Excellent, strong characters! It honestly didn’t feel like a sexist, wish-fulfillment anime or an animation dating sim. The characters were strong, quite unlike the normal way females are according to the Japanese perspective.
The lore is absolutely fascinating. There is so much more to this than we’ve seen, and I love to speculate on it.
The blend between character development, slice of life, action, and general world-building is pretty well balanced. I love the pacing of the first two OAVs!
A few points left me feeling a bit confused, and I feel like Kajishima doesn’t care enough about the individual characters enough to elaborate on those bits, but that’s more of an OAV 3 gripe.
Sometimes the girls can be a little
The Aeka/Sasami relationship could’ve been written better. I remember having to explain, multiple times, to the friend I was trying to convert in to a Tenchi-holic that the two of them were sisters. After watching too much Adventure Time and Gravity Falls (heck, even My Little Pony (don’t judge me, bro)) and seeing very well-written sibling relationships, I think they could’ve been handled differently, even in spite of the age gap between them. Sasami, in particular, comes across feeling a lot like a lost puppy whom the household adopted.
…???
I thought of one! The exposition dump regarding the Chousen’s motive was nice. You didn’t need it if you’d read the novels, but it was still nice to see.
Tsunami looked surprising good in the new art style.
Speaking of Tsunami, it was interesting seeing that her relationship with Sasami isn’t totally one-sided. If her will is strong enough, Sasami can force Tsunami into action. Unfortunately, she seem to suffer from a sort of schizophrenic personality; which personality reacts strongest to the event at hand seems to become the dominate one.
With the exception of Tsunami, the characters all look like crap. Who thought this was a good idea?
There were too many characters and too much story stuffed into too few episodes. This would have been better to pan out over two OAVs instead of one. The pacing in this was just terrible!
On that note, I didn’t care for the story much anyway. I was left thinking, “So, Tenchi is the supreme being in the Universe and will one day bang everything from cute furry critters to space pirates to a pair of princesses and their mother (literally, from what I gathered regarding the solution to the Counter-Actor incident) to goddesses. Why would I watch that?” It makes Tenchi so strong he’s untouchable, and it turns every other female character in the show into a glorified blow-up doll. Terrible direction to take the story in, so I would appreciate someone else being brought on to revise/retcon/reign Kajishima in. At this rate, Tenchi will put Captain Kirk to shame and rise to become the Ultimate Womanizer. rageblow1 wth2 wtfisthis1
I don’t often watch dubs, but Petrea Burchard really is the better Ryoko.
I don’t care much for Noike. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t have time to grow to like her and get used to her, as everything was being thrown at us in quick succession, but it made the household look like it was in severe disarray before she showed up, which certainly wasn’t the case.
Noboyuki’s remarriage. Just didn’t like it.
I’d better stop now. This list could go on and on…
I loved how it felt so familiar yet different. It was like an alternate universe, and it was a nice ride.
The characters that were added into this continuity were excellent. I love Kiyone, Achika, and all the rest. Perhaps this is why I was so disappointed in Noike; the Universe characters just fit better with the cast. Excellent villains, too.
I thought that, like the first two OAVs, this was very well paced. It was slice-of-life and a quest-like story all rolled into one, and it never felt too forced.
The characters are still just as great, and Kiyone really doesn’t feel new. It doesn’t take long before I felt like she’s always been there, and then I missed her a little when I re-watched the OAVs. The new plot just gave us a chance to see the characters in new situations.
Mihoshi sure got the short end of the stick when it comes to intelligence. This isn’t a burnt-out detective, it’s that annoying person who seems to breeze through life without problems while you, or in this case, Kiyone, have to work for every scrap of prosperity you can get! She was still great, though.
I only cared about getting to Kagato because of Aeka and Sasami; it had nothing to do with an interest in Jurai, which is too bad. I really wanted some politics explored, but I never really got what I was looking for. Game of Thrones this was not.
The characters’ personalities were tweaked to be made more extreme, but they still managed to be endearing. It wasn’t too annoying and could be downright funny.
The idea of Tenchi being away from the group is a good idea. It opens up opportunities to give the girls something to do other than pine over him, even though they tend to do just that anyway, and gives Tenchi a chance at a more normal life.
I thought the Aeka/Sasami sibling relationship was done a bit better in this continuity.
Yugi was a great villain!
I didn’t care much for Sakuya. She should have won my heart over to her long before the reveal, but she just came across as awkward and forced. I get that that’s the point, ultimately, but… I don’t know. Sasami made me care more for Yugi than Tenchi made me care for Sakuya.
I know there’s more, but I can’t really think of them.
I don’t want to recap all the pros I laid out for the first two OAVs, but, like Universe, Okuda managed to give us new characters (villains and allies) without them feeling intrusive or out-of-place. It was handled very, very well! I love it so much!!!
It still hasn’t been animated yet! Why hasn’t it been animated yet?!?! sadface1 WANT1
I’m not going to go into these, as I haven’t read them all yet. In fact, I’m skipping around pretty badly. I finished the first one and then went straight to Hawaii Vacation, and I know now that I really shouldn’t have done that. There’s a villain in it that makes me think, “I should probably read these in order. I might understand it better.”
So far, however, it seems like a nice alternative to OAV 2.
