Tenamonya Voyagers

Bandai

100 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 11/21/2000
Reviewed: 08/16/2005

So I'm thinking as I write the other review that I'm putting out this week that, despite my claims to the contrary, I really DO want to watch something that's just going to make my blood boil. It's like a sick fetish I have. While in the heat of the moment I couldn't be more depressed, bored, morose... whatever. While watching it I'm hating my life. But as soon as the show ends that's when the ire really starts. When I watch a program that I really like I mull it over, roll it around on my tongue like a nice wine. I pick and choose my favorite parts, because I have a stupid habit of leaving out the things I want to talk about the most.
On the other hand, when I watch a show I really despite all I have to do is put my fingers to the keys and the magic starts happening. Usually the shows I don't like have so much going wrong with them that I'm not really concerned I might leave something out. There's just so much and it's all so much fun to revile. It's just too easy! With that in mind, I inserted Tenamonya Voyagers into my DVD player while I shuttled loads of wash back and forth during a particularly non-hectic afternoon. I was ready to just rip into this like it was a baby calf, all fat and penned up in its cell, unable to avoid it's fate. I will not hesitate to tell you that the very thought of it was a little arousing.

Imagine my disappointment when Tenamonya Voyagers wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered it being.
Don't get me wrong, it's still crap. It's just not the kind of crap that nostalgia had made it out to be. I was looking for something really raunchy, painfully offensive to my tender anime palette. I wanted something that'd have me chewing on the arm of the couch, waiting for one of my hapless roommates to stumble by so I could sock them in the mouth to relieve the tension. I wanted girls accidentally making out with each other, comparing breast sizes, making off-color lesbian puns. All the kind of stuff that you expect from trashy anime! All the kind of stuff that makes me hate people that like that stuff! Is that too much to ask? To have a seventeen year old schoolgirl trip over a broom and fall into an impromptu kiss with her older, ditzy teacher? Oh they'll both mewl and blush in embarrassment, hiding their faces and shrieking in that terrible, cacophonic way that only Japanese women can muster and I'll find myself crushing whatever soft object I can grab just to relieve the terse, atavistic rage that it builds up in the very core of my being.

Tenamonya Voyagers seems to be about a whole bunch of girls that want to go to Earth. Originally this is because two of the main girls, a teacher and her student, have their school close down and now they're stranded out in the middle of space without a friend in the world. When they run into Space Trash Paraila, a character that I am slowly falling in love simply on the basis of her having the best name in the universe, their motives shift. See, Space Trash, if you couldn't guess, is an intergalactic sixteen year old girl criminal/space Mafia boss on the run from the law and her ex-mob cronies at the same time. It's revealed sometime late in the first episode that the reason SHE wants to go to Earth is because once you cross there all your past criminal actions are immediately forgiven and you're a model citizen again.
Before we continue, take a moment to mull over how GOD DAMNED STUPID that is.

Tenamonya Voyagers has literally nothing going for it, even for people that like this kind of crap. It's excessively lame, even in the one place that it actually should excel: fan-service. Until the fourth episode there is not a single boob to be found. In fact, in the entire 75 minutes those episodes take up we're granted only the briefest glimpse of the side of a teat in the twilight hours of the third episode. Then it's like the creators realized that they made a huge mistake and the whole fourth episode takes place on a ship with a broken thermostat. You know what that means? Everyone's wearing crazy, idiotic stuff like oven mitts and bags of goldfish. Even in this situation, which is already pushing the limits of the things that a man can create and still be recognized as intelligent, rational human being, there are no boobs. This may be a good thing, as the show decides in its last throes that it needs not one, but TWO fourteen year old lolitas for the audience to lust over. I have no desire to see preteen animated boobs.
Tenamonya Voyagers isn't offensive, it's just lame. It's like they decided to make a fan-service, girl-on-girl series and then totally lost their balls at the last minute. Every time you think they're actually going to cross the line they prove once again that the sum of their spines is less than a wet noodle. I don't care for fan-service shows, but I think I like castrated fan-service shows even less. I can't imagine that there's a fan for this crap, this non-porn. If there is, I don't need to meet him.