Tenchi Muyo The Movie #3: Tenchi Forever Pioneer 90 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 10/05/1999

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If you don't know this I'm going to assume you haven't been reading the site very long (or at all, as the case may be) but I love space pirates. Something about the idea of space and...piratrey, it gets me going every time. It's also about the only thing I tend to enjoy when I plop myself down for some serious Tenchi Muyo! action. Don't blame me, I was raised in a generation where you start to question a guy's sexuality the moment five attractive ladies start hitting on him and he does nothing to reciprocate. So when Tenchi, who is confirmed to be a heterosexual man, doesn't respond to the sexual advances of one miss Ryoko with anything more than a nosebleed and Spike Spencer-esque shrieks the entire paradigm my world is built on explodes and my mind shoots out of the back of my head as if it were launched from a potato gun. I do not like Tenchi Muyo! And Tenchi fans don't like Tenchi Forever. I guess they don't like the idea that Tenchi actually grows up instead of being a nubile fourteen year old boy for the entirety of his days, or they don't like that he actually gets laid from once in his life, or they don't like that Kiyone has more than three lines in the span of 90 minutes. I'm no Tenchi scholar or anything, but I think it's funny how little the green haired woman gets to say about anything, considering she's the most competent and level headed of the bunch.

 

What's really funny about the whole thing, though, is that I actually like Tenchi Forever. This doesn't mean I LIKE like it, I mean, I don't -Space Pirate- like it, but I did enjoy watching it the first time and I enjoyed watching it this time around. Without Tenchi around to bicker over, the main impetus of the show is gone and that means I don't have to bemoan my fate every fifteen minutes because someone's arguing with someone and suddenly the house blows up and then a rabbit turns into a spaceship and blasts off into the moon. Look, I'm sorry to say this, but if you told that plot to any kind of producer that I've ever met (i.e.: heard of) they'd laugh your ass out of Hollywood. Seriously, the RABBIT turns into a SPACESHIP. But Tenchi Forever has none of that. What it DOES have is the story of the long lost love of a tree and the forcible reclaimation of that love by that tree via Tenchi. See, this is no ordinary tree, there's a person's spirit living in it and it wants some action. It's not exactly clear at first what happened (besides it looking like the same movie as Tenchi Muyo in Love) we soon find out that Tenchi has been kidnapped by this tree women, wiped of his memory, and placed in an alternate dimension that made him age to the point where his testicles have actually descended. It's crazy I know!

 

What I like about this movie is that it's the antithesis of everything that Tenchi has ever stood for. The two girls sent out to retrieve him, Ryoko and Ayeka, actually display what could almost be considered real emotions (one of the more legitimate attempts I've seen in anime, anyway) and when they cry, a little part of me wants to cry with them. It's okay though, because I don't...I'm still a dude after all. What's more, when the sex actually happens (god forbid someone have sex when he's surrounded by a cadre of women who totally want him) it's possibly the most tasteful portrayal of sex in any anime. Certainly the mosts tasteful portrayal of brainwashed Japanese youth/evil tree woman sex I've seen. Call me old fashioned, but I think it's nice when they don't show anything below the waist and they're quick to fade the scene to black. Now, don't think this doesn't have pointless nudity (it wouldn't be anime without it!) it's just...the pointless nudity is a lot less, and there's no actual -bouncing- going on. Tenchi Forever dwarfs the first two movies, but look at the competition. We've got a shameless rip-off of Back to the Future that involves lion-people in disguise and we've got a Christmas elf villain that attacks people with her evil bladed teddy bears. I'm not saying these were necessarily bad movies (yeah they were) but they're not gonna win any Oscars.

 

Tenchi Forever has a story that actually manages to be compelling at some points, a plotline that doesn't feel like it was ripped off from some 80s movie already, and a marked improvement in the kind of lackluster animation the show has given us for so long (this is debatable, but I think it's better). Honestly, I can't see why everyone seems to hate Tenchi Forever when it's the obvious success compared to the two heaping piles dropped on the street beforehand. I think it's, as it always is, because anime fans hate change more than anything else in the world. 'Don't let my favorite character grow up!' they cry, 'then it wouldn't be statutory rape!'. Sorry, but all "good" (used loosely) things must come to an end. Even if everything Tenchi is back to normal at the end, I like to imagine that the last few minutes of the movie don't really exist and it's still all about actual plot and not slapstick hijinx. It's a wistful dream at best, I know, but it's one I'm willing to believe in. Tenchi Forever isn't the best thing I've ever seen, it's got a lot of heart. It's also got some badass chase music and the classic Tenchi ballad-style ending song with ridiculous Engrish ending lyrics that your normal Tenchi fan has probably become accustomed to. For $10, you could do worse. Then again, with the option to buy other things for the same price, you could do better too. Buy Tenchi Forever if you want to ameliorate some of the suck that is the rest of the series, or if you're not a loser who hates change. And always remember, "Song for me forever".