Tenchi Muyo in Love 2

A peaceful day at the Masaki Shrine is shattered when Tenchi suddenly vanishes without a trace.  As everyone splits up to search for him, time passes and Ryoko and Ayeka are no closer to finding their love.  That is, until a chance encounter reveals Tenchi is alive…but older, different and has no memory of Ryoko or Ayeka.  Sealed within a parallel world with a beautiful woman named Haruna, Tenchi is living a different life, one that threatens to overwrite his old one.  It’s up to Ryoko and Ayeka to put aside their rivalry and rescue Tenchi from Haruna before he ceases to exist.

 
Released as Tenchi Forever: The Movie in the US, Tenchi Muyo in Love 2, at the time seemed like the final chapter in the Tenchi Saga (hence the US rename).  If this had been the case…well, it would be a bit underwhelming but also its kind of strange.  TMiL2 is mostly everything that Tenchi isn’t: a super serious character study without humor, minimal involvement from most of the cast and no action.  And yet a good deal of this movie works without some of that, though it could really use more humor to break the tension.  All in all, its an interesting experiment with successes and failures, which comes with breaking the established Tenchi formula to do so.
 
TMiL2 works best when it focuses on Ryoko and Ayeka’s seemingly hopeless search for Tenchi.  You do have to question believability a little bit.  Between Katsuhito’s Jurian insight and Washu’s technical genius, it’s hard to imagine Tenchi being gone for six months without anyone being able to find him.  Looking past that, this story does wonders for Tenchi’s two main love interests.  As scary as it is to seem them being civil around each other, it feels like an extension of the scene Ayeka and Ryoko shared in The Daughter of Darkness.  This is a story about Ryoko and Ayeka examining how far theyre willing to go to keep Tenchi in their lives and eventually come to a final decision about who deserves his heart more.  While they do bicker, those moments are fleeting.  I’m glad these two have grown up a bit but come on: Ryoko and Ayeka’s banter is one of the best core elements of Tenchi.  Like I said, it’s a key example of why this movie does and doesn’t work.
 
Ironically, it’s the Tenchi plotline that I take the most issue within this movie.  This is where Tenchi Muyo is at it’s most radically different.  In Haruna’s reality, Tenchi is aged up a few years and is so far removed from his awkward, kind of clumsy self its almost unsettling.  Equally unsettling is the explicitly sexual relationship he has with Haruna in this world.  We’re no longer in comedic innuendo territory.  Tenchi is well…kind of boring when he’s grown up.  It’s a testament to how crucial the bonds he shared with Ryoko, Ayeka and the others are to Tenchi’s existence as Tenchi and Haruna’s romance feels like it belongs in a whole other serious romantic drama altogether.  I, like many others, like my Tenchi freaking out over every little thing and ducking for cover when sparks fly between Ayeka and Ryoko.  Tenchi can be a serious individual, especially when those he loves are threatened.  But TMiL2 has Tenchi in serious mode 95% of the time and it just isn’t right.  While the movie focuses mostly on Tenchi, Ryoko and Ayeka, the others have their own varied parts to play but not nearly to their degree.  Washu again provides answers to the mystery Katsuhito should’ve come forward with the second things happened.  Sasami barely has any real role while Mihoshi and Kiyone are sparcely seen as well in plotlines that could be their own tie in movies to this if TMiL2 wants to spend so much of its runtime showing Tenchi in a boring, false love relationship.
 
I’m not sure whether to call Haruna the main antagonist of TMiL2 or not.  On the one hand, yeah she basically abducts Tenchi, wipes his memories and puts him through a false romance for six months while his family desperately searches for him.  On this other, there’s an air of true sadness and tragedy as to why Haruna is the way she is.  That said, the plot recycles a lot of scenes with her, some repeating instantly after one another and it makes the plot drag, particularly when the movie should be wrapping up.  When I learned about her past connection to Tenchi’s Grandfather, it kind of dawned on me that if Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 wanted to be a serious melodrama, it could have centered on Haruna and Yosho and the aftermath of their tragic love story rather than throw all of this on Tenchi’s shoudlers…it also tells you that throughout all of the Tenchi saga, Tenchi has a habit of dealing with his Grandfathers unfinished business.
 
Production wise, TMiL2 takes the Tenchi Universe casts and gives them a bit more of a mature edge to match the equally mature feel of the overall plot.  Thankfully everyone looks great and the film overall looks about as good as the first Tenchi Muyo in Love.  The musical score by Tsuneyoshi Saito is perhaps the only thing I didn’t have a problem with during the Tenchi/Haruna scenes.  The tranquil and relaxing music reminded me of some of Kenji Kawaii’s work on the Panzer Kerberos films (The Red Spectacles and Stray Dog: Panzer Kerberos Corps) or Yoko Shinomura’s road trip themes from Final Fantasy XV.  The guitar laden tunes are very beautiful and a nice addition to the music that helps the Tenchi movies stand apart from the TV Series.  It compliments the sereness of Tenchi’s new surroundings and highlights the gauntlet of feelings Ryoko and Ayeka run through as they look for him. 
 
This is tough.  In the preview at the end of my Tenchi Muyo: The Daughter of Darkness review, I hinted that Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 could either be the Rurouni Kenshin: Reflection or The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya of the Tenchi Franchise (the former being 0/10 and the latter a 10/10).  TMiL2 has more to offer than Reflection but never reaches the heights of the latter, nor the first Tenchi Muyo in Love.  Here’s why that is: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was built up to slowly during The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, especially during the Second Season.  The situational comedy was there but the tone shift to something more serious was evident and it paid off when the movie arrived.  Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 had no such build up, hence why when the Tenchi Formula is all but swept under the rug in favor of a more emotionally explorative tale, it’s jarring and it can leave fans of the franchise scratching their heads wondering what the heck they just watched.  There’s no action, little humor and features a version of Tenchi we don’t want to see (yet anyway).  However, TMiL2 works best as a Ryoko and Ayeka tale and pays off their character arcs from Tenchi Universe beautifully.  The movie also looks great and sounds great but lacks a lot of what makes Tenchi so memorable in the first place.  Yet I don’t hate it like I did Rurouni Kenshin: Reflection, which reached all the wrong conclusions about its main character and had no redeeming factors whatsoever.  Is it a failed experiment, not as much as you’d think.  But as a final word on the Tenchi Universe Saga, Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 needed to be less Psych and Sex Ed 101 course and more like Tenchi Muyo in Love on an even more epic scale…with space battles, sword duels and Tenchi Comedy. 
 
In the end…I’ll give Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 a 6/10.