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NEWS: Funimation Reveals Ai Tenchi Muyo! Anime's English Dub Cast

While "Urusei Yatsura" and "Ranma 1/2" were among the earliest harem/proto-harem arnime, "Tenchi Muyo" is what I think really standardized many of the harem tropes. TM fans must be happy they got a lot of the original dub cast back.

Shame they can't get Jennifer Darling back as Ayeka, but still -- Union rules, I suppose.

For all the complaints about later Tenchi Muyo installments, have people actually gone back and WATCHED the original OVAs recently?

I don't think the classic series has aged particularly well.

It's not as funny as it once was and I was never that in love with the dub cast, either. I was one of those fans that got it on laserdisc in the days when closed captioning wasn't a common feature on TV sets back then so I HAD to listen to the dubs.

Now that I've heard the Japanese cast and have the subs to follow, well, it's -- Pioneer made some questionable casting choices for the English dub voices, IMHO. Let me say this without pointing directly -- they tend to cast the girls a bit too old-sounding sometimes and it has NOTHING to do with the real age of the actress because even the late 80-something (at the time) Janet Waldo STILL sounded like a teenager when she was voice acting. I felt a number of the girls who were "allegedly" teens sounded middle-aged. On the other hand, I always felt Rebecca Forstadt (who's gotten a LOT of shit from anime fans over the years) was perfectly cast as Mihoshi.

I also found it out odd that not everything was re-released on Blu ray in the States, either. I know that technically the Mihoshi Galaxy Police OVA that introduced her partner, Kiyone, wasn't a direct part of the original series but it wasn't included with the series 1 and 2 on the Funimation Blu ray release. It's a little side story that gives a bit more background to Mihoshi and GP.

For all the complaints about later Tenchi Muyo installments, have people actually gone back and WATCHED the original OVAs recently?

I don't think the classic series has aged particularly well.

It's not as funny as it once was and I was never that in love with the dub cast, either. I was one of those fans that got it on laserdisc in the days when closed captioning wasn't a common feature on TV sets back then so I HAD to listen to the dubs.

For all the complaints about later Tenchi Muyo installments, have people actually gone back and WATCHED the original OVAs recently?

I don't think the classic series has aged particularly well.

It's not as funny as it once was and I was never that in love with the dub cast, either. I was one of those fans that got it on laserdisc in the days when closed captioning wasn't a common feature on TV sets back then so I HAD to listen to the dubs.

Now that I've heard the Japanese cast and have the subs to follow, well, it's -- Pioneer made some questionable casting choices for the English dub voices, IMHO. Let me say this without pointing directly -- they tend to cast the girls a bit too old-sounding sometimes and it has NOTHING to do with the real age of the actress because even the late 80-something (at the time) Janet Waldo STILL sounded like a teenager when she was voice acting. I felt a number of the girls who were "allegedly" teens sounded middle-aged. On the other hand, I always felt Rebecca Forstadt (who's gotten a LOT of shit from anime fans over the years) was perfectly cast as Mihoshi.

I also found it out odd that not everything was re-released on Blu ray in the States, either. I know that technically the Mihoshi Galaxy Police OVA that introduced her partner, Kiyone, wasn't a direct part of the original series but it wasn't included with the series 1 and 2 on the Funimation Blu ray release. It's a little side story that gives a bit more background to Mihoshi and GP.

if I recall right wasn't the whole point of this to be nothing more than an advertisement campaign to pull in tourists?

A-Log wrote:

Shame they can't get Jennifer Darling back as Ayeka, but still -- Union rules, I suppose.

This show is listed in the SAG/AFTRA Database so it's not exactly union-related.

MagusGuardian wrote:

if I recall right wasn't the whole point of this to be nothing more than an advertisement campaign to pull in tourists?

Yeah, there's some kind of plot, but the whole thing is told out of order and made absolutely no sense to me.

GeorgeC wrote:

For all the complaints about later Tenchi Muyo installments, have people actually gone back and WATCHED the original OVAs recently? I don't think the classic series has aged particularly well. It's not as funny as it once was and I was never that in love with the dub cast, either. I was one of those fans that got it on laserdisc in the days when closed captioning wasn't a common feature on TV sets back then so I HAD to listen to the dubs. Now that I've heard the Japanese cast and have the subs to follow, well, it's -- Pioneer made some questionable casting choices for the English dub voices, IMHO. Let me say this without pointing directly -- they tend to cast the girls a bit too old-sounding sometimes and it has NOTHING to do with the real age of the actress because even the late 80-something (at the time) Janet Waldo STILL sounded like a teenager when she was voice acting. I felt a number of the girls who were "allegedly" teens sounded middle-aged. On the other hand, I always felt Rebecca Forstadt (who's gotten a LOT of shit from anime fans over the years) was perfectly cast as Mihoshi. I also found it out odd that not everything was re-released on Blu ray in the States, either. I know that technically the Mihoshi Galaxy Police OVA that introduced her partner, Kiyone, wasn't a direct part of the original series but it wasn't included with the series 1 and 2 on the Funimation Blu ray release. It's a little side story that gives a bit more background to Mihoshi and GP.

I'm glad someone finally said it. If you ask me, while a lot of plot and narrative decisions are RANCID with Early Installment Weirdness and plot points that never pay off (Ryoko attacking Tenchi when they first met only to later reveal that she's always had a thing for him, Sasami's odd mischievous streak in her introduction, Tenchi's grandpa being revealed to be a powerful warrior from Jurai only for that plot point to go nowhere, etc.), the first season of Ryo-Ohki is probably the most entertaining part of the franchise. It's a real shame that they decided to stick with this version of the story when it comes to continuations considering how flawed it's always been, and how as it goes on, the flaws only become worse and worse. Sigh... the Tenchi-verse should have remained vague and mysterious, because the more they actually explain the intricacies of it, the more awful the series becomes.

Ryo-Ohki season one was great but flawed. It's like if you only had the good parts of Iron Man 2 or something. Season 2 was... mixed, but still overall entertaining. Season 3 was where they introduced a bunch of new girls and sidelined the harem that we actually cared about, and season 4 amplified that problem to the nth degree.

If you ask me, the series of Tenchi that has aged the best is actually probably Tenchi Universe. It was far simpler, but also had a lot more confidence in what it was doing. Easily, in terms of series, OVAs or Television, I had the most fun watching Universe overall (though season one of Ryo-Ohki taken on its own had a tiny bit more enjoyment). I actually introduced a friend to Tenchi through the movies and Universe, and when he finally watched Ryo-Ohki, he was weirded out and disappointed. Makes me wonder how anyone here would feel watching it for the first time without nostalgia goggles.

Here's the big difference between Ryo-Ohki and Universe. Ryo-Ohki started promising, but got worse as it went along. Universe started... standard, and got more entertaining as it went along. I highly recommend people go back and watch Ryoko's "Death" scene from Universe one more time. It has a surprising amount of heart behind it. There's also a certain charm to the harem escaping through the stars as fugitives together. It builds a sort of bond that I don't think the OVAs truly earned.