Personally I gave up on the OVA back when GXP and OVA3 double whammy’d the community then.
Sure KM seems to constantly poke us Dual fans with snippets in various media, but it’s not going anywhere.
Frankly I sincerely doubt that AIC would create an OVA 4 series that matches what we know of the IF timeline:
1. AIC is not the AIC of the 90’s, it doesn’t have funding to do Geminar take 2. It’s too big of a risk.
2. As much as Kajishima likes to keep to his own world (sorry ANB) major publishers all over Japan are very much aware of their licensing with international distributors, particularly the US. This is why so much action on the simuldub, same day casts, games finally coming across borders, the national archive of manga and animation for Japan that just was unveiled is in both English and Japanese, why companies on both sides of the Pacific are fighting scanners and uploaders. It’s big business that can’t be neglected like Japan once acted before Admiral Perry steamed in. Japan’s own gaming and anime industry is in a slump, largely caused by mismanagement in the last 15 years. They are trying to fix it by opening doors (with a price tag attached) more than ever before. Have you seen how many more Japanese guests we’ve been getting in the states at cons lately too? So KM can border himself up, stroke his giant app-activated love pillow of Seto, but it’s not the industry keeping him in a walled garden. He simply doesn’t like being handled and told to polish his material into something besides porn.
3. Tenchi AI was a test of the waters. It’s been confirmed, we all knew it. More Tenchi was on the drawing board. No big surprise, it’s one of AIC’s largest name licenses. They might release an OVA 4, but they aren’t going to drive it into the ground with what we’ve seen in IF. Main reason being is that it’s KM further writing himself into a corner.
a. He’d have to pick up after IF when the kids can come into their own, which won’t have as strong ties back to the original cast.
b. He’ll have to do as shadows said and make it a prequel to Geminar, which will end up being more of OVA3.
Bring on the 12 cousins and step mothers that all have the hots… for him (Tenchi/Seina/etc). Keep in mind though that KM has never been big on direct continuations, there’s usually a time skip involved.
c. He’ll have to create a spin off story crafted before or after Geminar where you get another throw away villain for
the household to fight, and subsequently win against. Maybe one of the newborns is abducted? Meanwhile weird one off events occur that further raise questions about Tenchi-kami, chibi-Kagato, Mihoshi, and the other million threads left un-concluded.
d. If you really want to reboot the series, you have some new power behind the counteractor come in, strip the chousin of most of their powers, seal Tenchi and put him in peril, nuke Jurai, and you leave things in a bleak state like the transition of episodes 5 into 6. It creates demand for the next series, resets the baloney that no one cares much about, and gets back to the core of the girls fighting for and after Tenchi. It’d be a nice blend of TMIL1, and the OVA, while leaving it on a cliffhanger, and reintroducing the core theme to a new age audience.
But let’s be honest, the last time anything made sense in OVA land was the 90’s. So I’m not holding my breath for D to happen.
