Reply To: 2015 & Beyond: The Future of Tenchi Muyo! (?)

the bar and hear my council a moment.

Y’all feel dammed and abandoned, much less that there’s no future for Tenchi. To some extent, and your point of view, that may be the case. But I’d encourage you to awaken to a larger truth. One that I’ve come to, having passed through several fandoms that died, some more than others.

That being that in the scheme of things concerning Japan, we didn’t matter to begin with.

If you believed otherwise, you were eating a lie of our own design. That lie is called entitlement.

When you get involved in anything, you bleed for it, you stick your neck out for it, you’d think it’s right that your

voice have some impact on the outcome, or at least be accepted and understood.

The problem though is that we aren’t Japanese, and even native Japanese, have very little input on the outcome of how Tenchi turns out. The power has always lied with AIC and the publishers. The power has been with Kajishima, and his cohorts in industry. You all know this already, but you’ve been seeing with tinted lenses up until now, when you’ve been smacked in the face hard with how powerless we are. It’s hard to stomach.

Tenchi is not ours. That’s the bottom line. To bring up the oft used comparison with Star Wars, we all thought the fandom won a huge victory when it was forked over (at a price) to Disney. But Star Wars isn’t ours still, its Disney’s and largely the people in charge of it there as well. Whether their vision for it matches up with the vocal majority, has yet to be seen, but it’s the same situation. We can rant rave, get depressed, hate others, hate ourselves, feel loss, lose money, time, friends, and more – but it doesn’t change that we’re not in charge.

The assholes out there, and we know their names, have had to feel the same way you are now when AI came out, and it didn’t match their preconceived notions of how Tenchi would look. This has happened before with GXP and OVA 3, much less Universe and Dual. In spite of it, they’re still around, vocal as ever. I’d venture to say it’s because they just enjoy having something to pick at, and ultimately anything can be picked at. Even a lawnmower can chew up more than grass.

But, why are we letting people that have, and will always be asshats, disturb our way of life and interests?

I’ve been preaching this since ChibiPaw, and Ai’s failure was known, and I really truly beg you all to listen. You’re more important than this. You’re able to be above all this.

Love what you love for the sake of love itself, not because you expect something from it or it doesn’t go your way.

What Tenchi OVA 4 or whatever asinine direction Kajishima takes it, is on his head. Maybe it’ll devalue it so much some other company will pick it up from AIC’s corpse. We don’t know and frankly we shouldn’t care! Don’t get so invested that you’re killing yourself and your relationships over it. The future is an open ticket. Anything can happen.

Here’s the good news, and by now you want some right…?

There’s a community of people with similar interests, who like similar things, that think you’re a pretty cool person, and

we want to talk. No one said you have to agree all the time, or be here all the time. That’s fine.

Value your relationships, not the subject matter. Interests come, go, and change with the seasons, but those I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and doing life with remain a little part of me forever. This is one reason I want to get another convention gathering together. I enjoy talking with the TenchiCast crew.

In sports like basketball or baseball, you know we don’t talk years later a lot about the greats as a series, or sets. We talk about the players. Babe Ruth… Magic Johnson… etc. How about here? Is it the same without the star players?

I’d encourage everyone afflicted by this “fed up” bug, to take a step back and look at why you posted at TenchiForum.

Was it because of a name? Was it because we have the most pictures or most files. Was it because we are the most Universe or OVA centric…? or was it because we built the best damn community of people the English speaking world had to date? It’s like Cheers… where everyone knows your name..

I’ll tell you something. I didn’t learn this till after I lost the Dual community over the course of many years. I fought tooth and nail, I wore myself to the bone, I spent all my money, I went to the conventions searching, I tried everything in my power (during the midst of the most horrible time in my life) to desperately shore up a wall that had already fallen before I even got involved. I was blinded by my self inflicted delusion that I was at fault, and that with more content, with more everything, surely the golden age would return if I held the torch up long enough.

It doesn’t work that way. It never works that way. Communities are built, run, and function because people are there. The quality of those people make the difference. What is accomplished in those communities is due to the strength and character of their people.

Kajishima has no power here, unless you let him influence your mind and mouth (er.. fingers). It’s all about how you choose to be affected or not affected. The power… is.. yours! (Captain Planet reference for you youngins).

This is getting long in the tooth, so I’ll leave it at this. I love you guys (totally in a non homo way, considering recent events) so if you have to leave, don’t let it be under these angry pretenses. If you can separate yourselves from this symbiotic pattern of self inflicting wounds of the fandom…. and just step back and enjoy what parts of it you do like, then I think you’ll find the world is a bigger place with more freedom. You can approach any anime, or series, and take it for what it is, rather than what you expect of it. You don’t have to be chained down. I personally believe = anime is meant to be fun, and a way to experience new things we can’t see in live action or film.

So the carnival is still going on. It’s a place called tenchiforumsign .

There’s still people happy to see you when you show up to the festival, to play a few games and eat some stall food.

Signed JGZ

-Your friend, hoping to knock a little sense into y’all. 😉

(and yeah, I had Love Song ga Kikoeru on repeat when I wrote the letter, screw OVA 3 )