kenshi masaki what makes him tick

To get the “bad” out of the way, the criticism some have noted with Kenshi is he appears to have little to no detectable faults. A character has to be flawed to create conflict, fuel drama, allow for development and, most importantly, for you to care about them. Now while I for one cared about Kenshi, and really do like him as a personality, I had to concede this point brought up by fellow fans. To indirectly quote another friend of mine, at no time are you ever really concerned for Kenshi’s safety; he’s a badass right from the get-go, and while I enjoyed seeing him kick butt, at least for me personally looking back it was true, I was never worried for Kenshi in the same way I was for Tenchi or virtually any other protagonist from anything else I’ve ever watched/read in my life.

BUT:

The rationalizing for this can be expressed twofold: one, as stated, being the younger brother of Tenchi and growing up with his older “sisters” and Yosho as a trainer…if there was any kid with the right ingredients to add up to being practically a “super teen” I don’t know what else you could ask for. Learning under Yosho, you’d be more than formidable with combat, and cleaning up after Ryoko, you’d get darn good at tidying up rooms! It’s a bit unfortunate that Washu’s “conditioning” was used as a plot device to allow Kenshi to act out the ego-fueled, “wish fulfillment” of many lesser harem anime while at the same time retain his innocence and good-boy charm, but oh well, I suppose having Washu as a nanny would probably mess you up somewhat. Even his minor “flaw” of being obsessed with crystals can be chalked up primarily to growing up with Ryo-Ohki, likely taking crystal form for a toddler’s bemusement.

But the second tier of this positive take on Kenshi’s extraordinary abilities stems from points brought up during the cast, as well as by the starter of this thread earlier in chat, and that is that SKT is very much a series for Tenchi fans. Sure, it’s separated enough from the Tenchi continuity and good enough to stand on its own, but to truly get enjoyment out of it, it’s like an inside joke: you have to be “in on it” to “get” it. As such, the reason most fans (including me) enjoyed it and similarly how Kajishima could get away with having a slightly-less-than three dimensional main character (if taking the more negative view) is that we didn’t have our expectations set the same for Kenshi as we did with Tenchi (particularly if its cumulative, e.g. higher expectations for Tenchi in ova3 than ova1 because we were just introduced to Tenchi in ova1). We were just excited to see new characters, new locales and new adventures, and to be fair, that’s what we got (and then some). In my mind, if/when there is another Geminar series, that would be the time to add some much-needed depth to Kenshi and really delve into him as a character (but still allowing him to be a badass every now and then).