TalkBack:Tenchi Muyo! Series

While True the tenchi dub may not be the best dub in the world, it really is one of the best of its time, I can understand why garfield doesn't like it, the voices are diffrent then the kind you hear in most anime, but I think thats what makes it show special. Personally the Pionner Ryoko is one of my fav vocies in a dubbed anime of all time.

Sorry if i overreacted earlier garfield, but your litterally the 1st person ive meet in my entire life that didn't like the dub...so I was sort of well...SUPRISED! To say the least.

But yea, They VA's do have some weak moments In Universe & Tokyo, but over all a pretty good dub IMPO.
 
The original OVA will always be my favorite and IMO the best of the franchise, the first TV series was pretty decent and I liked the fact that they managed to wrap everything up, can't say the same about the second tv series which was dreadful along with the Magical Girl Sasami spin-oRAB. GXP was pretty meh though, nothing to write home for and I'll be frank by saying I never really liked any of the movies, but I'm deeply disappointed on how Masaki Kajishima managed to kill his own franchise with the final OVA to Ryo-Ohki, made me put off alot of Tenchi material afterwarRAB. But on the brightside I'm currently loving the newest entry Saint Knight's Tale and I hope he keeps it up.
 
Next to Ranma 1/2 Tenchi was one of the best enserable dubs of its time. A lot of current anime fans are spoiled on Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist which, I agree, are far more natural sounding. It still doesn't mean Tenchi was not a good dub. The voices were very different from their Japanese counterparts but still fitting to their characters.

Tenchi-Sounded like a Muppet and it didn't help that his voice actor went under the psudonym of "Kermit" but over the course of the series his voice did "man" up and get more mature sounding his best parts being Tenchi Universe and the later parts of the OAV series.

Ryoko- Petrea Buchard did make Ryoko have an elderly chain smoker quality to her voice but if you consider Ryoko's age it makes some sense. It's hard to justify the voice except to say that over the course of the OAV series she was very fitting for Ryoko and this was more obvious with her absence in OAV 3. It's not Ai Orikasa's sensual performance which, I admit, had far more range between cute and sexy but still good.

Ayeka- Dub voice sounded a little like a whiny British prude but given that Ayeka was a somewhat spoiled Princess who on the outside oRABet Ryoko, internally she was just as petty and far more sneaky sometimes to the point of being sadistic. The dub voice captured this perfectly. As far as Yumi Takada goes...well there was the Ayeka S & M song and pictures in the Japanese media. Nuff said.

Sasami- Her English voice was actually BETTER than the Japanese version.

Mihoshi- Same as the above. The second voice was more on par with the Japanese seiyuu.

Washu- Her English voice was...unique. But I don't get why so people get so up in arms about her English voice when her Japanese voice was funky sounding too.

I think that sums up the pros and cons about the voices.

O-chan
 
If you can believe it, for a long time Tenchi's dub was one of the best on the US market.

That said, I really wish more male romance shows were reaching like Tenchi did rather than just follow in a mix of it's and Ranma's footsteps. Even Tenchi in Tokyo, which no question doesn't hold up at all to Universe, let alone the OVA continuity, attempted to keep away from the straight up tropes (which may be why it tried to make the characters very different from prior Tenchi series,) that were already beginning to become hallmarks of harems and male romances in general, and carve out it's own story.
 
This is the OVA series right? I watched it, was weird art from the other series. Tenchi's Gramps was oddly out of character for me. Actually come to think of it every one except Tenchi seemed out of character. I did like the spin off too, it was cute
 
I agree about Gramps. When I first rewatched this one, I was really shocked that he wasn't shy about his heritage. I remeraber watching one of the other ones and it was a huge revelation that he and Ayeka were siblings.
 
DepenRAB on your definition of harem anime. There had been other anime that has multiple female characters, and by some definition Ranma 1/2 is a "sort" of Harem.

However, the Tenchi director was, and still is, one of the few directors in the anime industry that do harem ENDINGS. As in, the male character ended up with multiple wives. This is extremely rare for any anime that isn't porn.

On that note, OVA Tenchi married Ryoko, Ayeka and Noike, in that order. Ryoko, as Head Wife, has a daughter.

Who the hell is Noike? Well, she's complicated.
Washu in her younger days, had a lab partner named Naja. Naja created a "child" for herself via modified cloning, and this produced a hermaphrodite Kagato. Naja then went missing due to a mysterious accident.
A Jurai Royal picked up a baby girl near the accident, and was adopted into the Jurai family as Seto. Seto eventually became the most powerful mortal in the known universe, and the person truly in charge of the Jurai Empire behind the scenes.
(We have no proof, but some suggest this was all a giant infiltration mission; Naja wanted to study Jurai technology, so it might well be that she had to fake her own death and start a new life in order to do so as Seto. Also note that Seto is still Washu's friend... Suspicious.)

Back to Kagato, the male-side Kagato hated the female side of "him"self, so in later years he used advance science to separate the two genders into separate beings. The Male Kagato became the one you see in the OVA, and killed by Tenchi. The female Kagato was abandoned.

The abandoned female Kagato girl child was "coincidentally" picked up by Seto. She is named Noike, and was later assigned to be Tenchi's 3rd wife because, let's face it, Wife 1 and 2 are useless for anything except fighting. Noike could actually do WORK for a change. That still doesn't change the fact that she reserable Kagato, though...
 
I really liked the Tenchi series. The only series I never could get into that much was Tenchi in Tokyo. The Tokyo series was a little bit more boring to me. Plus I never got to see the ending of the Tokyo series, because not long after the Tokyo series ended, they stopped showing Tenchi on Toonami. I think they re-aired Tenchi Muyo! on Adult Swim back in like 2002-2003, but I don't think they ever re-aired Tenchi in Tokyo unless it was on the Midnight Run or something.

I never got to see the end of the Tokyo series though, which still kinda ticks me off to this day.
 
An often forgotten show, broadcast on TechTV/G4 once upon a time, Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure also has a tenuous parallel universe connection to Tenchi, a little bit of lighthawk wingery, and take a look at that show and then check out the ancient mecha in GXP.
 
It's not great but I do like it and bought the DVD's when they showed in Right Stuff's Bargain Bin.

I think it was quite self-conscious of its borrowing from just about every popular trend of the time. They had fun with it without making fun of it or trying to play it off as original (c'mon, the mecha had high heels- you think that was a serious decision?). It was a non spoofy spoof if you could call it that. In the end I think GXP pulled off the same trick as Dual tried to do, but better.

Actually, GXP is probably a lot like what a continuation of Dual would have been if it got another season. It is how they wrapped the series up, saying they were going to go into space.
 
I actually love the dub but I was mainly pointing out to qualities of the voices that may bug more purist fans and Washu and Ryoko tend to be the most controversial.

O-chan
 
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