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Tenchi Muyo is back in biz again! Yay! Well, so i thought for a minute or so. Because yes, it´s true that Tenchi Muyo is back in the ring again with a brand-new series. Well, new and new. “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” (Directed by Hiroshi Negishi and written by Junpei Yoshihara) started to air back in October last year.

And the last episode was released by the end of December (with 50 episodes +10 recaps in total). But I heard about it just the other day (and I bet that there´s quite a few anime lovers out there that don´t know about it as well). And let me tell you what. I LOVED the original Tenchi Muyo OVA movies from the 90s. I also enjoyed the cinema movies (“Tenchi Forever! The Movie”, “Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi Muyo in Love” and “Tenchi the Movie 2: The Daughter of Darkness”).

However, I lost interest with the series after “Tenchi Universe” and “Tenchi Muyo! GXP”. As the dialogs, plot and characters just got worse and worse over time
(fanservice much?). So I was somewhat sceptical when I heard about “Ai Tenchi Muyo!”, as I havn´t cared all that much about the Tenchi Muyo series since the 90s early 2000s. And when I watched the first 15 episodes of “Ai Tenchi Muyo!”, it was a painful reminder of WHY I stopped watching Tenchi Muyo.

I really like Ryoko in “Ai Tenchi Muyo” though.

For starter, each episode is just 4 minutes long, 4 MINUTES! It´s almost impossible to maintain some kind of plot, interesting dialogs or actual in-action scenes with such a short time limit. And to make things even worse. The plot of “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” is nothing less than a big disaster (each episode feels like a 4 minute fragment from the “Twelve Monkeys” movie).

As the series jumps back and forth in time and between different events. In short, it´s a damn mess. It´s like the creators just stopt caring along the way, and just said “Fu** it!” (kind of like the time line in the “Zelda” series. don´t even TRY to understand it).

It get´s worse though, as “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” is full of fan service content. In fact, every damn episode that i watched was full of it. It´s like the creators just filled out each episode with 95% fanservice, and the rest would be the messed up plot (which no one even bothers to keep up with as it gives you a headache…).

And just to rub the pain in even more, “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” was mean´t to be a 20th anniversary project, to celebrate 20 years of Tenchi Muyo.

For me it was just a really painful reminder about why i stopt watching Tenchi Muyo in the first place. Let´s be honest, “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” is a goddamn mess. In a way, it´s almost like a Hollywood production. You take something that´s hot at the moment (fan service in this case) and milk the living shit out of that concept. And don´t even get me started about the dialogs, one-liners or the so-called “jokes”. Yes, it´s that bad. But then again, if you havn´t watched the 90s movies of Tenchi Muyo, then you might actually enjoy “Ai Tenchi Muyo!”.

So make what you want out of it. But me, i´m done with “Ai Tenchi Muyo!” for sure.

Robin “V-Act” Ek
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround