The Anime Otaku Reviews: Review | Anime

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Review | Anime | Tenchi Muyo

TENCHI MUYO : Tenchi Masaki lives a quiet life with his father and
grandfather in their large house on historic grounds. When Tenchi accidentally
releases a 5,000 year-old demon named Ryoko sealed away under a cave of
boulders, things begin to collapse. Space Pirate Ryoko attracts Space Police
officers Mihoshi and Kiyone, later attracting planet princesses Sasami and
Ayeka, and 12-year-old genius Washu. Out of pity he ends up housing the oddball
girls and ultimately becomes the subject of their affection, which becomes too
much for him to handle.

One of the many results of my days of movie store anime scavenging for anything that caught my eye, I first rented one of the Tenchi Muyo movies, Daughter Of Darkness, and I tried it on for size. My liking for the movie finally guided me to the series.

This series is very, very Sci-Fi. The girls that live under Tenchi's roof are all aliens, even though they take on the physical forms of humans, and some of them are actually a lot older than they appear. At one time or another there's always lots of Sci-Fi-stylized fighting going on, which includes but is not limited to Ryoko and Ayeka's consistent cat fights over the heart of Tenchi, which only drives him away rather than draws him close. The only one of the girls that does not show an almost demented obsession over him is young Sasami, who sees him merely as a brother figure rather than a possible boyfriend.

This used to air on an anime segment of a children's television channel, which I found extremely strange because this show is very seinen and definitely not for children. There is profanity in the show and a lot of the time some nudity. Even though nothing too detailed is shown, there are a few scenes of the older girls (ages from about 18-24) in the girls' bathhouse fully unclothed. Even though the episodes they showed on the network were the mild ones that did not feature any nudity, I was shocked to find that there were a couple of "go to hells" here and there. They removed a scene of a very mild slap in an episode of Sailor Moon, yet they allow the airing of episodes with that kind of language on a children's network. I found it a little odd.

There is a large amount of unsuitable content in this series and I really wouldn't recommend showing it to a child, even with supervision. Again, some of the episodes are mild with no such content, but when there is, you really don't know it's coming, it's pretty much there before you can react.

If we are, however, talking about those suited for seinen animes, I would check this one out, it's a good show, just not very child-appropriate.

Overall Rating: