So I started watching Tenchi Muyo GXP.

[Traab]

I just want to check on a few things here. Is this like watching full metal alchemist brotherhood where it might be helpful to watch the original series first? Because im three episodes in and very confused. Some things make no sense, others seem to imply some sort of plotting.

Episode 1 made sense. It was a pretty standard but decent intro t our protagonist and how he gets involved to begin with. The thing with his family wishing him good luck was odd. I cant tell if it was meant to be funny, or if they were bribed to say those things since I think they were talking about going to see hawaii and reading off a script.

Episode 2 is where it started to get odd. Look, I got the idea behind letting the rookie put in a random jump location. I do. Its just, they didnt even tell him HOW. "Here is a keyboard, hit buttons till something happens" is NOT a plan. Then, he somehow made like 4 random jumps, and attracted over 100 pirate ships which, ok, I can see being done as a joke due to his terrible luck. Then some devil princess woman in the most abstract art looking space ship ever conceived shows up, and tells this 100+ set of separate pirate ships they are under arrest. And instead of vanishing in 100 different directions at once, they stay put. WTF?! I dunno, maybe we will learn later on they can fire off 600 shots in every direction at once with pinpoint accuracy, or the ship is so awesome it forcibly shut down all pirate systems. Whatever.

Episode 3 is where it got really strange. The princess is VERY interested in this earthling. Im not even sure what the hell that was all about with her allowing him to go to the GP. Im guessing its some sort of plot to do with the woman who nearly drowned our main character in the first episode, but also has something to do with his luck. It clearly means SOMETHING to her. Rather than being a funny story to tell back home about how this crazy earthling managed to wrangle up every pirate in a dozen systems and get them captured all at once. But then the REALLY odd thing happened. The female pirate ship that hung back shows up, and wants to chat? Not only that, but this woman says, "Hey you, earth boy with the odd luck. Join me and you can be my superior officer, even though you dont know jack squat about space travel, piracy, or anything other than having the magic ability to get into the stupidest situations possible." Once again, I get the impression that his luck means something to these people, though no clue what. Probably he has some sort of royal heritage, or long lost bloodline, something like that. But HOW DID SHE KNOW?! She had no clue who was on this ship, what happened before she spotted them, or even if this was all a crazy trap. That part was less mystery and more no fridge logic.

Ah well, im still going to watch, as I hope to see some of this get explained soon, but man is it an odd story so far. I just wanted to make sure I wasnt basically starting off in the middle of a series of remakes that assume I watched the earlier versions to understand whats going on. I also dont know how many seasons this show has, but netflix only streams the first one.

*EDIT Episode 4

Ok, so now we get even more mysteries, but at least these are the sort of mysteries that arent logic free strangeness. His crush works for the GP, ok cool, im sure there will be a reason for that. We also get to see a bit of the family tree thing, which might explain why he has all these unknown connections to the GP already. His luck continues to be terrifyingly bad. Well, ranging from terrifying to annoying. At this point im thinking he is the illegitimate love child of longshot and scarlet witch. He can effect probability so strongly that impossible stuff happens to him, like a magic hole in the ground that leads to right over a control panel that controls the ship docks.

[Hopeless]

Okay first off the protagonist of this series has incredible bad luck.
He ends up being rescued and resuscitated by the female cop who assumes he's being trained alongside Tenchi given the various injuries she notices and since she was being sent to recruit Tenchi she also recruits him thinking he's a potential recruit as well.
His family agrees to this because of his bad luck effecting their fortunes, however I don't know if they really understand he's being sent offworld.

They let a jinx program their jump coordinates and because they had no idea of his past he keeps jumping them near a pirate ship/fleet who go in pursuit because they think there's something important aboard and only the pirate girl suddenly realises that there are now several hundred or thousand and instead of wanting to seize it pulls back just in tiem to avoid the trap set when the Galaxy Police notice one of their transport vessels being pursued by a literal armada of pirate ships!

He's recruited pretty much on the spot and noted by the Devil Princess of Jurai whose thoughts are probably along the lines of "Perfect Bait"!

Like other series he ends up finding out he's now very popular with the girls and earns the enmity of the guy Mihoshi drenched when he challenged Tenchi from the OVA series I believe.

I'd go into more details but you're better off watching this without any further spoilers!

Oh right sorry missed the initial questions...

1) Watch the Tenchi Muyo OVA series its quicker than diving into Tenchi Universe and the other series since the OVA pretty much explains all you need to know of the back story of this series.
2) I believe pirate girl is a fan of Riyoko and apparently the GXP are fans of her such that when she boarded their ship they promptly blamed the protagonist thinking they'd earn her gratitude!

[Traab]

Okay first off the protagonist of this series has incredible bad luck.
He ends up being rescued and resuscitated by the female cop who assumes he's being trained alongside Tenchi given the various injuries she notices and since she was being sent to recruit Tenchi she also recruits him thinking he's a potential recruit as well.
His family agrees to this because of his bad luck effecting their fortunes, however I don't know if they really understand he's being sent offworld.

They let a jinx program their jump coordinates and because they had no idea of his past he keeps jumping them near a pirate ship/fleet who go in pursuit because they think there's something important aboard and only the pirate girl suddenly realises that there are now several hundred or thousand and instead of wanting to seize it pulls back just in tiem to avoid the trap set when the Galaxy Police notice one of their transport vessels being pursued by a literal armada of pirate ships!

He's recruited pretty much on the spot and noted by the Devil Princess of Jurai whose thoughts are probably along the lines of "Perfect Bait"!

Like other series he ends up finding out he's now very popular with the girls and earns the enmity of the guy Mihoshi drenched when he challenged Tenchi from the OVA series I believe.

I'd go into more details but you're better off watching this without any further spoilers!

Oh right sorry missed the initial questions...

1) Watch the Tenchi Muyo OVA series its quicker than diving into Tenchi Universe and the other series since the OVA pretty much explains all you need to know of the back story of this series.
2) I believe pirate girl is a fan of Riyoko and apparently the GXP are fans of her such that when she boarded their ship they promptly blamed the protagonist thinking they'd earn her gratitude!

Ah ok, so I need to find the OVA to really understand. And so the girls are a standard humorous harem setup in that type of anime? I was honestly wondering, because half the females there always seem to have that slit eyed scheming look on their face around him, so I was wondering if it was more than that. I missed the part where she thought he was being trained with tenchi, that does explain the whole odd way she didnt seem to care she nearly murdered an earthling with a space ship then didnt bother to treat it as unusual.

I also caught the family agreeing because his bad luck was costing them big, but since the mom had an actual script, and they mentioned a trip to hawaii, I wasnt sure if that was a setup and they were bribed to give permission or something.

The random jump thing I got, its just, since it seemed like so many random people were focusing on his luck like it was something special, I wasnt entirely sure if it meant more than he was unlucky. But the whole, "Dont even bother to tell him what a jump coordinate LOOKS like" thing is still kinda stupid. Would it have killed them to say, "Type in a 30 digit sequence of numbers" or something?

Perfect bait for WHAT?! Like I said, it would have made sense if she had treated him like an amusing spectacle over the pirate incident, but she seemed honestly interested in manipulating him somehow. Oddly enough, to do exactly what he had already signed up to do, which again, made little sense. "I tricked him into continuing to breathe! Fu fu fu."

Yeah i got the whole pirate fanboy thing, that wasnt exactly subtle from those guys. But that still doesnt explain why the girl was so interested in Seina. But I guess I kind of jumped into the middle of an ongoing storyline. Like getting confused over starting off, I dunno, Yugioh, at battle city and wondering wtf Kaiba is so obsessed with yugi about. Damn, maybe I should stop watching this. Too bad its the only series on netflix streaming.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Watching either of the two the tv series* wouldn't help at all with GXP because all three are in different continuities. GXP follows the novel continuity, which is kind of supposed to be in the same continuity as the OVA (not a tv series but animated). However nobody from the OVA has a recurring role in GXP from what I can tell (I've only watched the odd episode) and the settings are pretty different (they never leave the Solar system in the OVA, its all alien girls coming to earth).

So if you want to watch something to make sense of it you're out of luck because what you'd want would be the novel series.

*That's Tenchi Muyo! (Tench Universe in the dub and American release to avoid confusion with identically named OVA) and Shin Tenchi Muyo! (called Tenchi in Tokyo in the sub and American release), a truly terrible series. There are also movies which follow the Tenchi Universe continuity and are pretty bad

[Traab]

Too be honest, I think its the OVA I wanted to see anyhow, since I got interested enough to look for it on netflix due to some fanfics I have read that have dealt with what, from the wiki I have checked, has to so with the ova. I didnt even realize that there was an entire SERIES with the tenchi line, even if they arent really connected.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I only know Tenchi fanfics from my brother years and years ago, but they seemed to heavily be based of the movies and happily mixed continuities like crazy anyway (but not GXP due to it being more recent and not broadcast on TV in the USA).

Like how Ranma 1/2 fanfics usually had manga exclusive and anime exclusive characters in them.

[Traab]

Ugh, then to hell with it. Im not watching 4 different series and a set of films just to understand a few in jokes. Ah well.

[slayerx]

Ugh, then to hell with it. Im not watching 4 different series and a set of films just to understand a few in jokes. Ah well.

Actually you should be fine with just the OVA's. They total about 20 episodes, though the first 13 (OVA sets 1 and 2) are the one's most worth watching. They are the height of the whole franchise, and what made it popular in the first place. However if you like those first 2 OVA sets, you might also like Tenchi Universe. Its a non-canon TV series based on the OVA's. Same Characters; different stories. The manga which is an adaption of the OVA's is also worth reading.

The franchise is a bit of a mess. Fans love it for those first two OVA's and Universe because that's what was on when toonami was at its height... but the franchise has been going Downhill ever since. Tenchi in Tokyo is bad and GXP is probably the worst thing that the franchise ever spawned. Don't need to waste time with those.

[Alabenson]

The franchise is a bit of a mess. Fans love it for those first two OVA's and Universe because that's what was on when toonami was at its height... but the franchise has been going Downhill ever since. Tenchi in Tokyo is bad and GXP is probably the worst thing that the franchise ever spawned. Don't need to waste time with those.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on two points here. One, I feel Tenchi in Tokyo isn't nearly as bad as many people make it out to be. Granted it has its share of flaws, but I feel that it benefited from having a single coherent over-plot, and I have to give it credit for trying something different. Also, Tokyo has a certain advantage over the OVA's in that it's free of the malignant tumor of stupid that was the mythology created by Kajishima.

Which brings me to my second point, being that as bad as GXP was, it was still vastly superior to the festering pile of self-indulgent, poorly-paced, needless-exposition-filled dreck that was the third OVA season.

[Jayngfet]

The franchise is a bit of a mess. Fans love it for those first two OVA's and Universe because that's what was on when toonami was at its height... but the franchise has been going Downhill ever since. Tenchi in Tokyo is bad and GXP is probably the worst thing that the franchise ever spawned. Don't need to waste time with those.

Tokyo was also on Toonami. So was GXP back when Toonami got rebooted.

The Geminar stuff is all that hasn't been on Toonami, which is pretty hit or miss.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The OVA was on English Toonami before they showed Universe and then Tokyo.

[slayerx]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on two points here. One, I feel Tenchi in Tokyo isn't nearly as bad as many people make it out to be. Granted it has its share of flaws, but I feel that it benefited from having a single coherent over-plot, and I have to give it credit for trying something different. Also, Tokyo has a certain advantage over the OVA's in that it's free of the malignant tumor of stupid that was the mythology created by Kajishima.

I guess that's true. The mythogoly he was putting toeghther was fine in the first 2 OVA's, but the third OVA and GXP turned it into a convoluted mess. Though universe is also free of the mythology



Which brings me to my second point, being that as bad as GXP was, it was still vastly superior to the festering pile of self-indulgent, poorly-paced, needless-exposition-filled dreck that was the third OVA season.

While i think the third OVA was terrible, i still found it more bearable than GXP. The third OVA was merely boring where as I found GXP to be painful to watch. Frankly i think the Tenchi Muyo Manga is a MUCH better follow up to the first 2 OVA's.


Tokyo was also on Toonami. So was GXP back when Toonami got rebooted.

Ya, but most fans never really cared for Tokyo; Universe and the OVA's are what they remember fondly. As for GXP, airing that was probbaly the worst decision the new Toonami ever made. I mean, Sword Art Online might be bad, but atleast it has some following. GXP is like the tenchi series that tenchi fans want to forget existed. Its not good for old fans of the original show, and its not good for new viewers either



The Geminar stuff is all that hasn't been on Toonami, which is pretty hit or miss.

I thought Geminar was pretty good, but its hard to even call it a tenchi series. Honestly the series feels like it has NOTHING to do with the rest of the franchise. Its like the Creator had this idea for a fantasy/mecha anime and just decided to shoehorn it into the franchise by making the main character related to tenchi (tenchi is pretty much the only thing he ever made that was actually successful). Seriously, aside from a few rare times he vaguely mentions his family, there is NOTHING connecting that series to everything else.

[Alabenson]

I guess that's true. The mythogoly he was putting toeghther was fine in the first 2 OVA's, but the third OVA and GXP turned it into a convoluted mess. Though universe is also free of the mythology

To be honest, Universe was always my favorite of the three continuities by a wide margin, followed by Tokyo and then the OVA's largely on the basis of what Tokyo getting right being more significant than what the OVA's get wrong.


While i think the third OVA was terrible, i still found it more bearable than GXP. The third OVA was merely boring where as I found GXP to be painful to watch. Frankly i think the Tenchi Muyo Manga is a MUCH better follow up to the first 2 OVA's.

Despite its many cringe-inducing flaws, GXP at least gave itself enough time to show and develop its main characters. The third OVA, by comparison, managed to distill every flaw GXP into a handful of episodes while ignoring its supposed main characters in favor of new characters that rarely added anything to the show and were never given sufficient time to develop, a situation that wasn't helped by the fact that the show frequently would pause to deliver exposition about unimportant setting details.

GXP was merely bad, the third OVA was arguably one of the worst anime I have ever seen.

[BWR]

By coincidence I just finished the second OVA series and was about to start the third when I noticed this thread. I may just give it a miss.