Tenamonya Voyagers

Earth or Bust! Unfortunately, it was Bust.

I actually watched this show out of pure curiosity. I was just looking up info on Akiyuki Shinbo (Director of pretty much almost everything SHAFT has animated like Zetsubou Sensei and Negima!?) when I saw this work listed. I've pretty much never seen much of his earlier directing works unless you count Nanoha Season 1 as his earlier works. For some reason, I chose this one mostly because the story sounded interesting enough and I was expecting an action science fiction drama sort of thing. At least I was right about the first two things. This turned out ... to be an action packed science fiction comedy, and boy did I joy every bit of it.

Story - I won't go into the details of the story, but this is pretty much the biggest weak point in Tenamonya Voyagers. It's not that it's badly executed or too simplistic. It's actually because it just ends at episode 4 with no closure whatsoever. Yes, the narrator pretty much says at the end, "Only God knows what happens to them. The End." Apparently, the DVD's didn't sell well enough in Japan to continue making episodes so pretty much the people who actually bought them got sort of a giant middle finger from the company at the end of the 4th episode. My heart goes out to those who bought all 4 volumes of the DVD in Japan.

Art - The animation is smooth and well done, but it's only expected from an OVA. The animation was done by Studio Pierrot (Bleach, Naruto) and I'm actually surprised they were able to churn out animation like this. Art-style wise, it may not be for everyone but I find it good enough. Their eyes are a bit big though, but this is anime so this complaint is null and void. Also, you get to see some of Akiyuki Shinbo's earlier directing styles in the animation and it pretty much shows that he still had that creative spark in his early days.

Sound - I'll be honest and say I really didn't notice the music all that much, unless it was during a battle scene. The music was sort of just there for atmospheric purposes and it worked. The voice actors for the Japanese version did their jobs well and gave the characters life perfectly. I haven't seen the dub because the DVD for this is incredibly hard to find and I wasn't able to find any videos of the dub. Also, I love the opening to this series very much.

Characters - The characters are all just a joy to watch. From the top athlete tomboy Wakana to the bubbly teacher Ayako to the ever persistent space officer Tatsue out to bring the space criminal Paraila to justice. The chemistry between each of the characters is just plain fun to watch and the way they act in their situations is always good for a laugh.

Enjoyment - This is just an incredibly fun watch. The situations they get into are always a joy to watch. From getting stranded on a desert island and Ayako teaching Paraila's former sidekick how to farm on a beach to getting out of the orbit of a burning star using baseball pitches to move the ship, it's always bound to keep you entertained. And, as mentioned before, seeing the characters interact is a joy to watch.

Cons - There's only one real con and that's that the story ends with no real closure and the future isn't looking good for a continuation almost 9 years later. We, or maybe just me, can only hope they do continue it. I guess another con is that it's really hard to find the Region 1 DVD because it's one of Bandai's first DVD's and it's out of print.

+ Very smooth and consistent animation
+ The voice acting is spot on
+ The chemistry between the characters
+ The situations they get into are very fun to watch
+ Akiyuki Shinbo's style of directing is simplistic but stylish
+ Consistently funny
+ It's short

- No story closure at all
- Very hard to find if you want to purchase the DVD of this
- It's short

Overall, if you manage to find this in a local *insert store of your choice here*, do pick it up. It's a very enjoyable and fun series even with the incomplete ending.

It's always difficult to assess these OVAs and TV series that are sadly unfinished. How does one rate something when it's not finished? Well, there are two forms of unfinished that you will typically see: the first involves a completed arc; in some cases there's not enough material until years later for a new season to be created in the first place. Secondly, there are series that are just dropped either at a random juncture or more was clearly meant to be made, and it just wasn't.

The former would include series like Berserk (1997-1998), which was unfinished in the sense that the manga continued ... on for years, but the arc itself came to a satisfying conclusion, and so this series does not feel unfinished per se. The studio behind that season wouldn't be involved with anything that came out years later. The latter would apply to Tenamonya Voyagers, concluding without the satisfying closure of an arc, and, really, at an arbitrary spot, with the final episode being weaker than the first three in many ways. It's also an anime original, so this is all there is.

While I suppose it would be possible to believe this might be more of a drama based on certain clips available, this is primarily a comedy, with a mix of zany sci-fi crime caper and mech action. I'm hardly a devotee to comedy, much less ANIME comedy, but this one is actually rather funny, carrying itself well with plenty of situational humor, exaggerated expressions, and slapstick and physical comedy, and a big part of what allows this style to excel is the fantastic and wildly charismatic character animation and designs. The designs have that stereotypical ANIME look with the HUGE eyes, but they have a lot of personality, nonetheless, especially with the three mains.

It's semi-episodic, but it doesn't really feel that way, other than maybe the gambling in episode 3 and the entirety of episode 4. It could maybe be likened to the episodic nature of something like Cowboy Bebop, with it's constant change of environment and planet-hopping, but there's an overarching story and a tight-knit cast of characters. The three female characters are written fairly well and have good chemistry. They're very archetypal: the ditzy, (slightly) older teacher; the extroverted sports enthusiast; and space trash Paraila—a name so fitting, I have to mention it, and she's a bit of a psychopath to boot. Despite the chemistry, she does bear a sort of indifference and self-interest when it comes to the other girls, and it would be amusing to see the way this formula plays out and how she develops as a character, and based on the trajectory, her connection to criminal syndicates, and a pursuing detective, I believe she was probably intended to become the more fleshed-out and developed of the three.

The animation isn't the limited style of most OVAs, with occasional spikes of great animation—this one is pretty constantly well-animated, not just the character-based comedy, but also spaceship battles, mech fights, effects animation, etc. Every frame either has solid animation or inspired art and composition. If there are any moments where the animation quality drops at all, it's not even noticeable due to Akiyuki Shinbo's incredibly stylish direction, and you can see a lot of motifs on display that he would become known for in his various directorial projects with studio Shaft. It's highly cinematic and creative in terms of shot composition, even using occasional shallow focus and ample amounts of foreground objects. It's one of the most visually appealing OVAs of the late period. I'd have to look into Shinbo's early directorial efforts, but I think this was probably his first shining example as a director, so the show is very notable for that reason alone.

There are a few side characters along the way, such as Maako and Elaine, but they're pretty secondary, and the latter character is introduced in a very sloppy manner in episode 4, receiving little fanfare. The weirdest episode is definitely no. 4, as it's kind of a plot-motivated fan service episode, where the AC is knocked out because there isn't any power in the spaceship, and it's so hot they spend the whole episode with different items covering their private parts in every frame. It's kind of funny and creative the way they use many of these items, and it feels so sticky with all the sweat. : ^) They do loads of random things like telling ghost stories, and it feels a lot more, umm... slice of life? Although not a bad episode, it was probably not the best note to end on, and the very last frame has the narrator questioning what will happen to them, concluding with "Only God knows..." or something to that effect.

I'm not entirely sure why the show was cancelled. Apparently, it was unpopular or possibly even too expensive to produce, regardless of whatever amount of popularity it had. I'm always perplexed by some of the shows that end up being cancelled. You can see canned-dog food specials get the green light and have 1,389 episodes, 23 seasons, and 10 spinoffs about the family cat of the show, but a unique and phenomenally well-directed and animated show like this can't even get a semi-rushed final episode or however many episodes were intended?

I've rated it a 6, but I feel that if it kept the current pace in terms of quality, then it would probably be a 7—and if more of the somber mood found in the closing would lead to a greater injection of drama into what is primarily an action comedy, and it was handled well, I could see an 8, but that's just wishful thinking about what might have been. To end as abruptly as it did lowers the rating a bit, unfortunately. Would be great if Shinbo would get Shaft to make a reboot, but it probably won't happen, and few people even remember or care about this obscure OVA.

Such a shame this turned out the way it did. It had the ingredients on-paper to be a fun little OVA series, but it's just wasted on lame jokes, completely random and inconsequential plot, and empty characters.

The story starts off by introducing and uniting the three main characters... and then the rest of the story is driven by random events out of nowhere to propel it along. There's no telling how you got where you are and where you'll end up in the next five seconds. It's entirely disjointed and eventually just drops the very tenuous direction that it even had, which ... was vaguely "get back to Earth." But that goal doesn't matter, the events you're seeing one second don't matter to the next, and so on. The story is a wash, but the characters don't fare any better. They're as one-note from the moment they are introduced to the end of the series. Over 120 minutes of run-time, you don't know any more and they don't change at all from minute 15 to minute 60 to minute 120. They're a couple of traits that events happen to that can loosely be called "characters" and nothing more.

The action in the series is similarly pointless. It just happens. Lots of boom and bang segments but they don't matter, it's all just time being wasted to thrust the characters into the next location for a few moments in a never-ending chain of nonsense. It's like if Family Guy was entirely composed of cutaways, without the premise of an overarching story. And speaking of Family Guy, no matter what you think of it, I guarantee you've laughed at at least ONE joke. You won't be able to say the same for this. The humor is severely lacking. The bulk of it is extremely Japanese, but even if you were the most Japanese person alive, I couldn't imagine someone actually finding it funny. The jokes are mostly wordplay and the most superficial references to Japanese culture. Outside of that, all the jokes have little to no setup and little to no payoff. It's non-sequitur references and puns. After the first episode, the teacher character entirely devolves into making puns and poems. If you think a random haiku out of nowhere very, very loosely related to a thing happening on screen at the time would make you laugh, then hey, maybe I'm wrong and you'll like this show. And to be clear, it's just that the humor could only appeal to a Japanese audience: I've enjoyed many emphatically Japanese comedy series. The point is that even to a Japanese audience, the humor is the most shallow cultural references and wordplay that would make even the cultural ambassador groan.

The only positive thing I can say about this show is that it looks good. If it looked as bland as it is written, then I wouldn't have bothered past the first ten minutes. It clearly has resources and effort put into it, visually, which is probably WHY this show got cancelled instead of given two more episodes like it was apparently planned to be. It was probably hemorrhaging money from the animation costs so given its bad ratings, they axed it as soon as possible. I wish that art and animation and the character designs could've been used for a better series, because they were the only thing that got me through the four episodes in the first place. I should've just dropped it.

And that's the point of this review. This isn't the most terrible thing ever but there is so, so little here to make it worth watching. To make it even worth killing time with. It was a struggle to watch and the sum of my thoughts for the first two episodes was "I really hope it gets better" and the last two "I want it to just be over." Trust me, save yourself the time, and forget about this.