Saori Hayami, the seiyuu behind the voice of Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal’s Serafina, has been cast as Urusei Yatsura’s Oyuki for the upcoming anime series reboot.
A key visual of the Lum, the Invader Girl character has been revealed alongside the announcement via the TV Anime’s official Twitter:
Oyuki is a mild-tempered childhood friend of the anime’s MC Lum.
The Urusei Yatsura release date is on October 22, 2022. The reboot will feature at least four cours, although the first season will only have the first two cours broadcasting consecutively. The series will be broadcast via the Noitamina programming block on Fuji TV.
The reboot coincides with the 100th anniversary of Shogakukan, the publisher that serialized the original manga (1978—1987).
The Urusei Yatsura 2022 anime series: What we know so far
The reboot of the Urusei Yatsura anime series was originally announced in May 2022, when the first PV trailer was released via the Noitamina Youtube channel:
Urusei Yatsura is being produced by David Production and directed by Hideya Takahashi and Yasuhiro Kimura (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind). Naoyuki Asano (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!) is in charge of character design and Yuuko Kakihara (The Aquatope on White Sand) is handling series composition.
Additional staff includes:
- Kazuhiro Takamura, mikitail — sub-character designers
- JNTHED, Yoshihiro Sono — mechanical designers
- Masanobu Nomura — art director
- Ayaka Nakamura — color designer
- Yuuichirou Osada — photography director
- Masaru Yokoyama —music composer
The cast includes:
- Saori Hayami — Oyuki
- Sumire Uesaka — Lum
- Hiroshi Kamiya — Ataru Moroboshi
- Maaya Uchida— Shinobu Miyake
- Wataru Takagi — Cherry
- Miyuki Sawashiro — Sakura
- Mamoru Miyano — Shuutarou Mendou
The original Urusei Yatsura anime series ran from 1981 to 1986. The manga series has also been adapted into four theatrical films and an OVA series.
Multiple adaptations are customary with all Rumiko Takahashi’s manga series; Inuyasha and Ranma ½ anime adaptations also follow this pattern.
About the Urusei Yatsura manga series
Urusei Yatsura (うる星やつら) is the first manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi, who is one of the most prominent mangaka. Urusei Yatsura was serialized in Shogakukan’s Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1978 to 1987, amounting to 366 chapters. The individual chapters have been collected into 34 tankōbon volumes.
The plot follows Ataru Moroboshi and the alien Lum, who believes she is his wife due to a misunderstanding.
Like all Takahashi’s works, the manga is educational and fun and well worth the readers’ time. Like Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura features multiple references to Japanese mythology (in a different way, though) and is generous with cultural references and puns.
The manga series was originally licensed as Lum and The Return of Lum by Viz Media in the 1990s. In 2019, the publisher re-licensed the series and began releasing 2-in-1 omnibus editions under its original title with new translations.