Anime TL;DR
Review
Tenchi Muyo Movie (1996): Tenchi in Love!
天地無用! in Love (Tenchi Muyo! In Love)
Tenchi the Movie: Tenchi in Love!, also known in Japan as Tenchi Muyo in Love! (天地無用 IN LOVE! Tenchi Muyō in Rabu!), is a 1996 Japanese animated film and the first of three films set in the Tenchi Muyo! multi-verse.
The animation is good for the time, especially the background painting. But character animation is a bit of a hit or miss. Sometimes it’s detail and sometimes not.
The music was composed by Christopher Franke (formerly of Tangerine Dream and the main composer for the Babylon 5 series). The end theme song is “Alchemy of Love”, written by Franke and performed by Nina Hagen, with Rick Jude on backing vocals. There is also an Achika version of the song, with new Japanese lyrics, and is performed by Megumi Hayashibara (Achika’s Japanese voice actress).
The first half of the movie was quite dull as almost nothing was happening. A lot of time jump cuts was used to make the setup scenes more engaging, it isn’t. It was almost like a detective story while they investigate and protect Tenchi’s mom.
It was also a bit of a school romance slice-of-life section here, and not the good romance either. If by romance we see Tenchi’s mom and dad blushing every time they talk to each other, then sure, it’s a “romance.” There are so many lost opportunities to expand on their characteristic, but all they do is blush and talking nonsense.
For a big group that came back in time to protect Achika, they sure lost track of her constantly.
I love Tenchi Muyo while growing up, but even I have a hard time watching this movie. The main antagonist is a generic I want to destroy everything kind of villain.
Even for a Tenchi Muyo fan, I would say skip this movie unless you need some kind of achievement for watching every Tenchi anime ever. Tenchi Muyo first movie contains some graphic violence. Intended for young adults.
Asta and Yuno are orphans who were raised together from birth after being abandoned at a church orphanage on the outskirts of the Clover Kingdom at the same time. In a world where everyone has the natural ability to perform a kind of magic, or a Magical Power (魔力 Maryoku), Asta is the only person born without any, leading him to train physically as compensation. Conversely, Yuno was born as a prodigy with immense magical power and the talent to control it. When they are 15, Asta and Yuno are granted the ability to become wizards known as Magic Knights by receiving grimoires, with which all magical power is channeled. Yuno is granted a wind-based grimoire held by the kingdom’s first Wizard King, while Asta does not receive one. However, when a thief incapacitates Yuno to try and sell his grimoire on the black market, Asta summons his own grimoire, which contains the rare and mysterious Anti-Magic (enabling him to cancel out all magical effects), to defeat him. The story then follows the two boys in their time within separate squads in the Magic Knights, as they build a friendly rivalry to try and become the Wizard King themselves.
On a transfer from England to Japan the “The Book of the Law” has been stolen. This is all the more disturbing since deciphering this book supposedly spells the end of the Roman Catholic Church, and thus destroys the equilibrium of power in the world. To make matters worse the nun, Orsola Aquinas, who recently discovered a way to decipher the book, has been kidnapped…
At the Academy City the Daihaseisai, a sports festival, is underway. This “opportunity” is used to trade the Stab Sword — a spiritual weapon capable of killing Saints with one blow. But as it turns out the actual sword in question is far more dangerous…
Featured Music
A collection of notable music and song from this series.
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Photo by Nicolas LB, Jon Flobrant, and Yvette de Wit on Unsplash.
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