Urusei Yatsura: Remember My Love is the third movie in the continuity of the 1981 Animated Adaptation of Urusei Yatsura. It's a Non-Serial Movie released on January 26, 1985, in between episodes 140 and 141 of the anime.
When a mysterious wizard places a curse on Ataru that turns him into a pink hippo, and then kidnaps Lum, Tomobiki starts to forget all about their alien visitors. It's up to Ataru to rescue Lum and return things to normal... or at least to abnormal.
This film contains examples of:
- Aww Look They Really Do Love Each Other: Whilst Ataru throws himself into skirt-chasing once his transformation wears off, he's also the only one who remembers Lum despite the curse's effects, and in his own round-about way does admit he misses her. Whilst his first attempt to reach Ruu's lair is thrown off by his Harem Seeker tendencies, he does manage to pull through on the second attempt, and he willingly abandons that harem once he's told that the window to save Lum is closing rapidly.
- Brought Down to Normal: One of the first signs of the curse erasing Lum's presence in Tomobiki is when Shinobu loses her Super-Strength.
- Curse: The plot starts with an alien witch placing a curse on Lum when she is born for not being invited to the party. However, she was subsequently contacted and told her invitation got lost in the mail, so she attempted to cancel her curse. But it got lost in the mail, and floated around for three centuries until the film's Big Bad Ruu found it. Having grown in strength after centuries of going unfulfilled, the curse twisted Ruu's mind and sent him back in time to "save" Lum, inadvertently threatening to erase her from existence.
- Determinator: Lum ultimately defeats the curse by fighting through its attempts to literally bend causality to breaking point to keep her from uniting with Ataru, showing that nothing it can do will stop her feelings for him.
- Forced Transformation: Ruu uses the powers he has gained from the curse to turn Ataru into a pink bipedal hippo.
- The Magic Goes Away: When Lum is abducted and her alien friends subsequently leave Tomobiki, all of the weirdness in town starts fading. Shinobu loses her Super-Strength, Mendo loses his ability to communicate with octopuses, Ryoko discovers her "pet" the cursed sakura tree is now just a tree, and Lum's Stormtroopers lose their obsession with her.
- Oh, Crap!: When Ruu's nanny tells Ataru that he'll need to concentrate all his thoughts on Lum to use the dimensional doorway to reach Ruu's lair, he gets visibly nervous and warns her that he's really not good at that.
- Red String of Fate: Invoked early in the movie. Ataru cutting his finger and being reminded of the discussion is what galvanizes him to finally get off his butt and save Lum. At the film's climax, Lum follows a red string to Ataru... who is then shown to have similar strings tied to all the fingers on his right hand.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Benten lampshades that Ran seems to know an awful lot about how cursing people works.
- Tanuki: Ruu's accomplice is a female tanuki named Oshima.
