This Week in Anime

Coop

Steve, for as long as you and I have been into anime, there has always been one indisputable truth: we can’t escape it, ain’t no use in trying… And by “it” we speak of the oldtaku favorite, Tenchi Muyo! The series has sporadically popped up over the past 30 years with continuations of the original Ryo-Ohki OVA series and a whole Tenchi universe of spin-offs—including a run of American-made comics! From the late 90s, these classic comics have garnered enough warm fuzzies (and moolah) to push the recent Kickstarter for a series omnibus way past the finish line!

I might not have the fuzzies for the comics myself, but oh boy, do I have my own particular love for this found family of chaotic characters.

There is just so much Tenchi… but here’s the basic gist of the series for readers who haven’t heard of it before: Tenchi Masaki is a teenager living out in the countryside with his architect dad and shinto priest grandpa. As the leaves are about to fall, a series of extraterrestrial circumstances end up opening the Masaki house to an alien princess, her little sister, a mad scientist, a pair of space cops, and a wily space pirate!

Ryoko, the space pirate, rules by the way…
However, looking at the whole series through a wider lens, our formative experiences might be the best place to start.

Hearing Optimus Prime himself, Peter Cullen, deliver a Tenchi Muyo! plot synopsis is wild… I might have seen this specific promo back then, because I remember being confused for years on the difference between the original 1992 Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA series and the 1995 Tenchi Universe TV series. It was probably because this trailer uses footage from both. Then again, I was seven years old when the promo originally aired in 2000.

However, I remember seeing bits of an episode from the OVA series in which the resident science gremlin, Washu, dotes on motherhood while she watches after Tenchi‘s baby cousin.

I found it on the same International Channel where I found Utena. I caught the third (or so) episode of Tenchi Universe late one night, and then I watched the rest religiously, one episode per week, until it finished. And while it wasn’t quite on the same level as Utena, Tenchi was still a pretty significant revelation.

This was the show that made me look up a lot of Japanese and/or anime-related cultural signifiers, because it was the first show that made me cognizant of them. I didn’t always know what a nosebleed meant, or why a character would sneeze when other people would talk about them, or what an onsen was. Tenchi was educational.

Meanwhile, going up 2+ decades, Tenchi came into my life just as I was discovering the many wonders of the World Wide Web (my family didn’t get dial-up until like 2003). And by that, I mean anime webrings. My aforementioned Tenchi education came from many sites that looked like this.

And that one is still up!
Visit Little Washu, where you can find cool media files, awesome pictures of the red-head goddess, info on your favorite Tenchi Character, and cool sites on the net picked by the lovable Little Washu.
Those webpages were also where I discovered that Tenchi Universe was just one of many facets of the wider Tenchiverse. And to an outside observer, that’s probably Tenchi‘s defining feature besides the obvious harem trappings: the absurdly convoluted continuity.

A continuity so absurd, Funimation had to put a handy chart on the back of the most recent DVDs.

And that diagram still undersells it.
It makes for an interesting contradiction for Tenchi. It was one of the most accessible anime at the time, thanks to its prominence on Toonami, yet it was simultaneously impenetrable because you needed to do a lot of research on Geocities to understand why Kiyone wasn’t in the OVAs.

“KIYOOOOOOOONE, KIYONE WHERE ARE YOU?”

Mihokiyo till the day I die.

This is a good chance for me to say that I prefer Universe as well. The TV series has a wholesome, found family vibe that I find myself doting over regularly. I don’t mind the more sexually charged nature of the OVAs, but it gets a little weird for my tastes when the audience starts to learn how everyone is related. Ryo-Ohki has a kid with Tenchi?

This Ryo-Ohki?

Well, technically not THAT Ryo-Ohki, but it’s an element that’s cooled my enthusiasm on the OVAs. If you’re into the OVAs, dear reader, more power to you.

We have to pay Tenchi‘s saucier content its dues, if only for enabling the legendary feats of censorship in its Toonami airing.

It’s a legitimately fascinating relic of the times that only exists now through VHS recordings of the original broadcast. Now that’s what I call media preservation.

It would be an insane amount of work, but this would be cool to see replicated in a future home video release. I probably just made an editor break out in a cold sweat. Anyway, the aforementioned (and still decently available for now) DVD release of Tenchi Universe is going on 13 years old as of this writing.

I wouldn’t call this an amazing release, but it has character for days. From its VHS-esque video quality to the edited-on-video title overlays and occasional typos in the credits, these quirks really make it feel like a product of the 90s in all the best ways possible. It reminds me of when I popped my childhood copy of the Sonic OVA into the family VHS player growing up. I’d love a brand-new Blu-ray release at some point, but this set feels right to me.

Agreed on all accounts, but especially the nice Blu-ray part. So much Tenchi stuff is out of print and not streaming, and it’d be nice to at least have more of the older material available. RetroCrush had the first OVA a while ago, and that remaster looked great!

Meanwhile, Crunchyroll‘s current Tenchi catalogue is like a cosmic joke for any newcomers.

We’ve got parts 4 and 5 of the OVA series, the isekai spinoff that doesn’t even star Tenchi, the OVA sequel to GXP made 20 years after the fact, and the four-minute shorts made to promote tourism in the city of Takahashi.

Ai: Tenchi Muyo! is interesting as it features the return of original English cast members like Petra Burchard as Ryoko and Universe director Hiroshi Negishi. However, I’ll admit that Universe is probably Negishi’s best-regarded work. I don’t believe Burn Up W, Divergence Eve, and Amazing Nurse Nanako are all that fondly remembered.

And that last one scarred me.

I couldn’t get into Ai: Tenchi Muyo! because the character designs just didn’t look right.

Hashtag Not My Ryoko
I’m glad you brought up the English dub because those original dub actors are the characters to me. That’s how I originally watched the series, and it’s not perfect, but it’s so charming and full of personality. Tenchi‘s got that Kermit voice, Ayeka is British, and Ryoko is suffused with Petrea Burchard‘s one-of-a-kind gravelly, feisty delivery. It’s so great.

Wonkiness is intrinsic to the Tenchi experience. This is by no means a universally beloved franchise. Even fans will vehemently disagree amongst themselves over which parts are worthwhile. When I was getting into it, for example, the conventional wisdom was that Tenchi in Tokyo was garbage. However, I don’t remember it being that bad, and I’d be curious to see how it holds up today.

That’s probably why I haven’t gone too far outside the Universe branch of the series. Then again, that branch treated me pretty well with a wonderful show and a pair of fantastic movies.

These DVDs might be from the era of interactive menus and chapter selection as special features, but it’s one of the easier ways to physically nab these flicks today. Tenchi in Love sticks in my mind as one of the DVDs I’d see at the local video store and think “I shouldn’t let my mom know I’m looking at this.” That “TENCHI THE MOVIE” logo was burned into my brain for a while.
And while I dig In Love for its Back to The Future hijinks, Tenchi Forever! might actually be the best Tenchi anything.

With the bit I’ve heard about the more recent entries in the OVA series, I’ve found myself wishing for a return to Tenchi Universe that is the same kind of “next step” Forever is. I keep thinking about a hypothetical follow-up about the wild summer Tenchi‘s daughter has with her weird aunts while he’s away on business or the like… Giving new viewers a chance to see this world through new eyes while also showing longtime fans how these beloved characters and their relationships have changed over the years.
Like Eda from The Owl House is the Aunt Ryoko that floats around in my brain.

True. Concluding with Tenchi marrying everyone is, in its own way, pretty gutsy. I don’t believe the series is capable of handling that level of polyamory in an appropriately gutsy way. It’s no 100 Girlfriends.

And bizarrely, it seems like the whole extended OVA timeline exists to set up the beginning of War on Geminar, the isekai spinoff. Who was asking for that? Why?

I’m certainly interested! Tenchi refuses to go away. It’s always possible to reclaim some of that past greatness. One suggestion: instead of trying to ape the current isekai trend, why not blaze a trail and bring back Pretty Sammy?

I’m also easy to please. If you, say, wanted to ditch that Tenchi guy and dedicate an entire show to a certain boozehound space pirate, my attention would be piqued.

You have to understand: Ryoko was the blueprint. Every subsequent anime wife I’ve ever had and ever will have can be traced back to her.

This column is now a Ryoko appreciation post.

Ryoko sure does have a “Lum with a husky 90s edge” vibe. They both fly, have multiple love rivals, and can shoot lightning! It might not exactly be a “Daniel and the cooler Daniel” situation, but I can fully get behind a similar reading.

According to Hiroki Hayashi, I Dream of Jeannie is her true inspiration, which I can also see.
I mean, I guess the real question is who amongst us hasn’t dreamt of a loud floating woman who loves to bully you?