The series is very light-hearted in nature and often quite bizarre. It concerns the adventures of a group of teenagers who live in Tomobiki, an area of the Nerima ward of Tokyo on a slightly fantastical and often ridiculously surreal version of Earth. The story centers around an extremely lecherous and very unlucky high-school boy, Ataru Moroboshi, and the bikini clad alien princess Lum. Lum is in love with Ataru because he accidentally proposed to her, even though he chases after every humanoid female other than Lum. (He lost interest in her as soon as she started chasing him, and also probably because she uses her powers on him many times, which come in the form of electric shocks.) The series is mainly episodic, with only occasional plots spanning more than one chapter/episode. Each of these usually concerns Ataru's ill-luck, his lechery (and Lum's jealousy thereof) or the wide variety of weird humans and aliens who love, hate, or simply meddle with Lum and Ataru.