I think part of why my initial reaction to the ending was negative is that I never really understood what Nabeshin (Watanabe Shinichi, the director) thought he was doing with the series.

It's a harem comedy, so he showed us cute girls and cracked a lot of jokes. But it isn't a situation comedy, so he didn't set up a situation and let it stagnate. Instead, he kept changing the continuity -- but not really because he was trying to tell a story. The reason for changing the continuity constantly was to open up fresh ground so that the jokes didn't become stale.

And that, ultimately, is what confused me. I thought all the continuity changes were part of a real story arc. They aren't, mostly.

There is a story here, and there are six primary characters (counting Fuku and Neige, both of whom only appear later) and all of the characters do change and grow, but not as much as you'd think in a character-driven story. Amane, Kiriko, and Ryoko change mostly because their situations change and they respond to that.

Tenchi Muyo GXP is a pleasant show, a comfortable show to watch, and really quite an entertaining show. But it doesn't really engage you. It doesn't seize your imagination. It doesn't pull you in. Nabeshin wants to make you laugh, but he doesn't want to make you cry, or be frightened, or be concerned, or to worry. If you get too involved in the story or the characters, those things start happening, and I've come to believe he was consciously trying to prevent that. I think he could have made the characters more engaging, and deliberately didn't, because that's not the kind of series he decided to make.

Unfortunately, one consequence of that is that for most of the series, most of the plot is on rails. The changes in continuity are forced on the major characters, by Seina's curse or time or events or Seto-sama; little ever happens because of conscious choices by any of the major characters. All of them are virtually helpless when it comes to deciding their own fates. This isn't a coming-of-age story, not even for Seina.

He's a pleasant chap. In fact, "pleasant" is the adjective I'd use to describe pretty much everything about this series.

Seina is a pleasant chap, and he does get his act together to a surprising degree. He's learned to cope with things. Weird events don't shake his self-image or his determination. He's got guts.

The voice acting for the role was less than distinguished. This is that seiyuu's only major role, and I doubt, based on it, that he'll ever get another one. The main problem is that it's understated. The seiyuu just isn't that good an actor. (He pretty much only has two modes: normal, and excited.)

It doesn't fatally affect the series, but I think that with a better actor the character could have been more interesting. I'm trying to imagine Seki Tomokazu in the role; that would have been fun. But it wouldn't have given him as much range as some of his better parts, though I'm sure he would have done well with what there is.

Sometimes when I watch a series, one particular character leaps out and seizes me, like Glenda in Petite Princess Yucie, or Meia in Vandread. No character did that in this series. Still, I did find Kiriko perhaps a bit more interesting than anyone else, and maybe it's no coincidence that events (and Seto-sama) jerk her around more than anyone else. (Though Ryoko is a close second.)

So what's good about it? Not in any particular order:

• There are a lot of really good looking women. The fan service is mild but plentiful.
• Nearly all the good looking women are women, not girls.
• The main characters are moderately complex. They fit standard types but are not monochromatic.
• Seina gets it together.
• The show never stagnates. I was never bored while watching it.
• It's visually very imaginative. We go to a lot of interesting places, alien, foreign. Not too many alien creatures, but there's some of that. The ships are cool, unless they're deliberately strange.
• I laughed a lot while watching the show.
• I never cringed while watching it. Big plus for that.
• The series is not crippled by being placed in the Tenchi Muyo universe. Nabeshin uses it, but doesn't feel excessively bound by it, and seemed willing to make continuity changes as he saw fit. So TMGXP doesn't feel derivative.
• This is a comedy, but it's about a war. People actually die in it, and sometimes we get to see that. At one point one of the primary characters decapitates an enemy on screen and is splashed with blood. It isn't emphasized, but Nabeshin knew that the series would suffer if there were lots of battles and destruction and no one ever died. So the GXP takes a lot of prisoners in this series, but they also kill a lot of pirates. Seina personally is responsible for a large part of that, and knows it's necessary, and does his job.

What's bad?

• Seiryo is a throbbing headache. But there's a reason for him to be in the series, and to be a throbbing headache.
• NB (the robot assigned to Seina) is also annoying. And there's no such excuse for him. This is Nabeshin's self-indulgence, because he does the voice. But NB's continuing presence requires both deus ex machinas and character breaks. There are too many cases where he either should have been lost forever or deliberately decommissioned.
• Too much character reaction, not enough character action. They're tossed around on the waves too much. I wanted to see at least some of them firm up and take control of their lives. Seina is the only one who does any of that, and even he can't do much of it.
• There's a loli, and she is part of the harem. She's also a tease; she deliberately plays to lolicon and siscon fetishes. Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot.
• I think that in the end I wanted to care more about the characters than Nabeshin wanted me to. That's why I found the ending disappointing. I wanted resolution of character development arcs. Nabeshin wanted to tell jokes.
• There came a point, maybe three quarters of the way through the series, when I started getting tired of Seto-sama's machinations. She stopped being a plausible character and started being Nabeshin's way of controlling the story rails.

On balance, it was good. This isn't top drawer but it's quite enjoyable, and I am glad I watched it. I probably will watch it again.

Also, I need to go through it again to look for top rotation pictures.

UPDATE: Something else just occurred to me: if the animation art in this series is so clear and crisp, why in hell was the art in the third Tenchi Muyo OVA so crummy? They were done only a year apart, by the same studio (AIC).

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 04:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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