The truth about Tenchi Muyo!

[kndy]

$35 for an OVA episode is actually really cheap. Some episodes of Giant Robo were $100 each in Japan. Tenchi Muyo was about $50 there and it was a budget release.

It's still a budget release. Japanese copies of TM OVA are basically free now, like 35 yen or something.

Not sure if you guys can see the price on the KOR LD above it...

$35 for an OVA episode is actually really cheap. Some episodes of Giant Robo were $100 each in Japan. Tenchi Muyo was about $50 there and it was a budget release.

It's still a budget release. Japanese copies of TM OVA are basically free now, like 35 yen or something.

Current episodes of Gundam Unicorn are about $60. This stuff isn't on TV or theaters. It costs a million bucks an episode. The money has to come from someplace.

I hear you! "Gundam Unicorn" is expensive. But even Blu-ray's must be expensive, especiall for collectors looking for the anime Blu-rays. I get offered a lot of money for people wanting my early Blu-ray anime box sets.

[greg]

I've never cared a lot for Tenchi Muyou, but all this talk has suddenly given me the urge to buy an LD or two just for the heck of it---especially if they are so cheap. So CAV was the kind you could still-frame pause and slow-mo through, right?

I had found a few stores in Akihabara that sold LDs, but that was back in '06. I can't remember who they were, where they were, or much less if they still exist. Perhaps the best bet is to look on YAJ.

[_D_]

Yes, CLV was the 2 hour speed disc. CAV was 1 hour, better picture and you could do special effects like freeze frame. Can't remember which discs I have left but my bud is a big film collector and has 2,000 LDs left over from when he ran a rental store back in the 1990s. I recently took out Pirates of Dark Water to check the voices on a disc. I still have 2 working LD players, a Pioneer and a Sony.

[llj]

To me, Tenchi's popularity in the 90s was a lot like The Slayers. These were shows that were popular with both men and women and acted as gateway anime for many people. I generally gravitated towards the darker anime back then, so I was never huge into them.

As for the UY and Tenchi talk in here: what Tenchi does, comedy wise, is fairly general, broad comedy. Your basic sitcom-like humour. The genius of UY's comedy was that it was doing comedy on a more sophisticated level... jokes with numerous references to pop culture, politics, history...and each frame was packed with hidden visual gags. It was basically the Japanese version of The Simpsons almost a decade before The Simpsons existed. UY is a very, very, densely packed comedy series. Tenchi is more like your average sitcom...there's nothing wrong with that, but it's like comparing Two and a Half Men to prime era Simpsons. They're operating on completely different levels within the same genre.

[SignOfZeta]

$35 for an OVA episode is actually really cheap. Some episodes of Giant Robo were $100 each in Japan. Tenchi Muyo was about $50 there and it was a budget release.

It's still a budget release. Japanese copies of TM OVA are basically free now, like 35 yen or something.

Not sure if you guys can see the price on the KOR LD above it...

$35 for an OVA episode is actually really cheap. Some episodes of Giant Robo were $100 each in Japan. Tenchi Muyo was about $50 there and it was a budget release.

It's still a budget release. Japanese copies of TM OVA are basically free now, like 35 yen or something.

Current episodes of Gundam Unicorn are about $60. This stuff isn't on TV or theaters. It costs a million bucks an episode. The money has to come from someplace.

I hear you! "Gundam Unicorn" is expensive. But even Blu-ray's must be expensive, especiall for collectors looking for the anime Blu-rays. I get offered a lot of money for people wanting my early Blu-ray anime box sets.

That Orange Road LD had an MSRP of $39.99. I'm not sure why anyone would charge or pay $99.99 for it. The most expensive Animeigo LDs were, I think, the BGC ones that were $65 each with multiple episodes on them.

Btw, with a decent player you can freeze frame both CAV and CLV discs. The freeze and the scanning look better on CAV discs, but it's still useful. The quality increase of CAV is also pretty small on a well made disc running on a good player. If your laser is properly aligned its basically impossible to tell when watching the movie. The main difference is in freeze/scanning and how often you have to change discs.

[Drew_Sutton]

I was introduced to Tenchi Muyou! after I had already been into anime for a few years, so I think the only impact it really had on me was that it was another "thing" I got and another thing to reference with all of my other dorky friends. Maybe it's because I got started with Tenchi TV (Tenchi Universe), maybe being an impatient teenager who could never save a ton of money for an LD player, maybe because it was harder for me to get my hands on JP dialog versions...

I've seen many of the different Tenchi series, though I would say that the only ones that I truly enjoyed were the Ryou-ou-ki OAVs 1& 2, Mihoshi Special, In Love and In Love 2. I dug Tenchi TV enough to finish it once and dive deeper into the franchise but when I went to Daughter of Darkness, Shin Tenchi and GXP ... I knew I was pretty much done and only looked back once.

When OAV3 came out, I bought it as soon as it was released...and ended up selling it shortly a week after because I simply couldn't get into it. Even if it was canon and came after the original, it just wasn't the same at all.

This is where I looked back. When Ryou-oh-ki 3 started and made its way to the fansub community, I was excited. I really liked the previous OAVs and knew all about the jumbled timelines and differences between specific series, I thought this would be a "getting back to basics" project. Cash in on some of that nostalgia. I watched an episode or two and just decided that this wasn't even worth downloading. While the harem element had always been present, there had been so much more development in it as a sub-genre since Tenchi originally came out, it came off to me as trying to match the new mold more than trying to re-capture the feel of the original. Since then, I have gladly not looked back.

RE: Tenchi v. UY - I can agree there are a lot of similarities between the two series but the Internet seems to have this hard-on for the two shows being this pinnacle origin of The Harem Genre (TM). Is this a new thing? I'd never seen Urusei Yatsura (or Ranma 1/2 by extension) as a harem show. Tenchi, to me, is that origin - it gives us the concept of a lead that one could insert themselves into by the virtue of him being bland or milquetoast surrounded by a number of girls each with differing yet desirable character traits. UY, to me, is much more your classic sitcom (of The Simpsons variety, as llj nicely put it) where humor utilizes the character relationships: Ataru and anyone with a vagina. To me, Ataru does not have that bland persona, that lack of traits that could make him Joey Fanboy, and that is a critical requirement identifying something as "harem".

all this talk has suddenly given me the urge to buy an LD or two just for the heck of it---especially if they are so cheap.

I hear ya! I go perusing eBay and Craigslist for anime LDs every so often - lots of stuff can still be had for dirt cheap; unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I am most interested in is all more than I am really willing to pay. My legit Macross DYRL LD cost me a third of what my bootleg fansub did (back when I really didn't know much better). I love that this forum also shares the LD love though I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.

[usamimi]

RE: Tenchi v. UY - I can agree there are a lot of similarities between the two series but the Internet seems to have this hard-on for the two shows being this pinnacle origin of The Harem Genre (TM). Is this a new thing? I'd never seen Urusei Yatsura (or Ranma 1/2 by extension) as a harem show. Tenchi, to me, is that origin - it gives us the concept of a lead that one could insert themselves into by the virtue of him being bland or milquetoast surrounded by a number of girls each with differing yet desirable character traits. UY, to me, is much more your classic sitcom (of The Simpsons variety, as llj nicely put it) where humor utilizes the character relationships: Ataru and anyone with a vagina. To me, Ataru does not have that bland persona, that lack of traits that could make him Joey Fanboy, and that is a critical requirement identifying something as "harem".

It's always been my opinion that Tenchi's "formula" was what spawned the popular harem-anime series formula, but it was UY that inspired the "dude constantly surrounded by ladies" idea, since it was really the first popular anime to do that. I agree that Tenchi was the thing that really brought about the harem boom (I mean, no question about it--after Tenchi, that was the yardstick by which most harem anime gets measured by now). BUT it probably was heavily inspired by UY (and possibly Ranma), so it deserves a little credit, too.

[llj]

Gotta admit, the only Tenchi I've seen is the first Tenchi movie, the one about his mother. Even back in the day, this didn't seem like my thing, not for a teenage boy who really just wanted blood, robots and ridiculously intricate artwork.

[usamimi]

Gotta admit, the only Tenchi I've seen is the first Tenchi movie, the one about his mother. Even back in the day, this didn't seem like my thing, not for a teenage boy who really just wanted blood, robots and ridiculously intricate artwork.

The first Tenchi OAV had some cool space ships and a few decent fight scenes, but for the most part, yeah...it's mostly a romantic comedy.

[llj]

I'd seen *parts* of episodes of the first OVA series, and yeah, it's definitely light romantic comedy.

EDIT: Whoa, I already mentioned that earlier in this thread? I must have remembered seeing more of Tenchi when I posted that than I do this morning!