Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3
天地無用! 魎皇鬼 OVA 3

My review of OVA 1 can be found here.
My review of “Night Before Carnival” can be found here.
My review of OVA 2 can be found here.

***SPOILERS***

Although Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 1 and Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 2 had been a huge success for production company AIC and (then) distributor Pioneer, the word from Japan was that because of the success of the Mihoshi Special OVA, Pioneer wanted to shift to non-canon spinoff Tenchi titles for TV, whereby they could more easily profit from the popularity of the franchise. As such, Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 got put on the shelf for roughly eight years until AIC and Pioneer (who’d become Geneon at that point) parted company. In 2002, AIC conditionally approved the go ahead for OVA 3, providing series creator Kajishima-sensei did a TV series first and that TV series was successful. He did just that with the creation of the canon spinoff TV series, Tenchi Muyo! Galaxy Police Transporter (GXP). Having met AIC’s condition, in 2003, OVA 3 began coming out.

For those who don’t know, OVA 3 continues the story of Tenchi some time after the events of OVA 2.  Episode 1 does a recap and allows Ryoko to develop a sisterly bond with Ryo-ohki after the cabbit gets lost in the woods. Z begins his plans against Tenchi. Episode 2 introduces Tenchi’s 200 year old sister, Tenyo, who looks like their mother. Tenchi meets his grandmother Airi, who’s in charge of Galaxy Police Academy, and learns more secrets of the Misaki family. He is also introduced to his official fiance, Noike. Episode 3 has Tenchi fall prey to exhaustion, so Noike takes over running the Misaki household and tends to Tenchi, thanks to her nursing education. Noike gives Tenchi a tour of her ship. Z puts his plan into motion as Mihoshi’s grandfather and GXP Marshal gets confronted about using the planet-sized GP ship Chobimaru against Earth.

Episode 4 has Mihoshi’s siscon brother Misao (and their grandfather) thinking Mihoshi is being used by Tenchi, thanks to Z. Misao’s plan to take the Chobimaru to Earth by his adjutant Mashisu after she learns of the planets status. She comes up with a new plan and leads a special forces team to capture Tenchi’s harem and lead Tenchi into a trap. In episode 5, the Chobimaru‘s mission to Earth has failed as Mashisu’s forces are easily defeated. Ryoko takes Ryo-ohki to inflict serious damage to the Chobimaru while Washu and company come up with a plan to get Misao and Mashisu together as a couple. Episode 6 causes Z to take direct action against Tenchi, causing Washu and Tsunami to adopt the Choushin forms along with their younger sister, Tokimi. Tenchi is revealed to possibly be the higher level entity the Choushin have been searching for.

Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 is somewhat controversial among western fans. There are a large number of folks who really hated it for various reasons. Many of these reasons are quite valid. For starters, there is a radical change in the character designs for all of the characters. This was due to the fact that like many comic artists, series creator KAJISHIMA Masaki-sensei had evolved his character design style. Combine this with the fact that OVA 3 shifted from traditional cell animation to CG animation, and at times, the characters can look quite bad at times. Ryoko’s ears, which were always meant to be elongated, get really elongated here. The character expressions at times can be quite over exaggerated, enough so to take one out of scenes at times. On the whole, the characters look clean, sharp, and presentable, but it is those moments of exaggeration that really are off putting, even to me.

Another thing that really bothered a lot of Western fans about the start of OVA 3 is the fact that it ignores the mini cliffhanger at the end of OVA 2. Because OVA 2 ends with Aeka’s and Sasami’s father Azusa (the Emperor of Jurai) vowing to return to force Aeka to marry someone other than Tenchi by bringing new challengers, Western fans wanted to see that addressed. Unfortunately for fans outside of Japan, this was addressed at the start of Kajishima-sensei’s novel Shin Tenchi Muyo! Jurai. So unless you were a hardcore fan (like myself) who would keep up with the scraps of information that would come out of Japan, you wouldn’t know and would understandably not be happy to see the OVA 2 dangling thread dropped. It didn’t bother me though since I was versed in this extra information.

This leads me to another thing that put off a lot of Western fans. Quite a number of new characters were added to OVA 3 (Seto, Noike, Airi, Tennyo, and others), although only one of them was actually a new characters to the franchise (Tenchi’s sister Tennyo). Not only were these characters introduced in the various canon novels, 101 Secrets, and various canon doujinshi, they were also introduced in the Tenchi Muyo! GXP anime, which aired before OVA 3 was produced. It would not be incorrect to say that OVA 3 expects the viewers to have seen GXP at the very least, but obviously the more you know, the more you’ll appreciate the new characters. Because GXP only had a single episode that featured the Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki cast, a lot of fans unfortunately decided to pass on the series. These fans would argue that the OVA series shouldn’t be dependent on additional materials, and I understand their point.

That being said, because Pioneer put the canon series on the shelf, Kajishima-sensei decided to continue to tell his story the only way he could (sans his planned story for OVA 3), via doujinshi, novels, and his website at the time. His purpose was to do things for Japanese fans. I doubt very much that Western fans even entered his mind. That’s all well and good, especially since he had no guarantee he’d ever get to do OVA 3. All of these new characters that folks complained about were introduced in this alternate media and as such, there would have been an outcry in Japan (and from me too) if said characters weren’t in OVA 3, especially since they’d been put into the GXP anime.  So when I rewatched the series, I felt the new characters were introduced properly and had purpose0.2 It is just that because the new characters were here, there wasn’t as much time for Ryoko and Aeka antics.

And yet, Ryoko and Aeka both grew as characters in OVA 3. Ryoko got the ball rolling with her bonding with Ryo-ohki, but while she retains her rivalry with Aeka for Tenchi’s affection, the two show how they really are friends when they are drinking in Ryoko’s room after Noike is declared to be Tenchi’s official fiancée. Ryoko doesn’t understand how her rival can accept the situation. Aeka explains things, and then Noike seals the deal by telling them the truth of her being there. I don’t think the anime does a great job of telling this, but the whole reason for Tenchi having a harem run by Noike is purely political. The Japanese understand political marriages, but I don’t think that many of us in the West do. So once again, we get a story that’s geared to Japanese audiences, not Western audiences.

I’ve been touching on things that bothered fans in general, so let me get more specific to my own likes and dislikes. For starters, I didn’t like how the fight between Tenchi’s harem and the members of Mashisu’s GP Special Forces unit was handled. In episode 4, Ryoko gets snared in a trap, Aeka and Ryo-ohki are caught in a trap, Washu and Seto are caught in a trap, and then Sasami gets caught in a trap. We get these wonderful fights setup, with Ryoko getting bloodied and surrounded by robot before stating she’s going to kill her opponent as the episode ends. In episode 5, we don’t get to see that fight. Instead, we are told that the girls won. That angered me to now end. I suspect Kajishima-sensei thought, “I’ve already shown Aeka and Ryoko in combat before during OVA 1. As such, I don’t need to show them fighting again since everyone already knows they are going to win.”

We did get to see Sasami’s battle with Mashisu, but only as a flashback. Yes, I know Sasami was never going to lose the fight, but showing Sasami with the captured Mashisu, then having Mashisu tell the story of how she lost to her companions (which we did get to see in the flashback) totally killed any sense of drama. I think Kajishima-sensei only put the scene in for Sasami because (1) Sasami had never been shown in combat before and (2) Kajishima-sensei had written on how Sasami and Aeka were highly trained warriors, thus he wanted to see that displayed for Sasami. So while it was nice seeing that Sasami could fight, the way the fight was given to the audience was absolutely horrible. All of the fights should have been shown, picking up from where episode 4 ended. From a dramatic standpoint, this would have worked very nicely, even though we viewers would be 99% sure that the girls would win.

OVA 3‘s biggest problem may stem from the fact that Kajishima-sensei routinely violated the “show don’t tell” rule of writing. That shows up in the aforementioned fight, but it also showed up in a lot of other areas.

Another thing that annoyed me was the lack of clothing changes. For example, in OVA 2, the characters are shown in a number of different outfits. Ryoko comes off especially well there. In OVA 3, Ryoko wears one outfit, save for episode 6, where she’s shown briefly in her battle outfit to try to save Tenchi. That’s pretty much how it is for all the characters, and frankly, I hate that. People don’t wear the same clothing day after day, and I saw no reason that the characters couldn’t be shown wearing different outfits.

Then, there’s the music of OVA 3. For OVA 1 and OVA 2, the music really worked well, thanks to NAGAOKA Seikou’s composition. Ryoko’s Theme is quite a standout piece of music, as is much of the other incidental music there. However, the musical duties for OVA 3 were taken over by TADA Akifumi, who’d also done the GXP anime.  I found his music to be fairly mediocre for the most part. For episode 1, since none of Nagaoka-sensei’s music was to be used, we get what I call “clown music” for all of the flashback sequences to OVA 1.  Even on my latest viewing of OVA 3, the musical choices for the flashback scenes make me cringe. They are so out of place and do not capture the spirit of OVA 1.  The only moment of positive standout music would be episode 3 when Noike takes Tenchi to her ship. The music in a couple of places did match the scenes in Kyoko’s subspace domain and felt quite right. It is a shame this was not to be the rest of the time.

For someone who supposedly thinks there’s nothing wrong with OVA 3, I’ve spelled out a lot of flaws. And it has a lot of flaws, something I’ve never denied. The final of these flaws for me was the lack of significant plot development until episode 6. Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing Ryoko get character growth in the first episode. I loved seeing Airi show up in episode 2 as Tenchi learns the truth of the Masaki family. I enjoyed the antics of episode 3 as Noike takes over running the Masaki home.  I especially loved exploring Noike’s ship. I liked Misao’s antics in episode 4 along with the party preparation at the Masaki home. I didn’t mind the love story of Mashisu and Misao being told in episode 5. But with only six total episodes (OVA 3 +1 was not approved yet), you’ve burned five episodes and the plot about who Tenchi is and Z’s plans for Tenchi (as well as Tokimi-sama’s) has barely been touched.

Because of this, episode 6 becomes an exposition dump. I loved the episode because we finally get nearly all of the answers I’ve been looking for as a fan. However, I do not deny that there is a lot of information to absorb. The first time I saw the episode, I had to watch it a few times to try to absorb it all. Then when FUNimation scored the license, I had a few discussions with the translator about this episode, which was apparently “fun” for him to do. Despite this massive pile of information to assimilate, because I ended up getting the answers I wanted and a proper resolution to the series, the episode ended up redeeming the series for me to the point to where I liked the series. After watching it the second time, it was a lot better and I have continued to enjoy the series ever since, even if it is the weakest of the three OVA series.

In the end, Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 is a perfect example of the kind of storytelling Kajishima-sensei would prefer to do. We have a lot of “day in the life of the Masaki household” stories, combined with a tale of Mihoshi’s younger brother. These stories are filled with the kind of comedy and even ecchi moments that are such a large part of Kajishima-sensei’s world. Had this been all OVA 3 was about, I would have been displeased, but because he did resolve Tenchi’s story, OVA 3 became pretty enjoyable, flaws and all.

Next up: OVA 3 +1.