Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki 8/9

Genre: comedy (could be considered romantic/sci-fi) Length: 60 minutes (2 episodes) Audience Age: 12+ (this is not the Cartoon Network version)

Opinion: Great writing, a cool art style, and very neurotic characters...so far so good.

This is a review of the dubbed, out of print VHS version.

This is one of the most popular titles in all of anime spawning multiple spin off series and films.

Anyone who knows anything about anime knows of Tenchi Muyo! It is great to know that high quality Japanimation can crossover into the mainstream since it is now part of Cartoon Network's Toonami line up. Great writing, a cool art style, and very neurotic characters put this series above the Japanese standby situation of a normal guy in an unusual scenario with three or more unstable women.

Unfortunately, American producers feel any show that is imported from another country must make sacrifices to become mainstream. I will not even tell you where the producers can stick this idea. Tenchi just is not Tenchi without the sake jokes, the brief comedic nudity scenes, and other jokes that are more or less meant for a PG-13 audience, so if you can afford to, buy at least one of the Tenchi Muyo! videos to see how much better it can be when you have a little more open sense of humor.

In the first episode, Tenchi Misaki's, the series hero, cousin needs a babysitter, so our hero's aunt drops little cousin Taro off at the Misaki residence. Hilarious scenes are bound to occur when four alien girls care for someone who is not potty trained.

The second episode seems to start out well for Tenchi and company as they are invited back to an inn that Ryoko, space pirate and demoness, destroyed a year ago in a battle with Ayeka, princess of planet Jurai. As it turns out, this trip was not meant to be a weekend holiday when the inn keeper hands them all tools to repair the place.

The past year for this broken down inn must have been a strange one because it now appears to be haunted, and Tenchi's grandfather seems to know why. That is not the weirdest thing about this trip because Sasami seems to be wandering around the inn in a depressed stupor, but what would a 10 year-old princess have to be depressed about?