Customer Reviews

Tenchi Muyo! Ryo Ohki : Final Confrontations v.3 w/Tin

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As they say, Funimation definitely saw me coming.

This is a nice story and we enjoyed watching it. Then the disk ended after the 1 episode. :-( $25 for 25 minutes. A very steep price indeed. I didn't notice this when I ordered it. Who'd have guessed that the publisher would limit the disks to 3 episodes/disk, then sell the last disk with only 1? Obviously they COULD have put that last episode on one of the previous disks. Also, now that I look on Amazon's page, there is no running time that I can find. That's kind of tacky.

Regarding my rating, I'm somewhat torn. Combine the experiences of watching one of my favorite series with that of getting ripped off by the publisher. That averages to... a 2.

I will be thinking twice & thrice before buying more from Funimation. I can only assume that the company is having financial difficulties. Otherwise, why jeopardize future sales by
screwing your customer so thoroughly?

For this 3rd volume of "Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki" from FUNimation, the episode from "OAV 3 +1" (episode 20 starting from OAV 1) is shown. Here, elements have played out so that once again the group is faced with the Choubimaru crisis, only sans Z. Punishments are handed out and Jurai and the Kuramitsu family come to an arrangement to cover for the Choubimaru incident. Tenchi learns the shocking secrets of his mother's (Kiyone) death. Rea and Nobuyuki have a wedding to attend, which is also attending by Tokimi-sama for her own reasons. And finally, the mystery of the little girl and Noike is resolved.

I think fans of the canon Tenchi titles are going to be somewhat disappointed (and even somewhat shocked) at the explaination of Kiyone's passing. Having seen this episode a few times, I understand what Kajishima-sensei is attempting to say, but it also falls into his typical pattern of not giving it to the audience straight. Also, the script isn't written as well as it could be, so in one flashback one might think that young Tenchi is in the hospital bed when in fact it is Seina from "GXP" (though unnamed).

The script writing is also poor when Washu begins explaining Noike and the young girl that Tenchi rescued in episode 19 (and obviously again off camera in episode 20). So there is some confusion there, but subtitle translator Mato does his best to give it to us.

Finally, canon fans will note the political manuevers shown early in the episode. Combine that with the ending of "GXP" and you'll know another reason why Tenchi will never choose a single girl. Of further interest to canon fans will be Tokimi-sama's role in this episode, to include her keen interest in Nobuyuki and Rea's wedding.

As I mentioned, subtitle translator Mato did a good job dealing with such a difficult Japanese script. As usual for FUNimation titles, full use of honorifics are in the subtitles, which is very good to help fans see the character relationships. Even if you are a dub fan, I highly recommend watching this at least once in Japanese w/ subtitles in order to get the accurate story. ^_^

As to the extras, there are two which I believe both came from the "Nabe Special" which was released in Japan during the six-month span between episodes 16 & 17. The first special has the seiyuu of the two cabits in the canon speaking over a fake pot of nabe -- Kozakura Etsuko (Ryo-chan) & Kaneda Tomoko (Fuku). The two engage in various skits (a person coming to the library for Tenchi information, a high school class about Tenchi, and a Q&A in an office setting) where they provide information about both the "TM!R" and "GXP" series and the linkage between the two. As running of the "Tenchi Muyo! FAQ" website, it was cool seeing stuff I had already put out on the website further confirmed from this Japanese program. ^_^

The final extra is the "radio drama," which has some art (not done by Kajishima-sensei nor the art team from "OAV 3") slide-shows to illustrate the stories being told (think of the omake at the end of episode 13 on Geneon's release). While some of these are somewhat amusing, there's nothing here to give any canon information and so won't be re-watched by me. However, I am glad that FUNimation included them.

Bottom line: "OAV 3 +1" suffers from some of the same problems that "OAV 3" did, but is still worth having if you are a canon Tenchi fan. The extras are nice, especially the nabe one that provides actual information for those who haven't read my site. Now we wait for the next canon spinoff in a few years featuring Tenchi's half-brother ("Saint Knight's Tale").

Well, for being the first one to write a review of this OVA I will try to give an overview storyline of what is going on (without giving too much away) in this OVA but also I will try to make an overall judgment of the last three OVAs that came out and were supposed to give us the `true ending' of the Tenchi series that I love so much.

To begin with, this OVA starts were the second one stopped. Yet, instead of continuing the plot as it was in the spirit of the third episode in the second OVA, it returns in a sense to slapstick comedy and the so called harem anime. As Charles Solomon describes it above, what is basically going on is that Mihoshi gets married to Mashisu, were we will witness what will go on before a marriage ceremony with the addition of fun, etc. etc. The only interesting thing is on what will be introduced to us, and the revelations, about Tenchi's mother that will follow.


Overall critique of the last three OVAs:

For the ones who are unfamiliar with the Tenchi series, some things of what I will say may not make much sense to you (honestly, sorry guys). Well, to begin with, as most of you already know before these three OVAs came out, three Tenchi movies were done which provided us with a possible/alternative ending and which woman Tenchi finally chooses resulting to many disagreements in the net and among Tenchi fans. After a few years, these three OVAs came out `reassuring' us, the fans of the series, that this is how the story ends. Unfortunately, they fell short!

(Before you continue reading keep in mind that spoilers will be included here of the last three OVAs, therefore, do not read any further if you intend to watch them!)

Why am I saying this: To begin with, the OVAs did not make much character or relationship development among the main characters; the only exceptions were a couple of episodes in the first OVA and of course the best episode among these three OVAs and of all Tenchi series, which is the third one of the second OVA; and of course, the one that deals with Tenchi's mother.
Apart from it, in the battle were Tenchi confronts Z, his powers are not fully awaken, he seems lost in contrast to Z - who not only had fully awakened his powers but also knew things that Tenchi did not dream about. Moreover, the episode implied that Tenchi or Z, were the chosen ones but only one will be the `real thing'. Z had five `wings' while Tenchi only three. The episode also implied that Tenchi had the potential to create the four remaining ones. As for the story: Did the OVAs do something about this? No. Did the OVAs advance the relationships amongst the main characters? No. I hate to admit but the OVAs did create a great story base but they did not build on it.
[What do I mean with this: If for example you look at Samurai Jack, you will observe that although the series are more like episodes, but still it manages to keep the base story in tact and constantly advances it till season three (with a few exceptions of filler episodes). But the creators of Tenchi give sometimes the impression that they run out of ideas and do not know how to proceed with the story. The biggest exception was the third episode of the second OVA which was in two words: mind-blowing!]

Maybe there will be a continuation of the Tenchi series, something that is for the time being unknown, that will be based on these foundations and will make Tenchi to one of the best series ever. Yet, for now these three OVAs will disappoint most, if not all, Tenchi fans. Last but not least, the OVAs leave the story unfinished and leave an opening for a future continuation.


Buying it or not?
I have to be honest with you. If you have bought all Tenchi series, OVAs etc. so far, than buy it so that to complete your collection; if you have not done so yet, than at least rent it, because it is definitely worth a watch. In other words, it is up to you to decide if you would like to buy this OVA or not.

As for dub, if you prefer the dub version, and the music that accompanies these series, it is very well done and very good animated (in the spirit of the second OVA). Thumbs up!

As for the extras: Non credit opening / ending, art work, previews of other anime series etc.

Honestly,
I hope that I could help... ^_^

I was ready to give the whole series one star, but I'll give the people who worked on it the benefit of the doubt. They may have been bombarded by marketers and other behind the scenes tampering. Maybe this absurdly long-awaited return to the original OVA storyline was supposed to be a lot better than it was.

But it was rushed, unfocused, and all but devoid of any satisfying action or comedy. Do not even buy it used; rent it if you must.

This review comes too late for most of us (frankly, I tried to put the experience out of my mind), who fell in love with these characters years ago, and jumped at the chance to see them again. But by 'these characters' I don't mean the ones introduced here, who waste at least a third of this already too short 'wrap up'.

If I thought it would work, I'd have tried to gather everyone together for a mass returning of DVDs to the publisher, demanding not a refund, but a return to the drawing board.

After this debaccle, though, I'd almost hate to see the Masaki family subjected to any furhter indignity.

The reason why I am giving this 4 stars is because Funimation could have used a little more common sense in dividing the remaining episodes evenly between the final two volumes of this show. A few things I will address are for people to understand:

1. Why Tenchi does not pick which girl he likes: One of the obvious reasons to me why Tenchi does not pick a girl like Ryoko or Ayeka is because this is one of the shows' running gags and to remove that would run the risk of sparking a negative reaction of opinions, imagine if the writers for the Simpsons or Family Guy did a revision of character personalities, how would people react to that.
2. Disdain for Mona Marshall, Ryoko's new voice actress: Although it was said to see Petrea Bruchard turning down the role for OVA 3 and a lot of fans were upset that her voice didn't match the character as well as Bruchard did all I can say is either deal with it or change the audio to Japanese and with English Subtitles to listen to her Japanese voice actress Ai Orikasa. The trick to handling foriegn language audio is to listen and memorize a sound trait of their voice tones which isn't too hard and then it becomes easy to tell who's talking.
3. The storyline and character development: Although their wasn't as much story development in this series the episodes I truly liked are this one and the second episode of the first volume so I found it charming and funny and it sets up on the end of the storyline, While I agree the details of Kiyone Masaki's death was unexpected but that nothing short of being the daughter of Airi, although I admit one thing that this OVA and GXP lacks is power balance in various regular fights with Tenchi and the girls being so strong they could easily win against Galaxy Police officers. Anyway that is all I have to say that this series ended beautifully and it certainly set up the way for GXP, at least Funimation did the fans a favor by using the same dubbing company as the other series for OVA 3 and GXP.

First off, the single episode thing. There's only one episode in this disk so I took off a star for that. This could've been in a previous disk no problem.

Now, after all the chaos of the last episode they try to set things back to normal. Makes for a rather shoddy episode. Most of the characters are glossed over, as has been the usual in OVA 3, with attention going to Tenchi, his mother and Noike. Misao, Mihoshi's brother, has a quick and pointless wedding shown after an argument between families decides what's right, wrong and how to politically get by. Really just a pointless continuation to a story arch which could've already been finalized and was pointless in the first place. Then we get into Tenchi's mother's death, which really didn't need to be told and as it stands makes little sense. Then we get a bunch of time focused on Noike and Tenchi, which wouldn't have been bad if we hadn't already gotten an episdoe pretty much devoted to her and she didn't keep that perfect girl style. Why is there so much time spent developing this new chracter over the others? Then we get some other new character who assimilates with her for basically no reason. Six words: could have been left out entirely.

As for the others, Washu and, to a lesser extenet, Tokimi show us they'll do what they want when they want and too bad for any character which gets in their way. That's getting incredibly annoying in this series. It's also reaffirming Noike's perfect girl image as they won't even touch her. By the end of the episode I was praying for the others to overpower the two, it'd become so annoying, but alas. Not to be.

Voice work is on par with the last set of episodes. Meaning overall good, but with some shady points (yes, this includes Ryoko's new VA). Animation is the same as well. Pretty crisp with some of the wackier tendencies.

Really, this episode seemed pretty pointless to me. Resolves nothing besides that which was pointless to begin with and offers little else. It's really a shame this series has come to this. It had a lot of potential squandered by storylines and characters which probably should've never been introduced in the first place. Hell they could've taken all the main new characters, thrown them out and we'd have a more focused set of episodes with a good and tangible plot. It makes me fear what happens if they continue the series. On one hand I want a real ending, complete with Tenchi's choice shown on a silver platter. On the other, I don't want the series ruined any more than it already has been.

Look, this anime rocks, everyone knows that. The only peev I have is that they couldn't keep the voices consistent. There were many things that killed the anime, but there are too many other redeeming qualities as well. Overall 4/5 is what I give it. Good job, but you could have done better Funimation.

This is the final disk in the new Tenchi Muyo OVA series, and comes with a collectable Tin that all three DVDs will fit inside of. This makes it convenient for burying the whole pile at one time. I admit I was hoping for a continuation of the Original Tenchi Muyo storyline that might resolve the love triange (or pentagram) between Tenchi, Ryohki, Ayeka - and Mihoshi, Sasami, etc., etc. In one regard, and one regard only, the series delivers - the plot revolving around Tokimi is expanded upon. This episode - the only one on the disk - is a hash job, and seems hurriedly cobbled together in order to bring the storyline to a close. There is a subplot involving Tenchi's mother that is sure to disappoint every hardcore Tenchi fan. Tenchi's mother is portrayed as a dingbat who had no significance whatsoever and passed on of old age. I much preferred the "Mother" storyline in the Tenchi Universe series. And the original cast is given very little to do in this final episode as the story wastes most of the time with the new additions to the cast. I understand that these new characters are supposed to link the cannon Tenchi OVAs with the GXP series - but I watch the Tenchi anime to witness the adventures of Tenchi, Ayeka, Ryoko and Sasami, not a bunch of cardboard characters brought in from a lesser and not-quite really Tenchi series. And, of course, the original love triangle is NOT resolved. This is annoying for many reasons, but especially since Tenchi is not portrayed as a wishy washy fellow who can't make up his mind, like the hero in Kimagure Orange Road. Even Kyousuki eventually picked a girl in the end. There is no character flaw or plot reason for Tenchi not to voice a preference - except for the producer's desire to crank out for Tenchi drek - but once again Tenchi does not make a choice. Worse yet, due to the series utter neglect of the original cast in favor of all these newcomers who add nothing to the story, I have to say I ended up very disappointed in the OVAs. If you are a fan of Tenchi, and especially the GPX series, you will probably like this OVA as it supposedly links the cannon Tenchi into the Galaxy Police series. But, like an American comic book series where nothing permanent is allowed to happen to the hero. He must start the next issue exactly the same as the last. Sure, Superman was killed, but he got over it. Sure, Batman got his back broken, but he found a rare oriental herb or drug or something that miraculously cured him and he got over it. Sure, Spiderman married Mary Jane, but not really - three years later we find out he was really a spiderman clone, etc. Part of the charm of the original Tenchi OVA was that Tenchi was allowed to grow as he had to adapt to life around all these space princesses and his newfound powers. Ayeka learns to grudingly develop feeling for somebody other than herself - showing some concern for Ryoko but masking it under scorn and haughty demeanor. Ryoko learns compasion as well, and Sasami grows from a spoiled, useless brat into the glue that hold the family together. All of that is missing from this new OVA series. It was as if the writers had no idea what to do with the Tenchi story line - and that lack of ideas and unwillingness to let the characters advance to a conclusion - spoil what could have been a decent addition to the Tenchi story. This storyline left me thinking "who were all those idiots, and what did they really have to do with Tenchi and the girls?" The answer, sadly, is nothing.

. . . that the producers of a given series just ran out of episodes? That's the impression I get here. Like the writers woke up one morning and realized "Oh no, I only have one episode left! And I still have X, Y and Z plot threads to tie up!". So, they mushed everything they had left into a single blow-out episode. The dramatic potential of the revelations is muted, and at least one of them didn't even make sense. Here's hoping Tenchi Muyo GXP fills in some of the gaps.

As for the extras material, the live-action special is informative, but those women are annoying! If you don't enjoy 40 minutes of people pretending they don't have brains or vocal ranges, I recommend frequent use of the mute button. The radio skits are fun, though; I could have happily sat through more of them.

Well the Tin made a good way to keep the three DVD's together and looks great. The only bad thing about the DVD contents is that it could have been put on the 2nd DVD instead of the third.