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Ai Tenchi Muyo is another Tenchi Alternate Universe (AU) that is a product of veteran Tenchi AU director Hiroshi Negishi. Mr. Negishi directed 1995's Tenchi Universe and it's two movie sequels, Tenchi Muyo in Love and Tenchi Forever. AiTM may be part of the TU-verse, some things like the design of Tenchi-ken (the sword) and other such details point that way but it may be intended as stand-alone.

We're basically thrown into a situation where this Tenchi becomes a student teacher, not that a minute of this anime is spent in the classroom, and encounters a group of new girls and we slog through ... that story and have some time jumps to see what's up and what's happening.

The art is just okay, but I'm not enthralled by the character redesigns although it's not as bad as Sasami: Magical Girls Club from 2007. Especially not for Ayeka or Sasami. And the new characters look generic. The is some really bad animation in this but overall the quality is acceptable for 3-1/2 minute episodes, surprisingly good sometimes. Likewise, the music didn't distract me one way or another.

But the story left a lot to be desired. It's hard to get attached to new characters in a series that feel they'll be disposed of by the end. I ended up really liking Momo and Hachiko. Oddly, despite art showing her as a new main character along with Momo, Beni actually feels hardly there, even when on screen compared to the other new girls. She's really flat and the anime hints at more in her personality but never really delivers.

That happens a lot. Things I took as hints for further development never got developed. Plot devices left dangling. And the characters: Hachiko developed certain feelings in week 2 and 3, which took time to show, and then got dropped as a human character to be dealt with and afterwards only stayed around as a body that had convenient abilities to be exploited or as a gag. Some new girls only get little more than a single episode to be explored. Some more.

The show wasted a lot of time in many places on what felt like nonsense, the last example being a over a week of episodes on a student election that simply didn't matter in the end. There is a lot of fanservice and Tenchi getting abused for laughs and Sasami having an, eh, female admirer, all used well past the point when it's not really funny anymore.

The last 2 weeks of the show started with promising action, and felt like it's finally where it should have been much earlier and then it dropped the ball again.

Throughout, things happen but we don't know why. The entire overarching premise is never explained. And Negishi falls back on his time and space rifts, an overused device he used in the TU series and both movies to fix it up all but without a convincing explanation.

At 180 minutes, because of the filler, it could probably be cut down in half, to a okay movie hurt dragged down by a untidy conclusion by a talented editor. As it is...

I have a feeling that it will do better in the west than in Japan, just because the Tenchi Muyo nostalgia runs deeper. Tenchi completionists will want to watch. That's why I watched.

But new fans? Idk. Maybe they will like the show for itself outside of considerations about the Tenchi Muyo series, but there are many way better ones out there. The puzzling story here just doesn't justify a viewing.

Towards the end, Momo felt a lot like Sakuya/Yugi from Tenchi in Tokyo in the role she was to play. And the whole thing felt like a reenactment of the 30 minute Mihoshi Special done poorly considering Washu and the GXP.

Incomplete. That would be my one word review. Too many missing pieces. It's not like a mystery, where the viewer is challenged to puzzle everything together. Just not that type of story. The pieces were just never made to begin with in a rush to shove this out the door.

Too bad. Could have been much better.