Urusei Yatsura was a popular anime/manga series back in the days when dinosaurs and Betamax roamed the Earth (i.e. the 80s). It is a love comedy about an alien princess named Lum/Lamu.

There were other miscellaneous characters but we don’t talk about them any more because records of them have been long lost in the passage of time and everyone watched the show for Lum anyway.

Anyway, some twenty odd modern illustrators and mangaka drew their individualized version of Lum-chan for the new reprints of the Urusei Yatsura manga. Picture and name list after the break.

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The original mangaka, Rumiko Takahashi, herself did the first volume’s illustration to serve as a comparison to her artwork from two decades ago. Each subsequent volume of the reprinted series contains a special illustration of Lum done by an artist chosen by Takahashi-sensei.

The name list is as follows (original Japanese version), sorted by volume number:

1. Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura)
2. Mitsuru Adachi (Touch)
3. Mine Yoshizaki (Keroro Gunsou)
4. Eiji Nonaka (Cromartie High School)
5. Sensha Yoshida (Utsurun Desu.)
6. Takashi Shiina (Ghost Sweeper Mikami)
7. Kazumi Yamashita (Tensai Yanagisawa Kyouju no Seikatsu)
8. Fujihiko Hosono (Gallery Fake)
9. Kazuhiro Fujita (Ushio and Tora)
10. Kazuichi Hanawa (Keimusho no Naka)
11. Ryouichi Ikegami (Heat)
12. Minoru Furuya (Ping-Pong Club)
13. Noizi Itoh (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu)
14. Kazuhiko Shimamoto (Hoero Pen)
15. Ryouji Minagawa (Project ARMS)
16. Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist）
17. Isami Nakagawa (Kuma no Puutarou)
18. Moyoko Anno (Hataraki Man)
19. Atsushi Kamijou (TO-Y)
20. Takatoshi Yamada (Dr. Kotou Shinryoujo）
21. Goushou Aoyama (Detective Conan)
22. Junji Itoh (Uzumaki)
23. Taiyou Matsumoto (Ping-Pong)
24. Katsutoshi Kawai (Monkey Turn)
25. Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star)
26. Yuu Watase (Fushigi Yuugi)

The picture is incomplete and it isn’t sorted in the same order as the name list, so you’ll have to do a little seek-and-match yourself. Ops, ignore that.

The reprints have been coming out since November last year. There will be a total of 34 volumes, so we are left with eight more mangaka who have yet to be named.

And you gotta hand it to Noizi. She can take any female character and obliterate every aspect that is unique and distinct in its character design. It’s sort of like being assimilated by the Borg.

[ Source: ASCII.jp ]