Tenchi Muyo!: OVA Series Blu-ray Review
Back to the future.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 13, 2012
Who would have ever thought that the nineties could be quaint? The era of Clinton and Lewinsky, Newt Gingrich's ill
fated attempt to shut down the federal government, the devastating death of Princess Diana, and the cultural
phenomenon of the lovely Celine Dion warbling "My Heart Will Go On" hardly seems like the stuff of potent nostalgia.
And yet revisiting an "older" anime like
Tenchi Muyo is an exercise in a very sweet, almost old fashioned, type of entertainment, one that will be familiar
to fans of such other anime as
Dragon Ball Z, with a perhaps more primitive animation style and some kind of
bizarre character beats that frankly don't always make a great deal of sense. So many anime have followed in
Tenchi Muyo's wake that have aped at least some elements of this franchise that coming to
Tenchi now
may seem like an exercise in derivation, but the fact is at least in some ways this enterprise came first and at least
helped to introduce several salient tropes to the anime audience that have since become rather well worn clichés. I
recently mentioned how the long running
Bleach franchise doesn't seem to have inspired an overly rabid fan base despite having been around for
what seems like forever, but quite the opposite has happened with
Tenchi Muyo, certainly one of the most
ardently loved anime of all time. That may strike
some people as at least a little odd, for as undeniably
charming as the anime is, it doesn't exactly leap off the screen with unbridled genius. It's incredibly enjoyable, often
quite funny and has some intriguing characters, but
Tenchi Muyo, at least in this opening set of OVAs, may be
best appreciated as a lovely little window into what is perhaps surprisingly a largely bygone age in the world of
animation.
The hero of
Tenchi Muyo! is a sweet natured if slightly mischievous young man named Tenchi Masaki. Tenchi
lives
with his Grandfather and helps the elderly man tend to their family shrine. The grandfather is obviously a master of
some
kind and has tasked Tenchi with various chores which he insists will build character in his grandson. Grandfather has
also
repeatedly warned Tenchi away from a padlocked cave, which of course has piqued Tenchi's interest since it's off limits.
In
a kind of funny opening scene, Grandfather reveals he has the keys to the padlock around his neck and tells Tenchi he
can
have them if he can get them. A crazy, if short lived, battle ensues, which results in Tenchi being pummeled and thrust
through one of the paneled walls of the family home. The punch line is that he ends up with the keys grasped in his
teeth.
Tenchi of course gets into the cave and discovers that a family legend about an imprisoned demon isn't
that
much of a legend. His curiosity unleashes the demon, who turns out to be a rather voluptuous space alien named
Ryoko. While Ryoko is happy to be free of her 700 year imprisonment, she feels that Tenchi is an appropriate surrogate
for Yoshu, a long ago ancestor of Tenchi's who was responsible for Ryoko's predicament. Of course a battle ensues,
but after Tenchi rather unexpectedly vanquishes the woman, courtesy of the remains of a sword he also found in the
cave, he finds her sleeping in his bed when he gets home. That sets the middle group of OVAs in this set off on a
cascading series of events where one unexpected alien female after another enters Tenchi's life, to expectedly
humorous harem results.
There's a patently goofy aspect to these thirteen
Tenchi Muyo! OVAs that makes any niggling critical concerns
kind of moot. The show is unabashedly old fashioned, positing a somewhat clueless hero who (without mentioning any
major spoilers for those who haven't yet seen any installments of this long running franchise) turns out to be not
exactly who even
he thinks he is. And several of the supporting characters are just plain out there. Special
kudos must be given to such weird little ideas as the so-called "cabbit" Ryo-Ohki. Part cat, part rabbit and part
spaceship (yes, you read that right), Ryo-Ohki is a sort of mascot partner to Ryoko and is one of the most unusual (and
at times funny) characters in the entire series.
It had been years since I had seen all of these original OVAs in sequence and one thing that really stood out for me this
time through was how many surprises were in store, especially for a series that really doesn't pretend to be much more
than a silly exercise in some pretty innocent fan service and a fairly standard harem from outer space scenario. Several
of the plot twists, which I had forgotten in the years since I first saw some of these, actually caught me completely by
surprise, including a really cool one toward the end of this arc that casts Tenchi's relationship with his Grandfather in a
completely new light.
Despite the insistence of some who have deeply loved
Tenchi Muyo! for twenty-odd years by this time, the
series really isn't especially innovative or groundbreaking, despite the fact that it did indeed mine several tropes which
have been beaten to death in the meantime. But
Tenchi Muyo! is a very sweet natured, unpretentious
franchise that is long on comedy and has some delightful characters populating its kind of eccentric ambience. It may
seem quaint to those of us who are now jaded with the worries of the 21st century, but that doesn't make these OVAs
any less fun to watch.
Tenchi Muyo!: OVA Series Blu-ray, Video Quality
Tenchi Muyo! OVA Series is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p
transfer in 1.38:1. FUNimation has had a somewhat spotty record with some of these older series, and the fact that this
was licensed from Universal Geneon might give videophiles further pause, but the good news is
Tenchi Muyo! looks
surprisingly robust in its new high definition garb. The elements are in mostly excellent shape (in some cases much better
than even the refurbished
Dragon Ball Z Kai releases, to give just one indication), with bright, vivid and very well
saturated colors. The image is for the most part very sharp and well detailed, with precise and sharp line detail, though
this is of course an older enterprise, and so has a certain painterly softness to it a lot of the time. There is
occasional damage to be seen as you make your way through all thirteen OVAs, but considering the age of these
installments, I for one was quite pleasantly surprised with the results.
Tenchi Muyo!: OVA Series Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Tenchi Muyo! is just irrepressibly charming. Some may claim that it's nothing overly special, and on a certain
fundamental level I'd be prone to agree, but there's such a sweetness and often hilarious aspect to these OVAs that that in
and of itself becomes special.
Tenchi Muyo! is kind of an odd franchise in that it first gained anime fame in this set of
OVAs and only later branched out into a bona fide series and film franchise, so those wanting to find out what all the fuss
has been about for so long can find no better place to jump into the wild and crazy
Tenchi Muyo! universe than
here, where it all started. This Blu-ray set looks surprisingly good and also sounds just fine. The supplements are awfully
slight (if any franchise screams out for a retrospective featurette, this one is it), and longtime fans may lament the exclusion
of the
Mihoshi OVA, but otherwise this is a really solid release and comes
Recommended.
