I rewatched Tenchi in Tokyo. My thoughts...

[DishonorableKnight]

As some of you might know, I'm one of the mods/editors on the Tenchi Muyo! wiki. I specialize in writing the episode plot recaps. So far, I've done everything for Tenchi Muyo! GXP (2002), Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Magical Project S, Tenchi Muyo in Love!, and The Daughter of Darkness; as well as the six-issue Tenchi Muyo! comic series, Volumes 1 and 2 of True Tenchi Muyo!, and more recently, Naoko Hasegawa's first light novel, Hexagram of Love. Next on my list was Tenchi in Tokyo, a project I started years ago but gave up on. Earlier this month, I returned to the series to get it done, and last week I finished all 26 episodes' pages.

Tenchi in Tokyo is considered the (or maybe one of the) black sheep of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise. It's not as well remembered as Tenchi Universe, the first spinoff series from the OVA. Compared to Universe, I've found that series fans talk less about what the show is about and more about its controversial creative choices, namely the new girl named Sakuya Kumashiro, whom I'll talk about soon. Maybe that's because they haven't watched all 26 episodes, and if I'm being honest, I understand why. But I want to talk about what I thought about it after giving it a fair chance and watching it from start to finish.

I would love to know what the creative process was behind Tokyo. Whereas Universe was a loose reinterpretation of the OVA series with the same tone but a few new characters, notably Kiyone Makibi, Tokyo is a more radical departure. Everything about it was made to be different than its predecessor. The art style is different, and the character designs were altered to make the characters look different (among the outfit changes, Kiyone lost her red headband); the music is different (and in my opinion, for the worse); once again, the characters' backstories are different from the OVA; and half of it takes place not in rural Okayama, but the bustling Tokyo Metropolis (as in, mostly Shibuya, as hinted throughout the series). But in general, the show carries itself differently than Universe. It seems to have wanted to make a statement to the viewer that what they're watching is an indigenous idea, not a derivative like the previous series.

What changes the most is the tone of the storytelling. From my perspective, Tenchi in Tokyo can be broadly separated into two unequal halves. The first half consists of episodes 1-15, which focus on whimsical moments meant to amuse the viewer, while in the background, Tenchi and Sakuya's relationship slowly develops. The second half is episodes 16-26, where the plot suddenly accelerates in pace; Tenchi and Sakuya become boyfriend and girlfriend, the Masaki family splinters, and the truth about Sakuya and Yugi is revealed.

That first half of the show is painful to watch, and I suspect when people broadly talk about Tokyo, they're talking about this bloc of episodes. There is humor, but most of it falls flat. There will be occasional snicker-worthy jokes, but more often there will be eyerolls, or even something bad enough to make one cringe. Humor is a fickle thing; when you try to force humor in something that isn't funny, it falls flat. Humor must come naturally to work. The Ryo-Ohki OVA series, particularly OVA 1 and 2, and maybe some of 3, perfectly understood how to make the viewer laugh; it relied not on absurdism, but timing and pacing, smooth animation, facial expressions, and appropriate use of music, including when not to use music. These subtleties are lost on Tokyo. It fails to take itself seriously enough in the first place for the humor to land. The show treats itself like a joke, and it's tiring to watch after 15 episodes.

The music by the late Shunsuke Kikuchi is a dud. Maybe he succeeded in capturing the tone demanded by the show's producers, but it's not enjoyable to listen to. It feels like there are fewer than ten music tracks in total, and they repeat ad nauseam, with every episode seemingly using almost every track there is over the course of 21 minutes. I'd argue that is the worst part of the show; there are certain scenes I noted, even the more serious second half of episodes, featuring scenes that the viewer should take seriously, that are hampered by the usage of the same old music as before. Ryo-Ohki sometimes didn't have music in scenes, or used music only once or twice, which kept it fresh. I know Kikuchi was famous as a composer and worked on many anime, including Dragon Ball/DBZ, but he was out of his element here. The only highlight of the soundtrack is the image songs, particularly Mayumi Iizuka's song "Kataomoi", which plays at the end of episode 24.

Now, the second half of the show is where things got better for me. The plot progressed, things finally became serious, and the show began to take itself seriously, though I felt frustrated when they continued to retreat into the unfunny humor at times. At least I felt like the show was no longer wasting my time. I consider episode 16 the start of the second half because it's the turning point. When the girls sans Ryoko visit Tenchi's school while it held a festival, they wreak havoc, and Tenchi, who wanted a nice day with Sakuya, tells them for the first time to go away. He and Sakuya kiss later that episode, and Ryoko arrives just in time to see it. After 16 episodes, the show finally did something truly bold that worked.

While some loathe Sakuya, I think she's the best new addition to the series, without which I couldn't make myself watch it. Sakuya herself isn't particularly interesting, and that's on purpose; it's later revealed that, as Yugi's other half, she has no memories, no family, and no personal life outside Tenchi. She's not a real person, but was created specifically to be Tenchi's girlfriend. What makes me like her is what she does to Tenchi. While he's a guy surrounded by chaotic alien girls, deep down Tenchi is still just an ordinary teenage boy who wants to lead an ordinary life. Very quickly after moving to Tokyo, he acclimates to his new situation. He befriends two guys and Sakuya on his second day at school. It's something he perhaps wanted all along, but didn't know how to put into words, or wasn't willing to say aloud while in Okayama. And as for Sakuya, she's just a good girlfriend. She enjoys every moment she spends with him; they go on several cute dates; she visits his apartment constantly and brings him food—she even learned to cook just for him; she offers Tenchi a life that he could never have back home, because back home, he could never go on a date with either Ryoko or Ayeka, because the other girl, or someone else, would always interrupt and ruin it. That's exactly what happens at the end of the series, in fact; Ryoko wants Tenchi to kiss her, but before he can even make a move, the other five girls interrupt. Sakuya is the solution, the escape from the troubles at home, and Tenchi eagerly accepts it. And even when Sakuya knew she had no memories, she was determined to make new ones with Tenchi, because that's how much she loved him.

Something I wish the finale had addressed was how Tenchi reconciles his return home to how Sakuya made him feel. Tenchi loved Sakuya—he told her that out loud, and then, she was gone. How is Tenchi supposed to move on? What could he even say to the girls to explain himself, and why he did the things he did? Could any answer satisfy Ryoko and Ayeka, both of whom felt pain at the thought of losing the boy they loved? If Ryoko was right and Yugi eventually grew up to become Sakuya, would Tenchi want her? These questions remain unanswered, as the show implies that everything quickly went back to normal, without any long-term implications for Tenchi's relationship with the girls. Not to mention Ayeka and Ryoko's feelings for Tenchi remain unresolved; Ayeka, in particular, gets shafted. In episode 19, she confesses her love for Tenchi over the phone, and Tenchi barely even hears it over the sound of his teapot whistling and gives her a generic "I like you too" response, knowing full well he didn't mean it when he was dating Sakuya. I feel ignoring these feelings in the end and a return to the status quo was the cop-out way to resolve things, but that's why screenwriter Mayori Sekijima thought was best.

It's so hard for me to judge Tokyo, I don't even feel like giving it a number rating. The series is incredibly uneven; it's ambitious at times and does many things well, and a few episodes are superior in quality to many episodes of Universe, but many other things are done poorly. If I had to, I'd rate the first half 2/5, and the second half 4/5. My favorite part of the series was watching Tenchi live a normal life in Tokyo, along with his buddies Tsuchida, Amagasaki, Sakuya, and Sakuya's three friends: Sugano, Matsuno, and Yoshinaga. I feel like I could watch a whole series of just them doing things. Maybe I should seek out a 90s school romcom to watch that captures that feel. My least favorite part was seeing Tenchi's girls act like caricatures of themselves, behaving like they're on a 24/7 sugar rush, especially in the first half. All of us here know who these characters are originally and how they should act, and this isn't it.

I would give it only a weak recommendation. I think any fan of Tenchi Muyo! is obliged to watch all 26 episodes at least once, but it'd be far from anyone's favorite.