Adieu, Tenchi Muyo!

Hey there everybody, whether you are an old fan or someone who may have just stumbled upon our humble little website and podcast, this is the end of Tenchiforum.

I know, I know, we’ve been pretty quiet for the last year – year and a half, but I think it’s finally time to say our goodbyes.

I am going to try and articulate all of the things that I want to say and try not to ramble on too much but I figured I might as well get out everything that I need to say so everyone knows about as good as they can where I’m coming from.

Tenchi Muyo changed my life, it shaped how I view the world and many of my tastes, and like many, as I’ve said so many times over the years in our podcasts, I got into Tenchi Muyo through Toonami, that mystical time in America where anime was the cool hip thing, and we had this TV block every day that catered to our primarily shonen, but semi-mecha and niche shoujo demographic of kids, it was the best time to be an anime fan,

And of all the shows, Tenchi reached out and grabbed my heart and it titillated my mind, it was the perfect package, it had everything, and if you couldn’t find SOMETHING to like about Tenchi Muyo well, then you didn’t like a whole lot things.

But it was the first show that really, was “MY” show, I never missed it, I taped it every day afterward and fell head over heels in love with this zany cast of amazing characters and the crazy situations they would get themselves into all over the galaxy.

Well fast forward 9 years and I jump headlong back into Tenchi fandom, and started a journey that would last until, well, really 2015.

Many remember Tenchiforum for being a place where fans could just have fun, talk to other fans, and talk about Tenchi, about everything a fansite should be really, and by far the strongest point of Tenchiforum was its community, because that community has largely stuck with us throughout the whole thing, and before I go any further, I just want to take a minute to thank Akawoa, Oyasumi, Ryokofan21, SpacePirateKid, Mitchell93, Wisper, Thorn, Kiyoka, Julia, Ukinojo, MitsukiLover, Snowqueen, and the rest of the regulars throughout the years who I can’t even remember.

Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart, I want you all to know, that no matter what I say throughout this, that I will always have a fondness in my heart for you all in some way shape or form, thank you for spending your time on Tenchiforum, I’m glad you found our little carnival in an ocean of bigger, better carnivals.

With that being said, Tenchiforum wasn’t always a fun thing for me, in fact, for a long time I was almost allergic to it, I hated getting on sometimes, multiple times throughout the years I thought about giving it up, but I could never quite detach myself from it, I felt as though I was atlas, carrying the weight on my own, and something like this was too great for one man.

Enter “The Boys”, starting in 2013 Tenchiforum would go into what I’ll call now its “Last Crusade”, For Tenchiforum regulars this would be everyone with a blue name under the “Staff Option”, Crazed, Pii, Nil, Chuck, Kiyami, JGZinv, and last but certainly not least, Who, you boys and girl were the people who kept me as close to sane as possible and together we did more for Tenchi fandom than anyone else had EVER fucking done for it in its existence.

We translated what people said couldn’t be translated, we were THE news source, we busted so many long-held myths in Tenchi fandom that we should have had our own show on Discovery channel, and every time some stuck-up archaic figure-heads in the fandom said “Jump this high” we doubled it, then tripled it, and made them look like fools, we didn’t just set the bar high, we’ve literally done everything that is basically physically possible for a Tenchi fan to do, and then some.

Which all came to a head with Ai Tenchi Muyo and the first Hasegawa Novel.

Ai Tenchi Muyo was the greatest feat that Tenchiforum ever did, because we went from not knowing how to use Avisynth, to speed-subbing the show faster than an established sub-group who was doing it out of spite that we did it, and doing it better CONSISTENTLY for like 3 months, I guess in retrospect the stress was a good thing because it helped me remember all the shit we went through haha.

And the Hasegawa Novel, which we can all thank Crazed and Nil for, was the missing link to an earlier part of the fandom that quite frankly, really changed how people should have looked at the show.

But after that, this is where the many straws that had been put on the many camels backs, but mine especially, finally started to crush down, and if you don’t want to hear me get into one of my “famous” rants laced with truth and profanity, then skip to the TL;DR (CTRL / Command + F).

It’s hard not to say this but frankly I don’t care anymore.

If you are a Tenchi Muyo fan, you are living groundhog day, or that one episode of Space Dandy, whatever it is where you live the same day over and over again, you are living it, because you believe somewhere in your mind that the show is going to get better and magically everything is going to be as it was 15 – 20 years ago when you came home from school (or work) and popped in your VHS tape, well it’s not, and it’s never going to be.

Tenchi Muyo is dead, it’s not coming back, Santa isn’t real, the Easter Bunny isn’t real, it’s done, it’s over, If GXP and OVA3 didn’t show you that much then just stop listening now because there isn’t a goddamn thing I can say to you to fix that.

I sound like I’m getting ahead of myself but it’s leading to a certain point.

Lets shift gears and go back to Ai Tenchi for a second. The boys at Tenchiforum Translations put in the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears to put Ai out, but why?

It’s really simple, because it’s the first Tenchi series that wasn’t pre-ordained in one of Kajishima’s shitty doujins, it was a mystery, and for the first time in years it was fun to be a Tenchi fan again, because NOBODY knew where it was going to go. We took so much time away from our friends and family to do that, we even spent 4 hours on fucking Christmas working on that show because it was the first Tenchi in years that wasn’t complete and utter garbage and dare I say it was EXCITING.

Which leads me into my next point, Tenchiforum did things because we cared about it, when money isn’t involved, you get paid in passion, and the collateral is you getting “personally” invested, which is true for any fandom.

And what did we get for our hard work? A fandom that didn’t understand, a fandom that said “This is garbage”, and a fandom that is living in 2000, where their nostalgia has created a bubble where they cannot accept anything but 1992 anymore.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks “This isn’t my Tenchi” someone commented, and that was really it, no matter what comes out from now on, it’s NEVER going to be your Tenchi, wake up people it’s 2017, Ai Tenchi Muyo was the barometer for whether or not you’re going to EVER like Tenchi again, because it was the last time anyone at AIC gave a single goddamn fuck about that show, but nobody cared, all they wanted was a quick wank with their memories to move on, and yet Ai Tenchi is the 100% sole reason that OVA4 was not only given a chance but even exists.

Which brings us to the break point: OVA4

For years the crew at Tenchiforum said that OVA4 was an impossibility, not because it actually was, but because the OVA4 everyone wanted it to be could never happen. The OVA has been shit for almost 20 years, how on earth can ANYONE listening, if you’re still listening, hold out hope that the OVA can get its shit together, when it’s literally being done by almost the same crew as OVA3, which was the biggest piss in the face to the fans that I’ve ever witnessed and probably ever will.

And yet, it was announced, and still people thought it was going to do something, and you know what? It didn’t, it’s a filler series between OVA3 and Geminar, and nobody fucking wins, the harem fans or the old fans, nobody wins.

And at that point I said to myself, it’s over. Not because I didn’t get what I wanted, I got more then I could ever ask out of Tenchi fandom, I got the closest friends that I will probably ever have in my life, adventures that I will remember forever, and a platform to showcase my creative abilities, the only thing I never got was the thing that is needed for someone to continue being a fan, a version of the show that doesn’t suck.

If you’re a Tenchiforum regular, you probably noticed that around April of 2015, things pretty much stopped at Tenchiforum, that’s because the boys and I basically had a break-up moment with Tenchi, we all kind of broke the cycle, and I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but Tenchi became a memory, but not one I cherish anymore, it’s like Chernobyl, it’s going to be a long time before I can look back at anything in Tenchi and feel even a semblance of happiness towards it.

And once again, it hit me, “Dagon”, you’ll say, “but what if a GOOD Tenchi series comes? Won’t you want to be there? You have everything already here”.

I realized that, again, at least for me, things won’t ever be the same, that even if it was the second or third best Tenchi series ever to be released and had an old style and the whole 9 yards, that isn’t going to make me want to get back into the fandom, it won’t make me want to get on the forum.

That period of my life is over, I’m too busy and too happy working on other things both in Anime fandom and other creative endeavors that I don’t have the time nor do I want to take anymore of my time away from them for Tenchi or its fandom, to quote our friendly neighborhood “Who”, “A fandom that we outgrew”

TL;DR And here we are, I might as well let this sleeping dog lie, it’s time to put up the carnival rides for good.

To everyone who made it this far or who skipped to this part, it was a hell of a ride pun very much intended, we did it all and then some and then more, I am proud of everything we did as Tenchiforum and everyone involved.

If you are one of the regulars and you’d still like to talk or keep in touch with other old fans, the social media sites for Tenchiforum will stay open, and the Discord server will remain up as long as Discord will let us, we’re still around, just not talking a whole lot of Tenchi anymore.

And we didn’t stop working, we are still doing podcasts, still doing stuff, if you want to follow us make sure you check out stuff like “Who Cares About Anime”

And with that I’ll leave you with this, adieu and farewell Tenchi Muyo!

“When we were young, we lived in the limelight.

Far, far away, back in the era of dreams,
we once burned brightly as the sun”.