Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Terdwilicker's Anime Reviews ❯ Tenchi Muyo ( Chapter 20 )

Tenchi Muyo is a 1993 harem OVA series about a guy who accidentally breaks the seal on a tomb for an ancient demon. This demon turns out to be an alien catgirl who has been watching him grow up and developed True Love as a consequence. As any animefan knows, Ryoko is best girl. Her escape triggers the sensors on a space craft that's been searching for the infamous space pirate for over 700 years, waking up the crew in suspended animation and sending them plummetting into the ground nearby, destroying their ship and stranding them there. Tenchi, a teenage boy in high school, in forced to house the cat-girl space pirate demigod (yes, she is all those things), and her technical enemy, a space princess and her little sister, another space princess avatar of a goddess (also true), and eventually the pirate's mother (a goddess). Because having all this power in one fairly large country home in rural Japan beside a shinto shrine to a tree that sparkles at night is perfectly safe. Tenchi makes more friends, and has to house them, ending up housing an uneasy harem of young women he is unable to choose from for the next 35 years. You think I'm joking. They ONLY JUST resolved that with a wedding last year. 

As an anime it is cute and easy to watch. It has comedy, some drama, and plenty of OP surprise abilities which get referenced in other programs later, including otherwise unrelated ones like Full Metal Panic. That said, there's more than half a dozen related anime which provide side stories and origin stories for Tenchi, and the list is pretty long. 

First, I suppose you'd have to begin with Photon The Idiot Adventures. This the story of a scientists daughter who gets stranded in the ruins of her crashlanded spaceship and awakens centuries or millenia later when her animation system gets wrecked by an accident, and is married as a joke by the boy who finds her. As a wife, it is her duty to follow the boy around and she is annoyed. He in turn is looking for a village girl he likes that's decided to run away after a bard she likes, so there are comedy hijinks involving slapstick over married life and a villain who is bad at his job getting pummeled by the kid who is basically superman-strong. Its a comedy. It isn't good, but it exists. And eventually it revealls a giant robot important to the Tenchi series. 

Second would be Dual Parallel Trouble Adventure, which is pretty dated today, but is the origin of the Juriain empire, with a boy who can see across dimensions and is the sole male pilot of giant robots. He is teleported to the other world, spirited away, and ends up a pilot, saves various women, and become the center of a harem by accident. He eventually picks the Mitsukis, of which there are two, and marries them, having the first juriain emperor and the devil princess as his children. Not sure which child is from which Mitsuki. The story ends before that point, but it manages to reveal the super awesome giant robot from Photon that's later important to Seina Yamada. 

Third would be Tenchi Muyo GXP. This series is love and hate. I love that it covers so much plot and moves forward quickly because its a huge series and needs years worth of events in 26 episodes. Eventually, after many trials and tribulations our hero is in charge of the superrobot from Dual and Photon. The weakness of this series is several of the characters are annoying, the music is relentlessly annoying, and several of the characters deserved better development rather than rush into the ridiculously huge harem, when best girl is girl next door in the first place. For once, monogamy would have been the right answer. 

Fourth would be St Knights Tale aka War on Geminar. This is a really well done OVA series and I highly recommend watching it. The quality is fantastic, the story moves forward, the hero is likeable, and the characters are memorable. And strangely, the plot is about a rebellion over the right to monogramy, and against men being forced into harems. Yes, you read that right. A violent rebellion by men for the right to marry the woman they love. Yes, its incredibly unusual, and if the men in question had been more reasoned and less violent they might have gotten sympathy. The giggling villains and demented violence undercut their position, so that's the biggest flaw of the series. Once more, the superrobot makes an appearance. And the hero is Tenchi's brother, though not a juriain due to circumstances of his human father remarrying. 

There are also additional OVAs from Tenchi which might someday, after sufficient begging for money, result in new Tenchi series for side characters. They keep hinting at a fantasy world for Seina to visit, and then don't show us anything about it. 

Original Tenchi Muyo and War on Geminar are recommended watching. The others aged poorly or have sufficient minuses I can't recommend them.