Tenchi Muyo -- The Editorial

Sasami-chan: Even though this article written by Randall is dated back to late 1998, it remains to be one of my favourite articles on Shin Tenchi Muyo! As Tenchi in Tokyo starts its run on Cartoon Network, I thought I would repost it and share it with you. ^^

Why Most People Dislike Shin Tenchi Muyo! (Tenchi in Tokyo)?

by Randall M! Gee

The idea behind Tenchi is that there are a bunch of alien girls hanging around Tenchi, and they all have some interest in him. But he's not going to choose between them, because if he does, all the relationships have to change, and then we have a very different series. So you have this kind of tension, but nothing too serious, and everything stays about the same.

Now this can lead to kind of an insular setting. We see this in the OAV series, as the idea that Tenchi is nominally a normal Earth kid gets gradually overshadowed by creatures from beyond Earth, beyond our galaxy, beyond our dimension. Tenchi stops going to school and spending time with Earth people. He remains in this insulated world of alien girls, not choosing between them.

The first television series takes a different tack. Tenchi's earthliness is emphasized more. They're more likely to show him in the context of everyday Earth-people activities, such as a salaryman, a bank robber, a bartender, a street vendor. There is a greater variety of people shown. Still, they do take Tenchi off the Earth, but even then the extra-worldly focus still ends up coming back to Tenchi. And he does return to Earth at the end, and everything remains static.

But let's look at the second television series. What's the first thing that happens? Tenchi leaves his home. He leaves the girls. He develops an outside interest. This is very jarring. Now this is an experience that happens to all of us. We all have to grow up sometime, leave our home, make our way in the world. We all change. But it's hard, not only for us, but those we leave behind.

Not all change is good, of course, and all the Tenchi girls dislike this change, and they dislike his new outside interests, since it seems that he's abandoning them. Sometimes our voyages take us to places where we ought not to go, and our friends will rightly object. Sometimes our voyages take us to places where we should, or must, go, but they take us far from our friends, and they may wrongly object. Whatever the reason, the Tenchi girls are pained by his leaving. And it breaks up the essential static-ness of the Tenchi serieses.

I believe that the people who really, really dislike New Tenchi Muyou! are responding to this break-up. In extreme cases, people who really, really like a certain character look at this series and say "How dare they treat her so! I hate this series for letting this happen!"

It's not the only reason. New Tenchi Muyou! certainly isn't a perfect series. The animation isn't as good as in the OAVs. Some of the episodes are pretty lame. And ultimately, it's just light entertainment, and there's certainly no reason anyone has to love it, and any reason is as good as any other to hate it. But I think when I listen to some people complain about the series, what I'm hearing is a sense of betrayal.

I'm probably not one to talk. This post pretty clearly puts me in the fanboy category, since I've just spent tens of minutes of my life seriously analyzing a piece of light entertainment. I've spent actual American dollars to watch a television series broadcast in a language I do not understand, and then I've written up detailed synopses of the episodes I've watched. I am clearly not in my right mind.

But in my more lucid moments, I step back and think to myself, "This writer does not like New Tenchi Muyou! because he's feeling Ryouko's pain." And then I descend back into the depths of madness and write things like this.

-- Randall M! Gee, Keeper of Gummi Wisdom (gee@math.berkeley.edu)