This is a comedy ahead of its time, and perhaps had it aired decades earlier it would have aired in English on adult swim and no one would have been able to tell a difference in the comedy. It is certainly that absurdist kind of parody you find so often nowadays, but its got its own charm to it, its all parodies of the Japanese attitude and culture, samurai swords and seppuku, duels over ridiculous things or and really really overdramatic sense of sentiment or honor. Basically the entire series is about a guy who is basically just really really horny and perverted who is just unlucky enough to be chosen to save the human race from an alien invasion by playing a game of tag with a sexy alien girl, only to accidentally propose to that alien girl, and have her fall obsessively in love with him and try to move in with him and bring just a whole shitstorm of crazy alien shenanigans to rain down upon his life and the lives of everyone around him. He is often chasing other women, who often violently hit him with blunt objects and then he gets electrocuted by his fiancé, often within the context of some other crazy stuff going down like a giant penguin attacking the city or dinosaurs being pulled through a rip in time or a romanic couple of mind melding pear which possess the body of two dudes and constantly tries to express their passionate love through them. Or a sentient flower who threatens to kill himself. The comedy potential for this show is limitless, and thats not even the best part, which is the ridiculous supporting characters, from the handsome, self obsessed samurai who is in denial about how much of a pervert and a coward he is, to the shy yet violent man hating shinobu, to the troublemaker flying imp baby who always manipulates girls with his cuteness to the bipolar paranoid nutjob who can suck peoples youth out through a kiss but always feigns innocent.
And as someone who is not especially into anime, or love stories, this is one of my favorite for both. Because over the course of the show it becomes clear that Ataru actually feels something for Lum but he always denies it and she is always super clingy and trying to get him to admit it and its pretty adorable, but also hilarious.
