Back in 2023 and 2024, I used to only watched the Pierrot episodes of Urusei Yatsura for simplistic reasons, and then in 2025 and 2026 today, I now watch both from different studios.
The major drawback from 2023 and 2024 at that time, I was not aware that Urusei Yatsura had a lot of episodes, made only from 2 studios, but also more.
Back in 2023, I first only watched a lot of the Pierrot episodes, and they were of course simplistic story-telling, and the advent of Mamoru Oshii was the main reason why I really loved only the Pierrot era, even before Ghost in the Shell and Angel's Egg as well as the Jin Roe the Wolf Brigade and the Red Spectacles was a thing.
During summer of that year, I did try to watch the Deen episodes, but the major drawback was that I was not very fond of the artstyle or the story conceptions that were part of the Urusei Yatsura franchise, but only in the Deen era, and at that time I even watched Ranma 1/2, but that anime franchise was one I got used to with.
The only reason why I watched a lot more of Ranma 1/2 than Urusei Yatsura in terms of Deen episodes, was mainly because that it was not dubbed with main exceptions from Urusei Yatsura movie 3 and 4, but I was not fond of the awfully big design changes to the characters. I felt like that I was not paying so much attention to the later episodes of Urusei Yatsura, that maybe the Deen era was not as good as the Pierrot episodes, mainly due to complexity overshadowing how simple it was to see how rounded the characters back then in the earlier part of the original series.
Now, since January 2025, I first started watching the Deen episodes properly, with 107 being the major game changer, to mind change about what my perception about the Deen era of Urusei Yatsura was like.
Expectations from 2023 when watching the show in the Deen era: (APRIL 1984 to MARCH 1986)
Somewhat boring stories (some of them include the Kitsune episodes)
The designs were somewhat too complex to understand why they have been redesigned as I hated them at first
Reality check, the Deen episodes were actually even more engagingly funny to watch from my opinion sake, and I have to say that the Deen era of Urusei Yatsura has physically changed my life a lot about the show itself, and yes there were some great gems like episode 107, 157, and 194. I tell you what, Deen really shows how much high detail and better pacing of the animation was sick as hell, in an excellent mannerism.
The other fascinating appreciation I can tell you about why Studio Deen helped me to engage with that part of Urusei Yatsura was definitely the character personality consistency, where Lum and Ataru have somewhat solidified their personality, at the same time, there is a dynamic of personality changes surrounding the characters, with Lum being slightly still aggressive, but still feels somewhat affectionate towards her darling, while Ataru goes through episodes of being a real tough nut idiotic buddy boy, who still leches around with other girls that Lum still hounds at him for doing so persistently, but yeah the notable change I have noticed is that I loved the new art style as it gave the characters a whole lot more dynamic within the show.
Though I don't mind the Deen era now as it is with the Pierrot episodes, I still have few issues with characters like Asuka, who I seem to say that is worse than the Kitsune, just because maybe she was not gaven that much attention to other characters in the show, but opinion wise, attack me for saying so, go right ahead.
Similarity wise, both Pierrot and Deen may seem to have the same frame rate position, but notably the difference is the amount of attention to detail and the character dynamics surrounding in the show, as well as having to explore more stuff I didn't touch back in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Speaking of being similar, Takefumi Hayashi and Yuji Moriyama are like the two I dealt with, since they were working with both studios at the time Urusei Yatsura ceded towards the Deen era, as I felt like maybe it was something to do with Mamoru Oshii not being very happy about the franchise, as he wanted to do something a lot more passionate for himself of what he really felt like at that time during the course of like 1983-1984.