Urusei Yatsura in English: Two Attempts, Thirty Years Apart

The first attempt began, at fans’ request, in 1989: Lum * Urusei Yatsura, a monthly American-format comic carrying two stories per issue. Despite a strong start it was dropped after eight issues and one graphic novel in 1990. Viz reintroduced the series inside its monthly Animerica magazine under a new title, The Return of Lum, then spun it back into a standalone monthly (comics resumed 1994, collections 1995). The run stopped in 2000 after eight graphic novels: roughly the first eleven Japanese volumes of thirty-four, with several chapters excluded along the way.

For two decades that fragment was the whole English text of Takahashi’s first series. The second attempt was announced on July 19, 2018: a 2-in-1 omnibus edition based on the Japanese shinsoban, with new translations. It ran from February 19, 2019 to February 19, 2023, 17 volumes, complete, exactly thirty years after the first attempt began.