After finishing the original Tenchi Muyo! Collection with (Not-so) Mini-me and Adventure Girl, the obvious next show was MOAR TENCHI, and cracking open my still shrink wrapped Tenchi Muyo! Universe box set from 2012. When most people think of a Tenchi show, this is usually the one which gets referenced.
Tenchi Universe effectively reboots the story from Muyo and does its own thing. Ryoko isn’t the demon sealed away in the Masaki shrine anymore, that’s now Washu. Mihoshi gets a long-suffering partner named Kiyone, and Ryoko gets a rival bounty hunter called Nagi who zips around the galaxy in her own cabbit spaceship thing. The wacky hijinks get cranked up to eleven, and Universe gets twice as many episodes to tell its story.
Unfortunately, I feel like Universe really suffers in comparison to Muyo. While Muyo is definitely uneven in spots, its dramatic moments manage to land pretty hard, and none of the characters feel unnecessary. Even Mihoshi has flashes of accidental competence in Muyo. She’s still a ditzy blonde who’s severely out of her depth, but she tries to rise to the challenge when it’s required of her.
Universe really puts the focus squarely on Ayeka and Ryoko constantly fighting with each other. Mihoshi is just comic relief, with all her capable skills transferred onto Kiyone, who then exists as the straight-woman for Mihoshi’s foibles. Where Ryoko was something of sinister demon at times before, now she’s just a well-known teenage criminal with the hots for a teenage boy. Still crazy and dangerous, but not with a veneer of possible evil lurking under the surface that had to be tamed and redeemed.
There’s nothing in Universe that really packs any kind of emotional punch, save possibly for Ryoko’s end in the penultimate episode. Even that gets subverted in the final episode with an ending that’s basically “Well, those were sure some wacky adventures! Hey, the gang’s all back together again! What’s next?”
I really wanted to like Universe. Muyo definitely lived up to my memories of the show, and is something I’d whole-heartedly recommend for people looking for a ‘90s anime with a good blend of comedy and action. I just can’t say the same for Universe. Sure, it’s hilarious in parts, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but even with fond memories of catching an occasional episode on Toonami in the ‘90s, the show comes out as merely average. It’s too bad most of the follow-up shows chose to run with the Universe version of events. My teens certainly enjoyed it though, so we’ll probably continue our adventures with Tenchi and the gang at some point. I seem to recall GXP being pretty decent, though it also benefits from being a side story with only a tenuous connection to the main characters of plot of Universe.