(and by tenchi muyo I mean the ova, the other two movies, and tenchi in tokyo. i think that's all the tenchi stuff that we have.)
It’s pretty sad when a harem show’s title itself points out that the main character is useless, yet compared to the whole pantheon of harem leads Tenchi is one of the least useless ones out there. He helps out at the shrine, works on the farm, has a cool lightsaber, is pretty good at judo, and is part of the royal family of a galactic empire. Sounds like a pretty useful guy. When push comes to shove, rather than saying oh I don’t know “Can’t you just uh, not have the baby?” or something, he gets down to business. He even manages to have relationships with female characters which don’t begin and end at her punching him because of some complete accident.
While Tenchi Muyo is one of the earlier harem series, it’s not actually important to watch in any real kind of way in order to get the genre. Watching a show like Macross is critical in order to get Nadesico, but there’s nothing really from Tenchi that establishes any kind of baseline or easily referenceable text. My gut feeling is that this comes primarily from the fact that harem shows are basically at their cores about the fetishes du jours.
For example, Tenchi has a mad scientist in Washu and a magical girl loli that transforms into an adult in Sasami. It’s got to have been like, 10 years or so since I’ve seen those character types used in any kind of harem show. On the other hand, it also doesn’t have any sad girls in snow or maybe-or-maybe-not blood related little sisters or tsunderes or yanderes or or or. I get the feeling that watching Tenchi Muyo now would be like watching say, Clannad in 15 years and wonder what the deal was with all of the girls. What is the deal with Fuuko’s starfish? Why does Kyou keep acting angry and then nice? And why aren’t there any (I dunno), adults who have to go back to school? Those are my favorite out of the popular moe characters here in 2024!
Would I watch it even if I weren’t forced? I might not have watched everything in the series, but for completion’s sake I’d watch the OVA.
> What is the deal with Fuuko’s starfish?
I already wonder that only one year later…or more accurately, what the deal is with Fuuko in general…
When I watched this in 6th grade, it was my first exposure to a harem series.
I can’t even fathom how anime is going to look like the future.
I think Love Hina has had far more impact on what harems as a genre ended up looking like. But Tenchi is irreplaceable.
Not prepared to go tossing words like “classic” around though…
TM!R is considered to be the father of the modern-day harem genre. Basically, it took an element of “Urusei Yatsura” (lots of female characters and a single male lead) and turned it so that the guy wasn’t a lecherous guy, but a nice one, then had all the girls fall in love with said guy.
That said, if all you saw in the OVA’s was the harem aspect, you sadly missed the point. Don’t feel bad though; As one of the leading TM!R experts, I’ve learned that most people get caught on the harem stuff and somehow miss the story. For me, the harem stuff was just icing on the cake. Instead, I got into learning why Tenchi had these strange powers and the whole universe with the powers such as Jurai and the like. But that’s just me though because I like stories in big worlds like Tolkien’s stuff.
Am I the only one that actually liked Tenchi in Tokyo? Just cause Tenchi had finally settled on a girl (albeit a fake one but still) I was so sick of the Ryoko vs Ayeka crap in the OVAs
Hrm so Macross is essential to get Nadesico? I watched Nadesico first so I guess I know what I’m watching next and then rewatching soon after that.
Tenchi is THE classic 90s anime!
You should watch Macross anyways, but no, it’s not absolutely necessary. You do need to have some background in space operas though, and Macross is as fine of one as they come.
jp:
“maybe-or-maybe-not blood related little sisters”
Ayeka and Sasami are Tenchi’s great aunts technically. They just ignored it in the show, but this was a topic for certain fans.
And that’s not to mention Tenchi’s grandfather. LOL.
@omo/Koji Oe
I mean, I had seen Nadesico first, and while it was still good it got infinity times better once I saw Macross since Nadesico reworks so much of Macross.
Hinano > I belive you are, I love the first OAV’s, its one of my favourite anime of all times but when it comes to TV series… well the first one was OK but Tokyo, ZOMG I couldn’t stand to watch this shite, the only worse Tenchi series was IMO GXP, in this one the whole Tenchi Universe hit the rock bottom.
Yea GXP was awful lol I totally couldn’t get past the first episode