According to an ancient legend, 700 years ago, a demon was imprisoned in a cave inside an ancient Masaki Shrine. When Tenchi Masaki, an ordinary high school student, grandson of a shrine master (guess which shrine!), accidentally breaks the shrine's seal while trying to get a gem embedded sword, he realizes that the legend may actually hold some truth (after all, you don't see a lot of mummies wake up from a seven centuries long sleep everyday). Like every sane person would do, Tenchi runs for is life, and tries, rather unsuccessfully, to seal back the creature. Feeling safe, he goes to school, trying to forget all that happened. Which is very unlikely to happen, since Ryoko, the demon, who's in fact a beautiful young looking alien woman, is quite a bit furious about having passed the last 700 years imprisoned and decided to work that anger on poor Tenchi. Ryoko eventually calms down and decides that Tenchi is now "her man". From that moment, Tenchi's life is turn upside down as other aliens comes to Earth (most of them beautiful young females) in search of Ryoko or Yosho, the man who imprisoned the demon a long time ago.

My guess is that Tenchi Muyo could be considered to be a big hit. It was originally a six episodes OVA series, aimed at a at a more "mature" audience (one will have to admit the Tenchi girls spend a lot of time in the hot springs and the Tenchi bath - wonder who actually built that huge thing anyway?). This OVA series had so much success that it gave birth to a special OAV episode following the series, a side story OVA about Mihoshi, a music video, two TV series, a spin-off magical girl parody (Pretty Sammy), a second OVA series, two movies and of course lot of anime merchandise goodies. There are also Tenchi manga and it's rumored that there will be a third OVA series.

So, what makes Tenchi Muyo so successful? Well, it's a perfect balance of science fiction, comedy, slight romance (after all, all the Tenchi girls loves Tenchi…), and a hint of fantasy. The story is no doubt original and unique: it's actually one of those rare case where the OVA came before the TV series, movies and manga. It has a strong interesting story line, where (at least for the first OVA series) you don't really see things coming. It's not really a violent series (actually, I'd say Sailormoon would be more violent then that) but there's yet action where needed. It's quite funny: if it doesn't make you laugh, it will at least no doubt make you smile. It has the "girls in love" factor for the female audience, while the male audience will be likely happy with the "cute girls" factor (hey! It's a fact! If a series want to be popular with the male audience, it either needs violence & blood or cute girls characters…). And let's not forget an amazing art work.

Another of Tenchi Muyo unique qualities is that it has different story lines. If in overall the characters stay the sames, Tenchi OVA is not the same as Tenchi TV and Pretty Sammy. In Tenchi OVA, Tenchi accidentally frees a sealed Ryoko. In Tenchi TV, Tenchi "saves" a crash-landed (from space) Ryoko. The characters stays mostly the same, but it's fun to see them being introduced differently. The only bad thing about this is that Tenchi TV is a bit more "childish", being released for TV. Therefore, if it gives us a nice space adventure story (for the later part of the story), the 26 episodes of the first TV series don't come close in having the depth of character development involved in the OVA. But in anycase, what ever the form, Tenchi Muyo is one of those "must see" show.

Greatly recommanded!

Updated April 27th 1998