1

Interesting hypothesis, though that probably is more than what Masaki Kajishima thought about the topic.

Not to mention the whole Tenchi Masaki is the god of the current dimension and more, which would probably do more to unify the universe (There are interesting ideas in the TM fandon about who Seto is, but she is definitely not a goddess like the Three Sisters (Washu, Tsunami, and Tokimi), let alone the big god of them all (Tenchi).[/spoiler]

C.T.

2

He didn't write GXP. Nabeshin wrote it. And there are hints that he did think about some of these things.

At one point near the end of the series, Seto, Airi, and Kuramitsu Mikami are all having tea together in Airi's office. (I think Seto and Mikami were playing go.) And Airi says something like, "Suddenly the goal of uniting the galaxy is in reach." And the other two nod in agreement.

3

Nabeshin may have written the script, but the plotline was probably given to him by Kajishima and Yosuke Kuroda (That was similar to how Kuroda did script work on the original TMR series - the plot and much of scriptwork was already done by the time the writers came onboard.).

There is also the fact that:

what Tsunami would be willing to let Seto do regarding Jurain politics, since Tsunami is merged with Sasami.  Given that the power of Jurai essentially comes from Tsunami, Tenchi being less of a factor than Seina or Seta, for that matter, is inconceivable.  That is not even including Washu or Tokimi in the mix.

C.T.

4

I just don't see the TM people interfering as much as you do, or really giving much of a damn. And even if they did, I can't see them objecting to Seto's program. Why would they?

She's trying to unite the galaxy peacefully, through diplomacy. What's wrong with that?

5
The only way I could see it mattering, is if one of the various cosmics decided to solve the piracy problem more directly.  However, only someone on the level of the Chousein or higher could do so by simply snapping their fingers, and I don't think any of them *do* that kind of thing ( or in Tenchi's case, likely doesn't know how anyway ).

6 I don't even see Tenchi & the 3 Sisters being on the same level as Seina & co.  Their concern is the meta-universe and higher dimensions, although arguably Tenchi's not there yet -- but he's part of their plan.  Seina and his group operate on the "nuts & bolts" level of making Jurai work and keeping order in our galaxy.  There's a small amount of overlap, but not much.

Anyway, one of  the corollaries that I alluded to in the other discussion is that diplomatic marriages between Seina and various women in other empires are a possibility; there's terrestrial precedent for such polygamy (happened at tribal levels I think? Or China?)  Of course some of them might be marriages in name only, but I could definitely see Seto using that as a part of the alliance strategy.  Poor Seina; it may be in his destiny to have 100 wives....Neige should advise him to resign the succession and head for deep space! . Makes you wonder if his luck changed or not.

7 The chances of Tenchi and company getting as power players are slim to none, largely because they generally don't care. Washu, in her role as Fuku's mother, might help out from time to time, and it seems she's become friends with Seto so something might come of that. Mihoshi is Mihoshi and thus unpredictable, but if she gets involved it probably won't be deep. Tsunami is just watching out for Jurai, as per her bargain with them. Tokimi is still operating on her usual level, which is far too lofty to find empire and piracy important. Most important, however, I can say that if the Choushin cared about getting rid of space pirates, the space pirates would be gone. People at their level of power in this setting have been known to destroy whole interstellar civilizations as collateral damage.

Seto, on the other hand, is passionate about this. She likes political moving and shaking (possibly even for its own sake), and a unified galactic federation would give her a bigger sandbox to play in if nothing else. She also has a deep and abiding hatred of space pirates for personal reasons. She has plenty of reasons to want the sort of things Steven is writing about here, she's the kind to go after it, and since he can make it happen, Seina is a dream come true for her.

( Idly, who else would want to see Seto and Seina take a boat trip off the coast of Somalia? )

8 *raises hand*  Me, me!

9

Washu is interested in Seina. She's interested in anyone for whom the normal rules don't apply. That's why she likes having Mihoshi around; Mihoshi is another for whom the rules don't apply. Washu would probably like to study Mitoto, too, but Mitoto's positional uncertainty makes her difficult to observe.

It's part of her particular approach to the search for a superior one. Just because she finally found him (Tenchi) doesn't change her interest in looking at others for who the rules don't work, and it's likely she's been watching Seina for a long time.

When Seto came to Washu to beg her for a ship which could survive having Seina as its captain, I think she was already inclined to help. Partly that was because Seina was Tenchi's friend, and partly it was because she's not unsympathetic to Seto's grand plan to unite the galaxy. But I do think it was mostly because Seina is one of those rare and (to Seto) extremely valuable people for whom cause-and-effect doesn't fully apply, and she wants to study him and to make his power fully blossom.

Of the people in that household, Washu is the one who will be most involved with what Seina is doing. I have a suspicion that she's getting regular telemetry from Fuku. (She gets that from Ryoko and Ryo-Ohki, and it seems like the kind of thing she'd include in Fuku too.)

But I don't think she'll interfere, beyond her already great interference in giving Fuku to Seina.

I also think that there's going to be a great deal of quiet pride for her in having Fuku be a major contributor to the unification of the galaxy. Seina couldn't do what he's been doing without Fuku, and everyone knows it.

Everyone else in that household knows Seina and likes him. I simply can't see any of them getting involved to derail the project or to interfere with Seina's career.

(I'm not sure that Mihoshi knows him. But Mihoshi knows Amane, and she's a loyal member of the GP. She isn't going to consciously impede Seina and his team as they carry out the greatest and most glorious single project in GP history. (What she does unconsciously, on the other hand, is anyone's guess.)

As to Tsunami? Her approach to the search was to engage in breeding experiments with the Masaki lineage. Her means to do that was via her control over her offspring trees. The Masaki clan judges the importance of members based on the rank of tree that they get (or the fact that they don't get one) and ultimately it's been Tsunami who has been making that decision. So, for instance, she gave Yosho a first generation tree, because she judged his lineage to be the one available to her most likely to yield what she was looking for. (Which is what happened.)

Anyway, Tsunami herself doesn't really have any interest in Seina one way or the other. As observed by others, "fighting pirates" and "uniting the galaxy" are unimportant details for her.

But Sasami likes Seina and that's a good enough reason to help him out. So when Kiriko went in for a tree selection, Tsunami gave her a 2nd generation tree, knowing it would be used to help Seina in his quest.

It's an interesting question whether Tsunami expected Seina to find the Statue, and whether she commanded it to accept him as its master once he did. I'm inclined to say "no" and "yes" respectively, but I sure can't prove either of those.

10

I should note that people who have taken a look at the GXP novels Kajishima did have noted there is a lot less Nabeshin in them - not unexpected, since he apparently came into the production after it was well under way.

As for:

The idea that Tenchi and company will not be involved because they are not interested, consider that Yosho has essentially been grooming Tenchi as his replacement as the next in line to the throne.  While Tenchi has demonstrated no interest in power per see, he has demonstrated that he is very responsible.  I doubt if he gets to feel he has to be the next emperor of Jurai, he will (Given that Tenchi and most, if not all, of the girls eventually go to Jurai, that is not an inconsiderable hint about where this will go.).  Also that Tenchi is the current subject of a potential political marriage (The first of...well, we do not know.) is also something to consider.

Also, technically Tsunami's bargain with Jurai comes to conclusion when she found Tenchi as the power she and her sisters were looking for.  Anything else beyond that point is entirely up to her own will, which granted is inclined toward continuing the bargain.

Furthermore, Washu has manipulated the galactic politics toward her desired viewpoint before.  See Galactic Academy - Origins of:.  It is not a stretch that if she feels she has to, that she will do it again.

11

I didn't realize there were any novels. Were those written before or after the anime was created? I've always assumed that TM:GXP was created out of whole cloth by the anime development team, primarily led by Nabeshin.

Whose fingerprints are all over the story, if you know what he's like. It's clearly his show, even if it is placed in a situation created by someone else.

12 GXP is has Nabeshin's fingerprints all over the place, yes, and it's mostly good. (Less good with NB, but honestly, I like Nabeshin's work enough not to mind his self-inserts too much). Kajishima has lots of interesting ideas, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of literary focus and sometimes seems to go off on tangents. Nabeshin's presence took care of that problem, giving GXP lots of coherence and an excellent, consistent pace. ( After having seen Excel Saga, seeing Nabeshin as the bringer of coherence is a bit of a shock, but there you go. )
This may be different in the novels, but I can't know because they will probably never be seen in English. Translating novels is said to be an entirely different beast from translating anime or manga, and nobody's yet made an attempt at the three novels Kajishima wrote fleshing out the Tenchiverse ages ago now.
As for before or after; the first was written after the show ended, and more are still being produced. There seems to be a lot of elucidation and extra material in there, which is good because Seina didn't have a weird enough life already.
Poor guy.

Now, to complicate the question of whether the Tenchi crew will get involved or not - I still lean towards 'not' myself, if for no other reason than Tenchi will no doubt have his own problems and most of the girls will be more interested in helping him than Seina. But both Washu and Tsunami have been spending a great deal of time among mortals, and even as mortals. This has humanized them, shifting their perspective and the nature of their concerns; now they care about things other than the big existential crisis they had however many billion years ago. For isntance, Tsunami is likely to continue aiding Jurai even after getting what she wants, which has stopped being a small pirate clan she made a bargain with millenia ago and has become her home and family.
It's also interesting to note the places where Tsunami's experiment crosses over with Washu's. Yosho is one of these, since for the last few hundred years he hasn't technically had a royal tree - Funaho has become powerless and is living off of Washu's gems. Another might be Seto, but while that would make sense of a few things it's just speculation for now.
As for Washu getting involved in politics, there's this, which the mighty can look upon when they feel the need to despair.
http://www.oni-hime.com/novels/gxp_novel_4/images/GXP4-9.JPG (No, I don't know how to post image links. Apologies. )

Some of these things will probably be looked at in Seikishi Monogatari, an upcoming anime focusing on Tenchi's half-brother, who is still being carried by Katsuhito's new wife as of GXP episode 17. It'll be interesting to see - if we get to - how Tenchi and Seina have changed in the intervening decade or so.

13

The way I heard it, the brother gets whisked away to an alternate reality in the first episode and never comes back. Any appearance by established characters will be minimal at best, just cameos at the beginning.

I'm sure that new series is going to reek.

(Which brings us full circle, because it was Ubu's post about the new series which inspired his post about GXP, and then mine.)

14 Xivali: do I understand you to mean one or more of the novels shed light on Seina's situation, or are they all about Tenchi?  If the former, can you add anything to what we know?

15 Ubu: The GXP novels are likely to shed light on Seina's situation; after four of them, Seina hasn't even gotten his first command yet, so there's lots more being packed in there than in the anime. I don't know how densely packed they are (they're coming out pretty quickly, so I'm assuming 'light novels'), but I'm guessing there's lots of exposition coming in there. I don't actually know much of anything about the GXP novels, mind, because I can't read Japanese yet - all I have to go on is material from other fans. Well, that and scans of the interior illustrations.
As a note, none of the novels have been about Tenchi himself to date. The GXP novels are about Our Man Seina (of course), and the others are about the pasts of Azusa, Yosho, and Washu, respectively.

16

Kajishima himself might have problems focusing any any particular set of ideas, but he has been (From interviews he has done.) working on the story for TMR for the better part of a decade before he started the first one.  So I think he has a lot of the background material down pat.

For that matter, all of his non-hentai (He has at least two hentai titles to his credit, besides the NSFW stuff he has in his doujinshi.) work since TMR OVA 1 has been done with Yosuke Kuroda, who is very prominent in anime now.  If Kajishima lacks certain focus, Kuroda certainly does not - I doubt they or AIC needed Nabeshin to get any more focus with GXP, all the more so since Nabeshin was not part of the production at the start.

C.T.

17 Thanks, Xivilai.  (Spelled it right this time!)

18 ...nobody's yet made an attempt at the three novels Kajishima wrote fleshing out the Tenchiverse ages ago now.

Not so, Xivilai. This link is ancient.

The engrish and page structure are sketchy, but functionally it works as a translation. You just have to be willing to absorb the novels out of order from the original text. It's no professional translation, but it's better than nothing.

19 Will: Actually, I've been aware of Tatsumingo's translation for some time now, but from what I hear it's more a summary than a depth translation of the books. But you're right; it definitely is better than nothing.
( Thanks for the link anyway, mind - if I hadn't already read it, it'd be hog heaven for me. )

20 Will: thanks for linking it... good stuff; it explains some of Ryoko's background too, and some scenes I'd seen of the first OVA series but not understood at the time (Tusnami and Sasami's merger, for instance, and why I thought she was merged with a tree, rather than one of the 3 sisters.)