Tenchi Muyo GXP

Summary: >

Seina is a guy cursed with the worst luck in the world. In fact, he has the worst luck in the universe. Coping with his daily life of misfortune, he encounters a strange woman who gives him an application for the "Galaxy Police". His family fills out the form, thinking it's a contest where they may win something. Seina himself doesn't take it seriously until he's abducted by a spaceship.

From then on, no matter where he is or where he goes, Seina encounters space pirates. Bad luck? For a police force tasked with capturing such criminals, he may be the ultimate weapon.

Thoughts: >

Is Tenchi Muyo GXP the worst anime ever? After thinking for a while I decided, no it's not. However the fact that I had to ponder that should tell you all you need to know about this travesty of an anime. This will be as much of a rant as a review, because it's hard to stay impartial at the level of torture watching this show is.

To this day I remain a fan of the original Tenchi OVA series, which GXP spends most of its time insulting. While this doesn't have Tenchi or the other standard characters in it (aside from cameo appearances), it does have a level of "Tenchi-ness". That's about the only part they got right. There is an odd juxtaposition with this anime: How can a show be so stupid, yet boring? In order to be so stupid, you'd assume a lot happens, and yet...

If you can imagine an anime filled with dry tedious dialog only appealing to bitchy gossipy housewives who hate "action", that's the kind of hell GXP is filled with. Like I'm supposed to give a damn about threatening talk. I have no idea why this anime is overflowing with this content. Cheap to produce I suppose.

Seina's bad luck itself isn't an issue. After all, it offers plenty of comedy potential; however using it as the BASIS for the story is a terrible idea, making it impossible to avoid the stupidity which it succumbs to. Random coincidences are lazily explained by "Seina's bad luck". The Tenchi franchise always had a dash of silliness, but used sparingly with the story.

You can't talk Tenchi without talking about the girls. GXP is packed full of girls chasing the guy for no reason (seriously, there's no reason to like this guy). Seina has a crush on a girl since his earth days, and she was the one I found tolerable (ignoring the horrible way she's integrated into the story). A space pirate named Ryoko who is NOT the same as the Tenchi franchise staple; didn't seem too annoying, but I couldn't figure out what her personality or purpose was. Which goes for all the girls, perhaps explaining why I didn't like any of them. Each looks different, has a token trait (loudmouthed for example) and that's it. Failure to meet the low standards in the harem girl buffet is pretty sad.

The story... gosh, where to start.. It's hard to explain how godawful the story is at any given time, so I won't even going to try. It's not worthy of the effort. And that's not even addressing how it repeatedly flogs the Tenchi franchise with idiotic explanations, sometimes counter to existing cannon. Genius scientist Washu said she'd never make another Ryo-oki, then makes one for Seina in GXP. I'll have to stop with that because (aside from spoilers), I'll be typing forever explaining this stuff. Even the subtitles are bad! They mirror the English dub, which is inconsistent with the Japanese (that's fine), but also making it completely mistimed.

As I said, I don't believe this is the worst anime I've seen, because shows exist packing a whole lot of bad into a short time frame. However I don't think I've seen an anime this bad go on for this long. In that way Tenchi Muyo GXP is a different kind of torment that goes on and on and on. The good news, is that you can turn it off, or not watch it at all - which is what I recommend.

Screen Caps: >