Tenchi’s mum is hot

Posted On September 7, 2007

I present to you anime beauty, perfected. Well, I’m bias, since I have thing for ’90s designs. But she’s pretty hot, yeah?

Talk about nostalgia, I just watched the first Tenchi movie, TENCHI MUYO IN LOVE (what a lovely Engrish title.) This movie holds something of a significant meaning for me, since it was the first anime I ever watched UNCUT AND UNEDITED. Many (if not all) of you readers probably don’t know this, unless you’re one of my friends who was also there on the fateful night of my 13th (?) birthday, when a friend of mine brought over the dubbed VHS from Potomac Video…

Up until that point in my life, I had been watching whatever came on the Cartoon Network. I had only recently become an anime fan, so I had to eat up whatever I could. Those who happen to live in the DC area will know it doesn’t have much of a “scene”, and me being the age that I was, couldn’t exactly go very far on my own to get to a video store or anything. However, a friend of mine in elementary school (yes, I was corrupted young by these Japper-Knees cartoons) had all the “connections”, as it were. Each time we all got together, he’d bring some nth generation DBZ movie fansub, and we’d all watch it. Either that, or we’d all head over to Blockbuster and rent the sexiest looking we could find (Devil Hunter Yoko was an important part of my youth.) So one night, my 13th birthday, he brought Tenchi.

Tenchi was kind of my gateway drug, I’d say. Even though I was a fan of about two shows at the time, Tenchi movie 1 is probably what secured my interest in cartoons from Japan. It had sex jokes, cursing, gore and nudity! My 13-year-old mind was blown! I quickly developed a fondness for 2D women, and it was all down-hill from there.

Watching the movie now, after seeing over 200 anime titles (which is still an unimpressive number, but it’s far cry from the days when I could count everything I had seen on my fingers), I’m able to view it more objectively. It’s still a fairly great film, in terms of direction, design and story. I do feel that even at 95 minutes, it’s a bit too long. I can’t help but shake the feeling that they could have cut it down a bit. Then again, I was watching this with something of a headache (arg school) so that may have affected my judgment.

The movie contains that lovely clean-cut cel animation present in high-budget features from the 1990s, which is a look that came to define what anime means to me, and still does to some extent. What I love about these old productions is just how much character each frame has. I love the grainy texture of the cels, the marks of traditional instruments, the quality of the cel paint– everything. It’s just so rich looking.

Pioneer’s DVD is like just about any old Pioneer DVD in that IT DOESN’T FUCKING WORK. The menu froze up each time I tried to do anything. Maybe it just doesn’t like Power DVD. In any case, the movie is presented in letter-boxed format, not anamorphic widescreen, so it’ll look kinda lame on a huge wide-screen TV. Also, for some reason on the Japanese track, the ending theme is still in English.

Well, that was quite an unorganized look back at my younger years/review of some old movie. Anyway, it’s 1am and I need to hit the hay. I got classes now, after all.