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Otakon 2016: Discotek Licenses Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer


Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer Visual 001 - 20160813Discotek Media announced that they acquired the domestic rights to Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer. The publisher will release the film on DVD and Blu-Ray at an unspecified future date.

Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer is based on Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura manga. The 1984 movie is the second film in the franchise, and notable for its drastic shift in tone, from slapstick antics to a focus on deeper philosophical issues. The feature was directed and written by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor) and animated by Studio Pierrot. Akemi Takada (Kimagure Orange Road, Patlabor) provided character designs on the project.

Beautiful Dreamer is the only Urusei Yatsura anime work to not be released by AnimEigo. Due to a licensing quirk, Central Park Media acquired the feature, which it released under its US Manga Corps label. To maintain consistency between the two releases, though, Central Park worked with AnimEigo, who handled subtitling work.

The full story of the Beautiful Dreamer license, according to AnimEigo is:

Licensing all of Urusei Yatsura except Movie 2 (Beautiful Dreamer), figuring we’d head across town to Toho when the deal was done to pick that up, while at the exact same time, John O’Donnell of CPM was at Toho licensing Beautiful Dreamer and figuring he’d pop across town to Compass to license the rest of UY.

You can check out the original theatrical trailer below:

About the author

Samantha Ferreira

Samantha Ferreira is Anime Herald’s founder and editor-in-chief. A Rhode Island native, Samantha has been an anime fan since 1992, and an active member of the anime press since 2002, when she began working as a reviewer for Anime Dream. She launched Anime Herald in 2010, and continues to oversee its operations to this day. Outside of journalism, Samantha actively studies the history of the North American anime fandom and industry, with a particular focus on the 2000s anime boom and bust. She’s a huge fan of all things Sakura Wars, and maintains series fansite Combat Revue Review when she has free time available. When not in the Anime Herald Discord, Samantha can typically be found on Bluesky.

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