In the early 2000's, an otaku friend of mine exposed me to Tenchi Muyo
for the first time (probably on vhs tapes), but I didn't really like it.
My main memory of the show is: girl character was mean. After many a
moon, finally tried it again recently. I watched the 1993 6 ep OVA. I
get it now. It's funny and fanservicey without being hentai even though
it's pretty nakey. Ryoko is indeed still mean at first, but becomes not
as bad as I remember. She seems to actually be okay and I want to like
her. The leaps in anime logic are kinda hard to swallow, but the lore
has potential outside of it's pulp randomness, so I want to try out the
actual series some time.

On Dynsasty Reader a few weeks ago, I read a random oneshot GL manga
where these two girls came home, took pills, and died (spoiler). That
was pretty depressing and seems like an ultrarare conclusion.
--
I??NY

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 19:10:29 +0200
Feanor <houseof.usher715@silomails.com> wrote:

In the early 2000's, an otaku friend of mine exposed me to Tenchi
Muyo for the first time (probably on vhs tapes), but I didn't really
like it. My main memory of the show is: girl character was mean.
After many a moon, finally tried it again recently. I watched the
1993 6 ep OVA. I get it now. It's funny and fanservicey without being
hentai even though it's pretty nakey. Ryoko is indeed still mean at
first, but becomes not as bad as I remember. She seems to actually be
okay and I want to like her. The leaps in anime logic are kinda hard
to swallow, but the lore has potential outside of it's pulp
randomness, so I want to try out the actual series some time.

I should give it another go sometime for the sake of re-assessment, but
I wasn't impressed with it the first time. TM strikes me as basically
the first step in the evolution of the "harem comedy" as a shared genre
after Ranma 1/2 established the first full example of the form* - "hey,
*that* was a big hit, what if we try to make lightning strike twice?"

* (Urusei Yatsura laid a lot of the groundwork, but it's a crucial
distinction that in the "harem comedy" it's primarily the protagonist
being pursued by the love interests, while in UY it's the other way
around 99% of the time - and for all that, there's only two instances
where there's ever any question of Ataru's attentions being requited.)

But as a waypoint in evolutionary history it's a pretty limp lungfish,
or so I recall. Ryoko's shift from psycho space pirate to loyal love
interest is jarring; she's too much of a bastard at first for it to
feel plausible, and way less interesting as a character afterward. It'd
have been both more believable *and* more fun if she'd ended up as more
the "crazy bad-influence girlfriend" type instead. Tenchi himself is
also kind of a bland, passive nonentity (a problem that has plagued the
genre since...well, Tenchi Muyo.)

It's a shame, because there is some genuinely engaging strangeness to
the setting/lore (spaceships that are actually trees or small furry
critters? That's the kind of matter-of-fact kookiness '80s-'90s anime
would toss out like it wasn't even a thing; I *do* miss those days...)

As far as recently watching, been very much enjoying having Ranma back
on the air. The original anime wasn't as seriously in need of a trim-
the-fat edit/remake as UY was, but it's great to see nonetheless =^_^=


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 20 Oct 2025 12:03:54 -0700
John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

As far as recently watching, been very much enjoying having Ranma back
on the air. The original anime wasn't as seriously in need of a trim-
the-fat edit/remake as UY was, but it's great to see nonetheless =^_^=

(Another fun one in recent memory was Astro Note, which is *very*
overtly an answer to the question: "what if Urusei Yatsura and Maison
Ikkoku were actually the same show?" Fun to see some of the medium's
older works being celebrated by newer authors.)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Another currently-airing show that we only just got around to: "Tojima
Wants to Be a Kamen Rider," a whole series premised on the "misfit fan- boys/girls make good squaring off against the Real Deal" bit that gave
"Galaxy Quest" a lot of its emotional resonance. I'm not a tokusatsu
nerd myself, but the love & genre geekery is 100% palpable and totally
gets a smile and a laugh out of me anyway. Highly recommended.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Feanor wrote:

In the early 2000's, an otaku friend of mine exposed me to Tenchi
Muyo for the first time (probably on vhs tapes), but I didn't really
like it. My main memory of the show is: girl character was mean.
After many a moon, finally tried it again recently. I watched the
1993 6 ep OVA. I get it now. It's funny and fanservicey without being
hentai even though it's pretty nakey. Ryoko is indeed still mean at
first, but becomes not as bad as I remember. She seems to actually be
okay and I want to like her. The leaps in anime logic are kinda hard
to swallow, but the lore has potential outside of it's pulp
randomness, so I want to try out the actual series some time.

On Dynsasty Reader a few weeks ago, I read a random oneshot GL manga
where these two girls came home, took pills, and died (spoiler). That
was pretty depressing and seems like an ultrarare conclusion.

These days I've gotten into reading the English translations of novels
(web and light) using novelupdates.com as my initial starting search
point to find stuff. Lately I've had fun reading some of the what I
guess are take-offs of the Pokemon universe involving "beast taming" -
Beast Taming Starting from Zero. Another one I liked was called
"Surviving as a mage in a magic acadmey". The protagonist of each are
a reincarnted individual.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)