July 29th, 2009 
AstroNerdBoy As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the canon Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki franchise. As such, I get lots of questions about things Tenchi to include asking about the possibility of FUNimation or other company bringing back the Geneon USA-licensed titles such as the canon Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA‘s (OVA 1, Night Before Carnival, OVA 2, which Pioneer/Geneon USA called “Tenchi Muyo!”), the Tenchi movies, Tenchi Universe, Pretty Sammy, etc. When FUNimation began to distribute titles for Geneon and even completely take over some of Geneon’s titles, I had high hopes we’d see all the old Tenchi titles make a return to the U.S. Now, I’m not so hopeful.
Since Japan and the U.S. are now in the same Blu-ray region code (we are still in different DVD region codes though), Geneon Japan appears to want to bypass a U.S. distributor completely. I say this because first Geneon Japan released the three Tenchi movies on Blu-ray and included on that release are the original English dubs and English subtitles. Now, they are releasing the first 13 canon OVA episodes on Blu-ray with the same deal — English dubs and English subs! There’s a catch though — it will cost you Β₯30,660 *(~$327 as of this writing) plus shipping which won’t be cheap.
So, if they are going to release the BD version with the English dub and subtitles on their own, they aren’t going to allow FUNimation or any other U.S. distributor to license the series or distribute it on Blu-ray since the U.S. companies would sell the same set for considerably less (I’d say well under $100). If Geneon Japan allowed this to happen, it would be cheaper for Japanese fans to simply reverse-import the U.S. Blu-ray’s and come out ahead of the game. Instead, Geneon Japan feels that if you are a true Tenchi fan, you’ll pay their outrageous prices and import the Blu-ray’s for yourself. I guess I’m not a true Tenchi fan ’cause I’m not paying that ridiculous price for 13 anime episodes with subtitles desperately in need of a fresh translation.
That still leaves the DVD sets, right? Well, maybe but with Blu-ray being the growing market, companies like FUNimation are trying to obtain all of the distribution rights, to include DVD, Blu-ray, and various forms of digital distribution. Now that I own an HDTV and a Blu-ray player, I’d rather have a BD version since I already own a DVD version. Further, I have the feeling that Geneon Japan wouldn’t mind trying to cut out the middle man for the DVD market and attempt to sell R1 DVD’s themselves.
Still, if you’d like to pre-order (releases on September 26, 2009) the Blu-ray set from Japan, Amazon Japan has it on sale at the moment for Β₯22,688 plus shipping. If anyone does get this, I’d love to hear from you on what all is on the BD set. ^_^
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Got this on preorder and paid off. Now it’s just a waiting game.
I hope you’ll let me know how it is and all the extras that come with it. ^_^
Wow. That is expensive. As big a Tenchi fan as you are, I’m surprised you aren’t importing it yourself.
Yeah, well there are other priorities on table at the moment. ^_^;
I don’t know ANB, I like to here from Funimation and their lawyers about any competition with the material they aready own the US rights. That won’t effect the US market for OVA 1-13 since Geneno new sold the US rights, but the other material was sold and might give Funimation some rights about any BlueRay versions.
Of more worry to me, what does this mean for the english version of Seikishi Monogatari?
Currently, there is no official English dub or sub for Seikishi, so I’m not so worried about that. FUNimation could license it and score all the rights without much problem. With the Tenchi Blu-rays, the Japanese are adding the existing English dub and sub and that’s where I see a problem.
There’s always a possibility of a DVD release, I suppose.
AT least somebody drop a review about it please. ANd not just an extra list, I’m curious about the image quality also. The OVA3 was already digital but the old OVAs I think will be a challange to provide better than a DVD upscale π
I’d like to have it but let’s face it, the japanese prices are just insane. I think I’ll wait for a reasonable offer.
What I want to know is why the newer OVAs aren’t on this set though. They weren’t released in blu-ray.
Geneon had nothing to do with the release of OVA 3. In Japan, Geneon and AIC dissolved their partnership before the creation of GXP. AIC then partnered up with VAP and the new partnership has created all of the canon and spinoff Tenchi titles since. That’s why FUNimation has scored all of them thus far and why Geneon USA did not.
Geneon Japan does not have the rights to OVA 3, GXP, Sasami, or the new Seikishi so don’t expect to see them do anything with those. ^_^
Thanks for the info. That makes alot of sense. Has VAP re-released anything on blu-ray? I’m curious if any of those titles you mentioned will ever see the holy blu light. However 2004 might be slightly before the studio started producing HD masters.
I haven’t checked Amazon Japan to see if OVA 3 is on Blu-ray yet.
Sorry to ask but i just finished watching “tenchi … Sorry to ask but i just finished watching “tenchi muyo ryo-oh-ki” and I’m confused on what tenchi to watch next. I tried an episode of “universe” but I was confused why tenchi was meeting ryoko again. Gxp didn’t seem to have ryoko or the others in it. Is there something I’m missing?
(recreated text — we weren’t sure which post it was attached to so we added it to three places)
Tenchi Muyo! FAQ is where you will find your answers.
[…] has control over. Sadly, I do not believe this will happen, especially with FUNimation (I wrote a speculation article based on the release of the first 13 episodes in Japan on Blu-ray) since FUNimation would want all […]