I'm Watching Ai Tenchi Muyo

[WaitoKon]

Well this is my perplexion about Tenchi media following Geminar, just why? The same folks who rebooted or remastered the Space Battleship Yamato franchise (who later got absorbed into Sunrise or formed Troyca) they were ready to do something for Muyo! But with Ai Tenchi, which didn't go nearly into the same amount of effort as the SBY reboot, or otherwise approach Geminar S1, did they just not have the monies?

[Nonsuch Ned]

I got through it over the last two days. I wanted to rush through it because I remembered that the structure was such a big problem. i figured if I kept it fresh in my mind, things might be better.

The last third certainly improves things, there is a core of a decent tale within (credits say the original story was Kaishima's). But it "improves" from being dreadful to "almost adequate." The majority of it, the first two thirds... absolutely painful. I lost track of how many times I said "this is trash" to myself.

Nonsensical abuse humor, a rivalry that makes no sense. Tenchi himself is absolutely pathetic. Trope after trope after trope.

And while the last third improves... it's not like it actually makes sense. Then it just ENDS, leaving dozens of questions.

Maybe the biggest oddity... who makes a Tenchi show without Ryo-Ohki? One of the last stills in the last episode is of Ryo eating carrots off the floor. I guess they just left her to scavenge. 

[WaitoKon]

That might have been a nod to the ongoing Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-Ohki main series?

[Nonsuch Ned]

That might have been a nod to the ongoing Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-Ohki main series?

There is a bit of trivia that Ryo-Ohki is reading Momotaro in OVA4- which came out soon after this.

... maybe we can assume that the whole thing is Ryo's twisted fever dream.
 

[WaitoKon]

If Ai Tenchi is by the same director(s) for Universe, maybe it was Ken-Ohki's fever dream. Someone get the smelling salts.

[Ryo-Okay]

I'm still trying to get through it, but I'm struggling. It's like someone took the most obnoxious and annoying things I've seen in anime and crammed them into one show. But at least those characters I like show up for 10 seconds every 5 episodes and act completely out of character! This show makes Kajishima's info dump episodes look like fine art.

[Nonsuch Ned]

Since I went through it, I figured I should at least write a synopsis for the wiki.

With it fresh in my memory, I wrote a first draft from memory. Now I'm double-checking.

And on my first check I find one of its cases of astoundingly shitty story-telling.

As I remembered it (or my mind made sense of it), when Tenchi first showed up to save Momo and Beni in the past and found them... these things happened:
 He pressed his button,
the ground opened up to swallow the ship and his phone,
Momo and Beni get sucked into the dimensional rift and Tenchi is retrieved by Washu.
... and when they get back to the story 4 episodes later, that's basically how Washu explains it. Momo AND Beni got sucked into the rift and bounced around history... but that's not what happened. What actually happens is that Momo and Tenchi got sucked in (Tenchi popped back into Washu's lab). But Beni? She was still in the ship, and in fact, while the phone fell into a crevice... the ship did not.

I thought the worst bit of that section was that Ryoko and Mihoshi's appearance made no sense and was never followed up on.
Nope, the entire set-up of the story was fucked up.

I HAD succeeded in writing a synopsis that did not insult it... not sure if I can do it now.

[Nonsuch Ned]

I just started the sports festival arc, and I'm a bit confused about something. The show keeps beating down the science club and expects me to find it funny, but they haven't actually done anything wrong. Instead, it just makes the student council look like assholes.

The science club asked for more funding in the first couple of episodes, but was refused because they "didn't give a good reason." Now 20 episodes in I can only assume that was a lie, and the only reason they didn't get more funding was because the student council doesn't like them. The student council cheated them at the beauty pageant by forcing them to compete as 1 entry but split the score they earned 3 ways. And then at the sports festival they were cheated again. Yuki and the katana girl were in a race that allowed weapons. Katana girl had her katana, obviously, and Yuki used the robot from earlier in the show. The science club broke no rules, but, because they are supposed to be the antagonists, the student council cheats and hacks the robot.

The only bad thing the science club has done is attempt to molest Tenchi, but the student council did that as well.

TL;DR the student council is trash. The science club did nothing wrong.

That's a little off though. Not sure of your translation. The Discs also don't have any recaps, not even as extras (I searched them out again to see if the recaps explain the story in the past, they don't include them in any recaps).

the reason they are refused funding is legitimate. They're misappropriating the funds they are given and do not explain the club's activities. They're taking any funds they get (like money given to do a presentation for the school festival) to excavate the cavern beneath the old school- hiring diggers and the like. They need money because they can't afford to pay anyone (Mihoshi works for free).

...but otherwise,it's a stupid conflict because, if they actually explained what they were doing, there's no real reason why the council wouldn't help them. Is there a reason to deny a group that has found a mysterious cavern and given proof there's a treasure there? I guess the Science club wants to keep it to themselves?

[Ryo-Okay]

Forced myself to finish it tonight. I have no idea what the hell was happening by the end. I get that Momo needed to be reverted to a child so she could go back to the time she was displaced from, but why didn't Beni need to be reverted to her previous self and have her memory erased?

Anyways, I'm glad I finally finished it. Now I just need to force myself to finish Universe.