Rating: ***
Divided into 200+ installments
Rumiko Takahashi's classic tale of boy meets alien is a riot to watch. Our hapless hero is Ataru Moroboshi, a luckless and lecherous lad whose primary hobby is girl chasing. When an alien invasion comes to Earth, Ataru must win a game of tag with the aliens' champion or else forfeit the Earth to the aliens. He steadfastly refuses until he finds out that his opponent is the adorably bubbly and bouncy tiger-stripe bikini clad alien princess known as Lum. He manages to win through trickery, but that's only the beginning of his troubles. All of the characters are fun and adorable, and the series is pure light-hearted sci-fi lunacy. Unfortunately, the series starts to lose steam after seventy episodes or so, and begins to favor metaphysical absurdity over the original science fiction romantic comedy premise. The whole show is plagued with low budget animation, and the style and quality fluctuate wildly throughout the series. That doesn't keep it from being highly entertaining, though.