Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1
天地無用! 魎皇鬼 OVA 3 +1

• OVA 1 review can be found here.
• Review of “Night Before Carnival” can be found here.
• OVA 2 review can be found here.
• OVA 3 review can be found here.

***SPOILERS***

With the financial success of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3, AIC not only gave franchise creator KAJISHIMA Masaki-sensei a green light to create his long awaited Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari series (better known in the west as Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar), AIC also allowed Kajishima-sensei to create one last episode for Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki. Thus was born Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1, which until the OVA 4 announcement in May 2016, wrapped up the canon Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki series, even if canon spinoff titles were still in the works.

The Story In Brief

For those unaware, OVA 3 +1 shows that after the events of OVA 3, everyone was reset to the time when the GXP warship Chobimaru had come to attack Earth. This time, instead of Z attacking Earth, a possessed Noike causes the Chobimaru to attack. This forces Tenchi to consciously use his power to save Earth from a Death Star-like annihilation. However, this knocks him across time and space again, where he apparently repeats his encounter with Kagato-chan.

Tenchi’s home is used as a virtual place for GXP officers Misao and Mashisu to stand before a tribunal with Tenchi and company also in attendance. Both are given punishment, but for Misao to marry Mashisu, Mashisu is to be adopted into House Kamiki as a daughter of Seto-sama. This way, there is a new, political alliance between Jurai and the powerful Kuramitsu family.

Tenchi learns the truth about his mother, which shocks him to the point of anger at first. After he recovers, he gives his approval for his dad to marry Rea, the girl who’d helped care for Tenchi after his mother Kiyone died. Nobuyuki and Rea are subsequently married. Some time later, Washu reveals to everyone the link between Noike and Kagato, whereby the young girl Kagato-chan is revealed to be a part of Noike. The Choushin Tokimi-sama, who keeps showing up, learns why her sisters Washu and Tsunami spend so much time on Earth.

Providing Resolutions

While Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1 allowed Kajishima-sensei to return to the the well for one more bucket of fun, this episode also allowed him to provide some resolutions to certain plot threads. For us Tenchi fans outside of Japan, we eagerly took every crumb gracious Japanese fans with English skills could provide. Kajishima-sensei was and still is a prolific writer. So he would put canon bits of information into various doujinshi (which he still does to this day), and for a time, he had a website where he posted answers to questions.

However, these were only teases. Kajishima-sensei never gave us the story of Kiyone’s death. He never gave away anything meaningful regarding her life beyond what we’d already seen in the various, canon OVA titles. Prior to OVA 3‘s release, Kajishima-sensei had teased that Kagato would return in OVA 3. We had heard that Kagato was a hermaphrodite who’d rejected the female aspects of himself and discarded them. OVA 3 +1 allowed Kajishima-sensei to tell these tales, which I will now go into.

The Tale of Kiyone’s Death

One of the big controversy that arose among fans outside of Japan was Kajishima-sensei apparent trolling of fans over Tenchi’s mother’s death. From what little we’d seen of her in flashbacks, she was portrayed a certain way, as Tenchi remembered her. To then learn that she was not always the elegant, smiling, gentle mother we’d seen was a shock to Tenchi as well as to the audience.

After getting over my own shock and watching the episode again without a negative bias, I can see that Kajishima-sensei wanted the audience to feel a bit of what Tenchi felt at learning the truth. Sometimes, people remember things the way they want to rather than the way they were. Every generation looks at the new generations and wonders how we will survive. They then look back with rose colored glasses to how things used to be and long for the good old days.

While I can understand folks not liking this, I became fine with how things went. In the conversation that Rea had with Tenchi, followed by the conversation that Noike had with Tenchi, it is clear that Kajishima-sensei was causing Tenchi to face a hard truth and thus become more mature. After all, he is the head of a large harem of babes. 😉

Noike’s Tale

The explanation of Kagato’s appearance in OVA 3 came in Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1. This is where Kajishima-sensei’s tendency to pack a lot of information into an episode comes up short. Even now, I’m still not 100% clear on exactly how Noike and Kagato-chan were merged and given to the woman whom Noike considers her biological mother. I’m told the English dub basically makes stuff up. The subtitles for the Japanese audio really does attempt to get it right, but it is complicated.

Still, it was nice seeing that the backstory stuff for Kagato that Kajishima-sensei had mentioned in other places. Even though the complete explanation may be muddled a bit, it is nice to get a resolution for Kagato-chan. And it was nice finding how all of this tied in to Noike.

Too Much To Tell In One Episode

I get the feeling that for OVA 3 +1, Kajishima-sensei had more stuff he wanted to say, but couldn’t say it all in the thirty minute window he was given. I’ve always kind of felt that if he’d had his way, Kajishima-sensei would have dedicated an entire episode to Misao and Mashisu getting married, during which we’d learn something about Mihoshi’s past. But he did get some of their story in, primarily because of the Tenchi Muyo! GXP series. More on that in a bit.

What suffers the most is the wedding for Rea and Nobuyuki. That gets glossed over with a few still shots from the event shown. As such, we are teased about something that might have been. Here too, I’ve long felt that Kajishima-sensei would have made this into an episode if he could have.

As an aside, the rumor is that the forthcoming OVA 4 episode 1 will indeed cover the events sometime around Nobuyuki’s and Rea’s wedding. I hope that turns out to be true.

Ties to Other Canon Tenchi

One thing that came out from Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1 is that it made ties to other canon Tenchi titles, including earlier Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki titles. As mentioned earlier, we had the Kagato tie to OVA 1. Kagato-chan also had a tie to Dr. Clay in OVA 2. I liked those nods.

The reason OVA 3 +1 had as much as they did about Misao and Mashisu is because of their involvement in Tenchi Muyo! GXP. So basically, we get to see Mihoshi’s mom Mitoto, we get an explanation to explain why Mashisu was captain of the Chobimaru and why Misao wasn’t the same whack job he was in OVA 3. The only thing missing, and why I’ve felt that Kajishima-sensei would have done a full story, is the explanation of why Misao’s punishment was apparently changed so that he transferred from Galaxy Police Special Forces to Galaxy Army.

Kajishima-sensei made sure to give a nod to the as yet unmade Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar with some of Tokimi-sama’s remarks. When OVA 3 +1 came out, I didn’t really know if this would tie in with WoG, but in the end, it did.

Conclusion

Having now rewatched Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki OVA 3 +1 and thought about it a lot, it still holds up pretty well after all these year. It provides the usual harem gags that Kajishima-sensei is fond of. The episode contains some of the slice of life stuff that Kajishima-sensei loves. And we get some resolution to some plot lines. It is a shame that there was just too much stuff to cram into a single episode. For me, that’s the episodes biggest flaw. However, we’ll see what Kajishima-sensei does with the four episode OVA 4.