Seems someone who worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation was a big fan of Dirty Pair and Urusei Yatsura. From the episode "The Icarus Factor"... See the Japanese writing on the banners behind Commander Riker? On the left, the hiragana for "u-ru" and on the right "ya-tsu". The whole banner says "Urusei Yatsura." Another pair of banners on the set reportedly say "Lum" and "Ataru" (the main characters from Urusei Yatsura) although it's not easily readable in the episode. At the bottom right (partly hidden by the Space Channel logo), red katakana writing on the platform says "Yuri"; references to Dirty Pair's Kei and Yuri are hidden in several Next Generation episodes. For example, in "Menage a Trois", the Ferengi captain gives his computer password as "Kei Yuri..." In "Measure of a Man", the schematic diagram of Data shows references to Nausicaa and Totoro. Of course there are also instances of Star Trek showing up in anime and manga, such as this example of Urd watching Captain Picard in "Ah Megami-sama" (Oh My Goddess) volume 18!
The idea for this article came from an old UseNet posting by Andrew Tong.
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