Ai Tenchi Muyou!

I really enjoyed this show. The show lacks character development, being a short series, and the show relied heavily on fan service. But, the show had a ton of callbacks to the original OVA series, and had a good overall story. I also really enjoyed the voice cast. The voice work was good, and they brought back most of the VAs from the original dubs. This was pretty nostalgic, and certainly did a lot to add to the presentation of the show.

Overall, the show was really fun to watch, but lacked depth because of the format. This would've been much better had they produced ... this as a regular season. Still, it was a good show

Goat's Review for Ai Tenchi Muyou!

Story: 5/10
The story is, in it of itself. not to bad but the execution is sloppy. The habit of jumping around between plot points at the beginning of the story was annoying. Normally it is acceptable to have a flashback to see the events that started the plot, but Ai Tenchi Muyuo overuses it. This is more a directing fault than writing, and I'm sure that if I had watched the episodes out of order so that they were in chronological order I would have probably given this section a better score. The beginning of the series is also a ... little slow to start, lacking major conflicts, and several elements that made the original Tenchi Muyuo so entertaining, although some of said elements (sci-fi themes, in-universe mythology continuity) do show up in the last dozen episodes that do make the show feel like a true Tenchi Muyuo plot with a finale that was rather enjoyable.

Art: 7/10
The art is not bad by any means. However, it lacks a certain something that made the original Tenchi series truly shine. If you are fan of the previous series you will probably find it a little more cartoonish. The redesigns of the classic Tenchi Characters (Tenchi, Ryoko, Ayeka, etc.) really did not bother me that much, but die hard fans are probably not going to care for them.

Sound: 7/10
Good sounds and voice over work, no weird errors and audio sinks up pretty well with the movements of characters but nothing really that make it stand out. Not a lot to say, good or bad here.

Character: 5/10
Sadly the Characters were the biggest disappointment for me. Tenchi is more of a clown in this series than his earlier series counterparts. Previous Tenchis did have their foolish moments but always seemed to role with the punches and when push came to shove would put their foot down if things became serious, they were more believable and approached things to how a person would. This Tenchi is more of a punching bad and doormat who falls into the stereotypical accidental pervert jokes you see in many modern harem stories but they just do not seem to lands.

Classic Characters like Ryoko and Ayeka are mitigated to background roles which feel like they were just added into the show to pander fans of the old show with no real interest in taking full advantage the characterization built for them over the course of several series.

New Characters are numerous and each has a unique personalities, but the problem is there are to many new characters with no real focus on any of them for long, making them seem like 1 dimensional with no real development.

Enjoyment: 4/10
Sadly the problems with the beginning of the story and characters really kept me from getting to invested into the series. The comedy seems to fail hitting any joke that are laugh worthy and there is no romance what so ever. It was not until the last episodes were more traditional Tenchi Muyuo plot points were used did I start enjoying things.

Overall Rating: 5/10
With scores of 5, 7, 7, 5, and 4. The series rounds out to a 5 for me. The problems with the way the story is told (not the story itself) and the misuse of characters were the biggest flaws for me. If you are into the Tenchi franchise this is one who can probably skip over and not feel to bad about it.

I am fan of the Tenchi Muyo! franchise, it does have its bad parts but even the worst parts of the franchise can't ruin my memories I had when I first watched it years ago. Then I watched Ai Tenchi Muyou and well I expected average the more I think about it after I had some time since completing my watch of it, the more I'm upset about it.

So the plot is that for some reason, Washu has to have Tenchi try to find the cause of something going in the past, but it could also be something from a different dimension, but also from ... its past affecting the present. And then Tenchi is told to go undercover at an all girls school and find out what is going on. Yeah the plot is hard to follow

I could go into more details from what I fully understood what the actual plot of the show is about, but the anime does something divides its story up like this. Half the show is dedicated to pointless dumb school anime tropes, such as the sports festival, school elections and pointless school activities. A little less than a quarter of the series devoted to flashbacks way into the past because of time travel, explaining how everything is supposed to tie together, and the final ten episodes trying to wrap up everything, including trying to make heartfelt dramatic moments mean something, but in the end feel forced and not deserved.

The main fault of the anime lies in its characters, we have eight new sort of love interest characters and the anime has only four minutes an episode to develop them. Now short run time anime can develop their characters well, the problem is outside of the original cast, especialy if you are a fan of the Tenchi series then they are the best characters in the entire series, the problem with the new cast they are all have generic cliche character tropes. Most of the characters try to have development and be important, but only two characters, Beni and Momo have anything to do the with the main story and they barely do anything in the anime and their character development barely goes beyond that. Beni is just another Ryouko but playing the punk delinquent of the school and Momo is kind shy girl that everybody loves and wants everyone to be friends.

I know I'm ranting on all the faults on this anime, but it does have some good things, I may not like soundtrack as its mostly just fine background music, its there and its not bad just alright. The original characters from the original series are back and I do like to seeing them again. Their scenes were some of the better parts of the anime and I do like when they started to interact with the newer characters. The animation is fine, its not great but I find it average at best and I do like the new character designs for the original cast.

To summarize all the problems with Ai Tenchi Muyou are this: it has too large of cast that have no real character trait other than one basic trope and doesn't spend a good portion of its episodes to fully develop them or make them interesting. The story gets more broken when you look at the plot holes it leaves unanswered and when it does try to everything together it makes feel like a Science Fiction story with harem elements crammed into it. And any likable character from the past franchise barely do anything more than a cameo for most of the series until the end where its tries to wrap up everything in its finale but fails to be memorable or good. Look maybe you can say I am being more hard on this series that I should, but to that I say this, if your going to celebrate the anniversary of well beloved franchise, especially if its celebrating its twentieth anniversary and want to give its fan something they would enjoy for all the memories they had with the original series over the years, you gotta give it your best and not this.