Ai Tenchi Muyo Review

Twenty Years Later, Tenchi Masaki is STILL Pimpin'...

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back with a brand new review. Today, we'll be taking a look at Ai Tenchi Muyo. Ai Tenchi Muyo is a series that celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the the Tenchi Muyo franchise and it is directed by Hiroshi Negishi, the director of Tenchi Universe. But does this series deliver and is a worthy title in the Tenchi Franchise? That's what we're here to find out.

Synopsis: When one of Washu's experiments goes haywire and threatens to destroy the world, Tenchi Masaki must go undercover as a teacher in an all girls school in order to solve this problem. What he didn't count on was all the mayhem that would ensue in this school, such as the beef between the student council and the science club. This series has sixty episodes (technically about fifty since nine of these episodes are just recapping the episodes that came before...) and are roughly four to five minutes per episode.

The Good: This series feels very much like a reintroduction to the world of Tenchi Muyo in which none of the material that has come before this series isn't mentioned, which is a smart thing to do as you don't want to scare newcomers to the Tenchi verse with over twenty years of continuity (And Non-Continuity). The Art designer for this series is Suzuhito Yasuda, the man behind the art for Durarara. For the series, Yasuda redesigned the original cast of Tenchi characters and gave them more "modern" looks; looks that I both like and hate. I like the looks in the sense that they're different, but they aren't so radically different that I can't tell that the characters don't look like themselves...if that makes any sense.   

Although I do personally miss Ryoko's Sonic hair...

The original cast of characters, Tenchi, Ryoko, Ayeka, and others are all back and they all (except for Ayeka) have their respective voice actors back to reprise their roles. Seeing these characters togethe interacting with each other provides a great treat for long time fans of the franchise. The series is easily at its best when these characters are interacting with each other.  

The Bad: It was halfway through the story where I realized the biggest problem of Ai Tenchi Muyo. You see, this series has a pattern where you get three episodes of complete "Crazy anime high school hijinks" which is completely boring, then there'll be one episode where something actually interesting is happening, then it goes back to completely boring.

To further elaborate on this, the first ten episodes are set up establishing the plot: The majority of these episodes are essentially Tenchi as a teacher and him getting into a mess of shenanigans. Then there's one episode where Tenchi goes back in time and meets a younger version of one of his students and the rest...pretty much look like his students. Of all these ten episodes, the one with Tenchi back in time was the most interesting one. But instead of putting more focus on that, we get more focus with the high school stuff and it's supposed to be zany and over-the-top but by anime standards, it doesn't really stick out to me.

Hey everyone, it's the cast! On the furthest to the left you have...uh...

That isn't a joke people. Okay it is, but it's also the truth. This series introduces us to eight characters; and they aren't memorable. Throughout all sixty episodes, I only remembered the names of three  out of the eight characters: Momo and Beni (The Pink haired girl and the tan skinned girl next to Tenchi in the picture above) and Rui, the blue haired girl with a silly moon bang in her hair.Anyways back to Momo and Beni, the reason I remembered them the most out of all the girls because of how predominantly they were shown in both the art promoting the series and in the show itself. The show paints them as central and important characters, but I felt that they just weren't fleshed to where I cared about them when the events of the story played out.

Remember when I said earlier in the review that I liked and hated the new designs for the characters?

Looks like two of them are wearing nothing at all... nothing at all...nothing at all...

These designs (Well two of them anyway) play a part into a larger problem i have with this series, the fanservice. Now Tenchi Muyo is no stranger at all when it comes to fanservice (Especially Tenchi Muyo GXP but that's a whole different beast all together), but compared to a lot of the Tenchi series in the 90s, the fanservice is cranked up to eleven, and in all honesty, it feels a little unnecessary. 

Conclusion: When I first found out that a new T.V. series for Tenchi Muyo was being made, I was looking forward to seeing these characters that I loved come together again for brand new stories and adventures... For a Twenty year anniversary series, Ai Tenchi Muyo is disappointing, not bad, but could have been so much more as a modern day harem series, which is very disappointing because I find Tenchi Muyo to be the pioneer of harem series. Almost none of the new characters introduced are all that entertaining to watch and the moments where the characters fans really wanted to see come together feel short and are spare compared to all the new characters we don't care about. Whenever it seemed like the story was picking up, all interest in it was sapped away with the next episode or two.

Now in the series's defense, the last ten or so episodes were the strongest of the show and it did end the series on a good note, but that alone wasn't enough to save this whole series. If you aren't a fan of Tenchi Muyo then you can safely skip this series, and if you are, then proceed with very low expectations. The one hope I have is that this series will be the spark that kick starts something new with the Tenchi Muyo Franchise    

Til next time peeps, I'm the Shaman of Animation saying: Ryo-ohki was only in  two seconds of Ai Tenchi Muyo

Da F**K show, Da F**K....

Take Care...