wwwwhhhhoooo

I’ll start by saying once again thank you to our translations team. I still haven’t experienced it first-hand, but folks lemme tell ya, even from the sidelines I can tell it is a LOT of work: day in, day out, our boys kept at it, all while fitting in a convention, podcasts, regular forum activities and oh yeah real life on top of all that! It’s something to be very proud of, and I’m proud for Nil, Crazed, Dagon, and Titan, and that much more proud of Tenchiforum as a whole for yet another major undertaking accomplished for the good of the fandom.

I was apprehensive at first. New character designs, let alone new characters themselves, along with an unorthodox format were enough to make any Tenchi fan jittery (“this will be garbage” at worst, “well, here’s to hoping” at best). But with Negishi behind the wheel of this rig, I put my faith in an auteur who has proven himself numerous times with the franchise, buckled in, and sat back for the ride.

And a ride it was! As in, it was…oh, what’s that word??? I can’t quite remember, it’s hard to pinpoint, since we’re describing a new Tenchi series…oh yes, FUN! Remember that thing? Fun? I had to dust that word off and pull it off the back shelf, but there she is, plain and simple.

Since this was Negishi running the show, and this was a Tenchi series after Tenchi fandom, as it were, Ai knew the risks, what to tackle head-on versus what to dance around, and in the end proved it could run the gauntlet and prod every corner of the fanbase with impunity, because at all times it came from a place of mutuality with the fans; everything potentially taboo was broached in a facetious way, because as this series has definitively proven (I invoke bachelor’s of film studies, auteur theory!), it was made by fans: it was produced, performed, and directed by people who know and love the subject matter.

On the note of one of the aforementioned risks, the new characters were introduced as seamlessly as possible considering it’s Tenchi we’re dealing with (whether it be Sakuya, Mayuka, or Noike, we all know the formula for fans: new girl = attack mode). The new girls weren’t propped up. They weren’t shoved down our throats. We didn’t get our face pushed into it while being ordered “EAT THIS!” There was buildup (remember that, people?); though the episode (or rather, as Negishi suggests, “scene”) length was short (as in hindsight the screen time for this entire series was short), we had time to get acquainted with every new character, learn what they were about, their relationship to one another, and eventually their relationship to Tenchi and the classic cast. (Do I want more? Yes! Could there be more? YES! Feeling that way after a series/novel/whatever is a GOOD THING, my friends! It means you cared about the characters because you were invested, as opposed to having large, irrelevent info dumps thrown into your lap.)

It took me years to warm up to Sakuya; still not “warmed up” to Mayuka, and I doubt I ever will with Noike. Amazingly, with screen time comparable to that of a feature-length film, Ai managed to endear an entire cast to me, a somewhat jaded, old-time fanboy. The trio of Hana, Hachiko and Touri were bemusing and surprisingly endearing; Beni’s tough-gal personality with a soft side attracted me almost as strongly as did one Ryoko to my fourteen-year-younger self; Yuki and Rui (and Kumo-kun!)…forget about it, they’re to-die-for funny; and Momo, the one out of all of them most susceptible to being a Mary Sue if ever there was one, was not only redeemed at several key junctions provided by the writing, but also redeemed herself through revealing and subsequently overcoming her own insecurities.

Looking at the larger picture, it’s fantastic to think what Ai can do for Tenchi: revitalization for the old (present), introduction for the new (contemporary anime viewers), and if it garners enough interest and capital, possibilities for new projects down the road (including Kajishima’s, potentially). But whether there’s supplementary material or not, seeing the cast again, especially ending with shots taken right out of the conclusion of Universe, was more than I could have asked for from an advertisement series for Takahashi.

A wonderful opportunity for the franchise, and a nostalgic feels-ride for an old fan like me, albeit with a “new anime” veneer.

Borrowing the adage of a great film critic, in my book Ai Tenchi Muyo! is “art masquerading as popular culture.”