Tenchi Muyo The Movie #1:
Tenchi Muyo In Love
Pioneer
90 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
08/29/2000
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Tenchi Muyo The Movie #1:
Pioneer
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I honestly had no intention of things working out this way, but they did. So I'm very sorry to be bringing it up again, but I love space pirates. I had totally forgotten about Ryoko being one, but when I was reminded my interest was suddenly piqued much more than it had been before. And honestly, is there really anything wrong with that? I mean, far and away Ryoko's the best female character in the series. Confident, independent, she can walk through walls, and she's just plain mean to everyone else who gets in her way. There's nothing wrong with a girl like that, save that I think she's sixteen, she's animated, and she's a cyborg/android or some variation thereof. All the same, I wouldn't mind giving an older Ryoko-bot a work out. She's certainly better than everyone else in the show, as I just said. Ayeka's too annoying and her dub actress sucks. Why is she english? Who knows! Washuu's too weird and her dub actress is too nasal. Mishoshi's too dumb, Kiyone's too...well Kiyone never does anything. Sasami's a stupid kid and Tenchi's pretty much the only guy, and I'm pretty sure here's playing all these girls for the fool to get whatever he wants out of them for as long as he can. So yes, when you put her up against a cast like that the monomaniacal green-haired robot space pirate cat thing doesn't seem so bad. But to be honest, I just like the parts when she rips on everyone else, as evidenced by the picture to the left. I don't know why, but I just can't get enough of that catty expression. And she's got like five more in that scene! I wanted to take all the screen shots from right then...but that probably wouldn't have been the best idea. |
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The only problem is that everything seems to be turned into a fight and then something blows up and haha, someone gets flung into the outer atmosphere. Get some new jokes Japan! I mean, I understand that Tenchi was one of the earlier shows to do things like this, and it's certainly better accomplished than it has been in more recent times. All the same, I could do without stuff like this, and if chicks want to fight then they should get down and dirty like everyone else and not rely on the director's sense of "funny" to get things accomplished. It's my idea that every director of an animated programme should have a gun pressed into their back at all times. And whenever they say something like "And then she punches him to the moon!" or "He peeps on her by accident" or "He peeps on her by accident and then she punches him to the moon!" he gets shot. I know it sounds cruel, but I'm pretty sure it's the only way they'll learn. There was something in the bible about that, I think. Like, a stupid anime director should not be able to walk so that a crappy show named Love Hina should exist. The Hina-hate is in full effect today, isn't it? I just figure it's been awhile and I really need to vent my rage. Problems with this movie are a bit less, fortunately, but they're not non-existant. The chick getting pulled out of the bath for whatever reason (teleporter in this instance) is an old joke and it was never really a good one. A bit too much cheesecake for my tastes and I don't see how it really helps anything. |
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On the technical side of things, the animation sometimes gets pretty lazy. And by pretty lazy I mean incredibly lazy, especially for a feature length movie. I mean, there's one scene that sticks out in my mind that's about three or four seconds of two characters having two frames of animation looped. You don't see that in many TV shows nowadays, so why should we be subjected to it in something that likely had a much bigger budget? My main problem is something you can't blame any Japanese people for (no matter how much you might want to). It's those damn flashy menus, I can't stand those things. Every time you highlight one of them it seems like there's an audio clip that plays for approximately a year and a half. God forbid you don't have a shortcut to start playing the movie, because the menu starts you at the upper left and the "play" button is at the bottom right. All things considered, I want to punch Pioneer of America right in their stupid faces. I've been out of the new DVD loop for some time now, so I don't know how things have become but even back in the day three years ago stuff like this was unacceptable. I bet there's someone in this very country right now who's cursing irately in Japanese (or Nihongo, they might prefer you to call it) at Pioneer for doing such a slipshod job of mastering this thing. But I figure, let bygones be bygones. Back in the day, if I remember anything about buying anime on VHS something like this would've cost approximately $6,000. That's not going to be entirely accurate, but it's close. Plus it wouldn't have been on digital media and you know what I say to that? Well...I honestly can't remember because I've been going on this tangent for so long. In conclusion, basically what I was trying to say was "Forget you anime dorks, and forget you people who don't bother with good animation and sensible menus." |
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But the story isn't as bad as it could be, I guess even though it's basically a space-ripoff of Back to the Future. There's some guy made of pure energy who really hates the family Tenchi and some of his crew are descended from. So he goes back in time to kill Tenchi's mother, thus Tenchi will never be born. So everyone decides to go back thirty years to save Tenchi's mother and even though there's a high likelyhood that they're either going to die from fighting the most powerful being in the galaxy/the act of going back in time itself nobody really seems to care. Do you know why? Neither do I, but I'm willing to bet it has something to do with them all liking Tenchi and believing as hard as they can in the power of love. I hate that crap, no disrespect to Huey Lewis or anything, but the power of love certainly doesn't pay my bills. And frankly I don't know a single woman, let alone six or seven, who would risk their lives in two different ways for me. Then again, I don't know any green haired cat woman robot androids either. Though lord knows I wish I did. Tenchi deserves a three probably simply because it's Tenchi however I relaly couldn't find a reason to give it more than that. There's some obvious directoral coolness here, and some of the character designs are, as the Germans say, "off the hook" but otherwise it's just another movie that you really wouldn't be able to distingusih from any other generic movie. Things get exciting at times, but damn sure not nearly enough. And most of the characters that have speaking roles in this movie probably really shouldn't. However, anything with a catty** space pirate in it gets my seal of approval. Not that it really means anything... |
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