Tenchi in Tokyo Part 5 Episodes 21-26

Tenchi has it all: fun school life, excellent Apprentiship, and a beautiful girlfriend: Sakuya.  However, this newfound happiness has come at a cost Tenchi doesn’t realize.  His family is scattered across the galaxy, some devastated by his romance with Sakuya and others achieving their own dreams and goals.  All of this has been enacted behind the scenes by the Mastermind Yugi and she’s finally ready to enact her endgame.  Even if it means leaving Sakuya behind, Tenchi must reunite the others and bring them back to Earth for one last showdown with Yugi.  It’s the end of new beginning and the start of the next one.

This show has been a freaking see saw of an Anime.  There are nuggets of genuine good ideas and a surprisingly effective central romance all throughout Tenchi in Tokyo.  The problem is everything else is so ugly looking, poorly plotted and filled with over the top humor that’s made everyone look either incompetent, selfish and greedy or just a shadow of better versions of themselves from other Tenchi series.  All that said, some of the best stuff (I know right) was saved for the final episodes and Tenchi in Tokyo worked for once when it went in on Yugi’s own past and insecurities and Tenchi’s doomed romance with Sakuya.  It’s not enough to save this series from the low score it’s had coming…but I suppose some good is better than none.
 
Sakuya really became the breakout new character of a very poor show.  She had an iffy introduction, suddenly appearing before Tenchi and saying “we’re gonna be friends” so fast it was unbelievable.  But once they dialed back her advances, the slower paced build up gave time for Tenchi to really fall for the super cute newcomer and it was a change to see Tenchi in love for once.  Yeah, you can argue that it should have been with Ryoko or Ayeka.  But personally, while Ryoko will always be the one I ship with Tenchi the most, it’s ok for Tenchi to find love outside of his core group, especially when theyre as demented and destructive as their Tenchi in Tokyo versions.  Even Ryoko finally came to grips with this truth and still had Tenchi’s back in the end.  Still, it was always inevitable that Sakuya was gonna be revealed as another ploy of Yugi’s, which meant she wasn’t long for this world.  Her final scenes with Tenchi were heartbreaking, probably because the series went well out of its way to paint Sakuya as an aloof but well meaning girl compared to Tenchi other zany girlfriends.  Her giving up any future with Tenchi and accepting the fun they did have showed that Sakuya was more than Yugi’s shadow…she was her own girl with her own feelings and her own heart and one that Tenchi definitely deserved.  Also…damn, Sakuya looked amazing in a green swimsuit (no wonder everyone else has looked so ugly by comparison…except for Ryoko).
 
At long last, we got Yugi’s backstory and in spite of her cackling OP state throughout most of the series, I actually felt bad for her.  Yugi may have been an experimental biproduct of whatever shady stuff Jurai was working on, but she was still a kid that they sealed away when she begged them not to, genuine tears and all.  As much as I’ve given Sasami grief for being too trusting, even after learning what Yugi had done and was about to do to Earth, she still held out hope Yugi could be saved.  After all, she’s just a kid who wanted a friend and didn’t want to be alone.  There had been hints of a deeper side to Yugi beyond her snickering riddle spouting earlier self.  I was moved by some of her emotional breakdown scenes and very impressed at Tenchi’s final solution: slap Yugi to break her out of her breakdown and then…give her a hug and offer her a home with himself and the others.  Sure Yugi might’ve taken Sakuya from him but Tenchi’s not an outright killer and Yugi didn’t deserve a fate akin to that of Kagato.  The fact that Yugi offers to reseal herself in her prison at the Masaki Shrine, watched over by Sasami, is a very effective conclusion for her, better than I would have expected if im honest.
 
With a surprising amount of interest in finally taking things seriously, the fact that the bizarre humor was still being prioritized reminded me why Tenchi in Tokyo hasn’t worked as a whole.  It’s just not right to see a scene of Tenchi being told the devastating truth about Sakuya before cutting back to Ayeka (who might be my least favorite character in this show and that’s saying a lot) fortifying the Masaki Home with cannons, barbed wire and mouse traps.  The drama worked far better than the comedy because the comedy was always cringe worthy and insulting to an established cast of beloved characters.  I never laughed, I always groaned and the more Ayeka pilled on her would be humor, the more clear it became that despite Tenchi in Tokyo’s wishes to take things more seriously, it has utterly failed to be a fully compelling or enjoyable chapter of the Tenchi legacy.  It hasn’t helped that this has always been the ugliest of the Tenchi offerings so far with warped character designs and overblown comedic exaggerations that make them look even more hideous.  Nothing looks nearly as smooth or polished as the OVAs or Tenchi Universe and the action heavy finale suffers for it as every scene feels bargain bin and just plain dull…though unlike Tenchi Universe all of the girls have a hand in taking down Yugi and her three underlings and those latter three really had it coming.
 
My feelings about Tenchi himself at the end are kind of a mixed bag.  While I pride Tenchi on how he handled Yugi in the final battle and felt for him when he lost Sakuya, I’m not sure Tenchi should be kicking himself for being the cause of all the trouble throughout the series.  He wanted to move to Tokyo before Yugi was even on the radar and given the chaos of the girls that he went through everyday for two years, I couldn’t blame him.  As for being the reason why everyone split up, no one tried to tell Tenchi clearly what had been going on and instead focused on trying to ruin his romance with Sakuya rather than figure out what was going on with Yugi right after her first attack. Should Tenchi have given a little more thought to how things were going at home without him?  Maybe.  But again, no one was communicating anything to him that would not have sent off any red flags in his head.  It wasn’t until the two most serious characters of the bunch: Washu, when she finally decided to look into Yugi herself, and Katsuhito, paid Tenchi a personal visit that he got the message and got properly motivated.  Also, Tenchi’s destiny as a Planetary Guardian is kind of dumb.  Turns out the Masaki Family are Planet Guardians, Tenchi is the next generation.  Tenchi’s crystal, when united, can dispel most evil.  Separating the shards (aka everyone going their separate ways with their own shards) weakened its power, leaving everything vulnerable to Yugi’s attacks…they try to make it sounds really important but really this is just oversimplified Tenchi Jurai stuff that just doesn’t sound as cool or mystifying (just like the rest of this show).  Tl;dr I don’t think Tenchi should be blaming himself.  If the girls had not been waked out, psychotic versions of themselves id say he should feel bad about ditching them.
 
Well that’s Tenchi in Tokyo, how does it stack up against its two predecessors?  It doesn’t, not even by a long shot.  Again, there are nuggets of good ideas sprinkled here and there and the finale proves to be the best part when things get a bit more serious.  Sakuya is a great love interest for Tenchi and their fun but doomed romance would’ve made for one of the greatest Anime romances ever if it was part of a better show.  But the animation is terrible, the story takes too long to get itself together and the core cast is barely recognizable due to overexaggerated personalities of their very worst qualities.  It makes me happy this wasn’t a continuation of Tenchi Muyo or Tenchi Universe and thus can just write off this crew as the Mirror, Mirror versions of my favorite characters: cruel, selfish, more Tenchi crazy than normal and none truly worthy of Tenchi’s heart, though Ryoko still came through from time to time.  This is easily the weakest of the three Toonami Tenchi offerings.  Who knows if I’ll get around to checking out the other spin offs: Tenchi Muyo: GXP! or Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar or if I’ll ever see the rest of the original OVA if it’s ever finished (by 2021 there have been 5 OVA seasons and its still not done).  But can any of them be any worse than Tenchi in Tokyo?  The bars been set pretty low…thankfully this is separate from everything else so the legacies of better shows are left unscathed.  Just skip this one and rewatch Tenchi Universe again, it’s a far better use of 26 episodes worth of time.
 
Tenchi in Tokyo gets a 3.5/10 (would be a 2 but the finale and Sakuya bump it up a smidge, otherwise I freaking hate this show).
 
WELL, technically that’s the end of The Tenchi Toonami Saga.  I’ve officially reviewed all three series that aired on Toonami during the Summer of 2000.  But, we’ve still got three days left in 2022…and I have three Tenchi Muyo Movies sitting on my shelf that I could take a look at…and so I shall.  Our little Bonus Tenchi Round begins tomorrow with the first of the Tenchi Muyo Trilogy-Tenchi Muyo in Love, right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.