Tenchi Muyo! GXP

Original Title: 天地無用!GXP
Romanized: Tenchi Muyou! GXP
Literal: This End Up! GXP

Plot Synopsis

Harem show plot #3: Yamada Seina, a young, rather naive, generally nice boy from Earth, gets caught up in intergalactic mayhem at the Galaxy Police Academy, attracts the attention of several very attractive women from other planets, and spends his not-so-lonely days trying to either avoid their affections or keep them from killing each other over him. Oh, and there are also some space pirates with an unhealthy interest in any ship he's on.

But our young hero isn't just any old affection-showered schoolboy: He's known far and wide on Earth for having luck so bad that he's a plague to those around him, and he's about to introduce the unsuspecting GXP to misfortune like they've never seen before.

If you average it all out, I suppose he's just a normal guy.

Quick Review

Rating: 1.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2002-12-31

Wow, a Tenchi Muyo series that's finally part of the OAV continuity... and it has absolutely nothing to do with Tenchi and the gang. Instead, GXP focuses on a completely unrelated Tenchi-look-alike Earth-kid named Seina who finds himself somewhat unwillingly recruited into the GXP. The series got my hopes up early on with some spectacularly timed visual jokes involving Seina's terminal bad luck, and there are certainly plenty of attractive women chasing after him. Sadly, it just doesn't have that Tenchi magic. It also ends up feeling like a kids' show with a 16-up rating; the jokes are cheap and juvenile, but the harem stuff pushes the limits so far you wonder why the kid would even notice the average nosebleed moment any more. The women are also so much more mature than Seina that I ended up half-wondering whether they're just playing with a borderline-pedophilic toy. Aside from the variety of pretty women, the art is functional if unremarkable, as is just about anything else.

I can't recommend Tenchi Muyo: GXP either as a Tenchi series or on its own merits. Overly lightweight, not terribly funny, and a bit dirty to boot, it seems to narrowly miss the mark in every area. Then again, it isn't outright bad, either, and you don't need to be a Tenchi initiate to enjoy it, so if it sounds appealing it may not be a complete waste of time.

US DVD Review

FUNimation's DVDs, regardless of the packaging (8 individual discs, 8-disc box set, or four 2-disc sets), include English and Japanese audio and English subtitles, but don't boast of any special features.

Content Guide

Parts are relatively clean, but I'd call it 16-up based on a couple of episodes. At the least, expect a variety of suggestive situations and a lot of borderline nudity.

Violence: 1 - There's a lot of fighting, but it's all pretty bloodless.

Nudity: 2 - A whole lot of skin in some episodes, but you don't technically see many "important bits."

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - At the very least, several naked massages and a lot of suggestive behavior.

Language: 1 - Apparently pretty mild.

Notes and Trivia

If you haven't at least heard of the Tenchi Muyo franchise, then you're probably not an anime fan. But, not everybody is an expert, so if all my talk of "OAV continuity" has you confused, it goes like this: First, Pioneer produced the Tenchi Muyo OAV series (two series, actually, but they pretty much fit right together). Everybody loved it. Then, they made a TV series (generally called "Tenchi Universe") that involved different versions of the same characters, in a similar but somewhat different plot. Everybody liked it. Then they made a couple of movies that sort of fit in with the TV series. Then they made another TV series ("Tenchi in Tokyo") that involved yet another unrelated version of the same characters, in an entirely different plot. Finally, there was a "final" movie. Plus, there's the random, completely unrelated (except for the fact that it involves yet another version of... yes, the same characters) spin-off series "Pretty Sammy."

Though each of those series has a following, most "True Tenchi Fanatics" (or at least the smart ones who agree with me) consider the OAVs to be the original and best incarnation of Tenchi Muyo (partly because of the very inconclusive stopping point to the story). This series clearly fits into the same continuity as the OAVs, but involves completely different characters, hence my violent knee-jerk reaction.

Also, in a small stroke of insulting irony, Pioneer did a little online poll a while back asking fandom "If there were a new Tenchi Muyo series, what universe should it take place in?" The OAVs won by a vast margin, but this being the apparent product leads me to believe that they'd already decided on a story and didn't really care whether the fans wanted yet another continuity or not.

Availability

Available in the US from FUNimation on bilingual DVD, currently in your choice of four 2-disc sets or a box set of the works. It was previously available on 8 individual DVD volumes.

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