Maison Ikkoku, the second pillar
Maison Ikkoku ran in Big Comic Spirits, a magazine for young men, from 1980 to 1987. Takahashi built its boarding house out of her own apartment-complex years and worked on the series on and off simultaneously with Urusei Yatsura; both series ended in 1987. The opening was historical as much as personal: the late-1970s New Wave in seinen manga had made young men’s magazines newly open to shojo aesthetics and to women artists, and Takahashi became the proof of concept.
The anime followed the same relay pattern as the manga. Kitty Films’ 96-episode TV series debuted the week after the final Urusei Yatsura episode in March 1986; three OVAs, a theatrical film, the 1988 Urusei Yatsura: The Final Chapter was shown as a double bill with it, and a live-action movie followed.
This hub covers Maison Ikkoku as what it is in the Takahashi story: the noted second pillar, the adult counterweight to the Sunday comedies, rather than a shelf of its own.
