released 18 jan 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* One of the longest-running and popular anime series is the TENCHI MUYO franchise, traditionally involving a nice Japanese lad named Tenchi Masaki who ends up being the target of affections of a gang of quarreling galactic femmes.
At the beginning of the latest installment of the series, TENCHI MUYO GXP (GALAXY POLICE TRANSPORTER), we meet Seina Yamada, a younger friend of Tenchi's who literally is the most unlucky boy on the entire Earth, being not merely a jinx but accident-prone. It is a wonder he's lived as long as he has, though he's had some help being raised, in the form of the maternalistic Kiriko, a mysterious femme who shows up about once every six months.
Seina goes to visit Tenchi, suffering many accidents along the way, finds no one home, and then suffers another accident when a spaceship smacks down in the pond outside Tenchi's house and nearly drowns poor Seina with the resulting tidal wave. When he comes to on the porch of the house, he is being cared for by a blonde minx in a strange uniform who identifies herself as "Amane". She leaves an electronic brochure for him that encourages him to enlist in the "Galaxy Police".
Seina now begins to realize that there is more to the strange and mysterious things that happen around the Masaki household than he ever imagined. He signs up -- his family all but forces him to do it even though they have no clue what the Galaxy Police really is, simply because they are desperate to get their son out of the house and have a life where disasters aren't daily occurrences.
Now Seina learns about galactic society, the Galaxy Police -- it turns out that Kiriko, who he's known about all his life, is a GP officer -- and the powerful imperial race of the Jurai, and he also finds himself the object of interest by a large number of femmes. Not only is he a trouble magnet, he's a babe magnet; eh, I suppose the two aren't so different. Although Earth isn't supposed to know about Galactic society and Seina's recruitment was outside of the rules, one of the femmes, the imperious Lady Seto of the Jurai ("iron-willed old hag!"), has the rules waived because she sees the potential of the unluckiest lad in the Universe. You see, since any ship he is on is likely to be attacked by space pirates, he's the best bait in the Galaxy. And so the adventure begins.
* It quickly becomes apparent that TM-GXP is possibly one of the most mixed anime experiences ever made. It's a Jekyll-&-Hyde production, with the artwork approaching crude at times but with some excellent computer graphics work bringing up the average. The story ranges from stupid and sleazy -- in some places it get sleazy enough to border on hentai / porn -- to very clever and hilarious, while still being sleazy at times. While most of the theme music is nondescript, some of it has a quirky and fun flavor of its own; sometimes I'd just sit on the DVD menus to listen to the music and not make a selection until it cycled around to the beginning again.
The TENCHI MUYO franchise has been around a long time and it's a bit weary, but the production crew did a lot of clever things to revive the story, most importantly by essentially getting rid of all the traditional TENCHI gang; when Seina goes to the Masaki house, nobody's home, and the old gang always seem to be just offstage in the wings. TM-GXP then builds up a completely new and distinctive cast of characters, often shrewdly exploiting little loose ends in the original series. For example, on Earth Grandpa Masaki / Yoshou married a Japanese girl, Tenchi's grandmother ... what ever happened to her? And who but a hardcore TENCHI fanatic remembers who Seiryo Tennan was? There are also completely new characters, such as NB, the most disreputable of all disreputable robots of comedy science fiction; he makes FUTURAMA's Bender look respectable.
Recommending TM-GXP is a bit dodgy, because if I do I have to add that it isn't high-class entertainment. It's kitsch, sometimes stupid and sleazy kitsch, but also sometimes fun and entertaining kitsch. On the balance I have to judge that if this production tends to stumble here and there, the people who made it were trying very hard to come up with something imaginative and entertaining, and I have to give them a guarded thumb's up.
