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Ai Tenchi Muyo! is yet another spin-off in this franchise. Though, I admit it is the least annoying one made by this director, Hiroshi Negishi, but that's from having such low expectations to begin with.

I did find some positive things about it. The artwork is decent. I did come to like some new characters such as Yuki and Rui. They were amusing. I liked some episodes and my favorite part was the election of a new president for the school. Also, I didn't think the old characters were too bastardized except for Tenchi himself, who is too weak here and comes ... off like a modern-day generic male harem lead, one who gets repeatedly punched by the girls, something that never happened before in any previous Tenchi Muyo series.

Sadly, the story has many problems that make it subpar. I didn't care for and about most of the rest of the new characters, including Beni who was hyped as the main girl along with Momo, but it seemed most of the other girls had more screentime than her.

The big problem is that the structure of the story is a mess. During the first half of the series, it jumps around to different time periods, without explanation, and then in the latter half when the writers try to connect all those random scenes, they fail to make it coherent. Another problem is that it had too much filler, but now I think about this, I realize I enjoyed the filler way more than the main story.

This isn't the worst series I've seen, including within the Tenchi Franchise, and the result is just okay. But for an anniversary series, it's a joke.