Background midi: Tenchi Muyo! theme
Written 05/01/96
This is one of my favorites of all time, mostly because of the cabbit. What's a cabbit you ask? A creature called Ryo-Oki that appears to be half cat and half rabbit. Like a rabbit it likes to eat carrots and things made of ferrous metals, and like a cat it meows and morphs into a big spaceship. Perfectly ordinary - right?
Tenchi Muyo! is a fun science-fiction/fantasy series with a healthy dose of that unique combination of high drama and low comedy that drew many of us to anime in the first place. The first story arc is comprised of 6 OVAs available on tape, dubbed or subbed, or on laserdisc which has both the English and Japanese audio tracks with closed-caption subtitles. There are a further 7 OVAs on 4 tapes or discs, 1 special , and a spin-off alternate universe series with 1 episode out so far, with more to come.
We start out with our protagonist: Tenchi Masaki; a reasonably normal high school boy (or so he seems at first) who doesn't want any trouble. He just hopes not to die of boredom helping his grandfather take care of his shrine and to get the key to explore the mysterious cave-shrine where a demon was said to be imprisoned by one of his ancestors long ago. Grandpa of course says no, its too dangerous, a horrible demon is imprisoned there, yatta yatta yatta, but what teenage boy ever paid attention to such warnings anyway? This being anime, there is something down there, which Tenchi barely escapes and manages to reseal in the cave (or so he believes). He will soon discover that the "demon" is free as it shows up after school to play cat and mouse, with him as the mouse. Naturally the "demon" is actually a beautiful alien space-pirate girl (you had already guessed that, right?) with great powers. So as not to give too much away, lets summarize by sayings that Tenchi defeats Ryoko (the "demon") with help from an artifact he took from the cave, and shortly thereafter Ryoko falls in love with him. As the series progresses two more beautiful space-alien girls (lets hear it for parallel evolution!) show up and fall in love with him as well (tough break, why can't my life be like that?). They have many interesting and humorous adventures for a time until the first story arc's "heavy" arrives and things turn serious. The love-quadrangle makes for many humorous moments, not to mention Tenchi's goofy father who feels its his parental duty to introduce Tenchi to the fine art of "peeping" (ah, the infamous onsen episode).
I strongly recommend this series. Pioneer did their usual great dubbing job, but if you are rabid anti-dubber they have a sub-titled version available as well. If you get no other anime series this year then get this one, its that good!
Yours in anime,
Jay the Obscure