It really amazes me just how well Tenchi Muyo: GXP stands up to rewatching. As a series, it's grown on me over time. When I first watched it and finished it, I thought that the characters weren't very deep, and the story not very engaging, and the main point was fan service and jokes. But as time has gone on it has seized my imagination in ways I never expected. And the characters have become more interesting to me.

I looked at Chris Beveridge's review of the series. When he originally reviewed it in 2004, he gave it a moderately positive score. But when the thinpak came out, and he rewatched it, and re-reviewed it (SPOILERS), he said this:

Directed by Shinichi Watanabe, Tenchi Muyo Galaxy Police Transporter is a twenty six episode series that has actually become my favorite Tenchi show out of all of them. Surpassing my love and nostalgia for the original six episode OVA series, the GXP series simply gets it right from start to finish by having a whole lot of fun, managing all the characters quite well and really playing up the sexy fanservice in a way that just clicks perfectly. The original release by FUNimation was awkward if only because of its release schedule across eight discs but seeing it in the space of three days in this Viridian Collection edition has truly solidified its position in my show rankings of the Tenchiverse.

That was last December, and Chris had seen everything else in the "Tenchiverse", including Tenchi in Tokyo, Magical Project S, Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, and of course all three Tenchi Muyo: Ryo Ohki OVAs, not to mention sundry movies.

I haven't seen anything besides GXP and the original Ryo Ohki OVAs, but I agree that GXP is my favorite of the series. And like Chris, I find that it gets better as time passes and as I rewatch it. There are a lot of series for which the first viewing is the best, and if they're even worth rewatching at all, subsequent rewatches are a pale experience by comparison. I'm not sure I can think of a series where the series improves so much with subsequent rewatches the way this one does.

A couple of days ago I increased my rating of the series from 3 stars to 3.5. And I confess that I was tempted to bring it all the way up to 4, but I couldn't justify it to myself. (There are some flaws in the series, enough so that it really doesn't quite rate a full 4.)

That said, in terms of simple enjoyment, it's done a lot better for me than some series I did give 4 stars to.

I'm also strongly tempted to put it in my "top 5 recommended list", replacing Angelic Layer, but I just can't bring myself to do so. That's because harem shows by their nature don't tend to appeal to broad audiences, and that list is supposed to be "things I'd recommend to almost anyone".

Ubu recently sent me a link to this post I made about the series just after I finished watching it the first time. And now I disagree with it in a lot of ways.

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.

And now it does engage me. Now it does pull me in. Now the characters are more real to me. Now it does seize my imagination. And now I no longer believe Nabeshin was trying to prevent that.

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.

And now I don't find the ending disappointing, but that's because I understand it better. It is a resolution of the character development arcs; it's not just about jokes -- though it is hilarious, especially once you come to understand the characters better.

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.

And this is where I've changed my mind the most, because now I understand what Seto is doing. Fact is, she's one of my favorite characters, and now that I understand her real goal -- and it's a good one -- it's become clear to me that everything she does to Seina, and with Seina, is indeed consistent. She isn't just a personification of deus ex machina, or a way for Nabeshin to control the story.

Once I figured out Seto's real goal, the real game she's playing, and the way Seina fits into her plans, a lot else became clear to me. Now for me the ending is not contrived. It is inevitable. And that's part of why it works better for me now.

I think my first reaction to the ending was that it had the same disconnect with the rest of the story as the ending of Maburaho did. It felt like something stupid tacked on at the end just in order to be humorous. But now I understand that it is in fact exactly where the story was aiming all the way from the first episode.

Nabeshin has blown me away; this is amazingly high quality story telling. He never misses a beat, all the way through the series.

And because of that, he's giving me a headache, and a tummy ache. There's a series which is being released here in R1 under the title "The Wallflower". In Japanese, it was called Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge, and it's been on my list of "series I'll never watch" mainly because it features four bishies (bishounen, "pretty boys").

Recently I noticed that Nabeshin directed it. And I read somewhere that part of what he does is to make fun of the bishounen esthetic. The bishies are a target of his comedic ire.

So now I'm finding myself to be simultaneously tempted and revolted. I really hate watching bishies -- but I think I might like watching Nabeshin skewer them. Oh, sigh...

Two DVDs of the series are out now. The third will appear whenever ADV gets its act together, if it does, and assuming ADV doesn't die first. As to the other three (? given that it's a 25-ep series) it's anyone's guess.

Anyone know anything about the series? How awful are the bishies? Is there really 25 episodes worth of story and jokes in this concept?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 02:58 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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