This is all Owl's fault.
She posts a picture of City Hunter, which makes me go all 90's nostalgia and I remembered Tenchi Muyo which is a tragedy in 48 acts of which only three have anything to do with the actual story.
Allow me to tell you a story.
Back in 1993 a series of anime OVAs were made by the name of Tenchi Muyo. A word play on the protagonist's name who was called, Tenchi. This series was fantastic and had it all. Zany comedy, tender romance, kickass action, heartfelt drama, a creepy villain, mysterious conspiracies, unexpected plot reveals, space ship battles and even awesome laser sword fighting. And it did all of this in less than three hours. No one should be surprised that the series was a hit. Fans demanded more and what's more, it was one of those series that spearheaded the anime american invasion of the early 90s, along with Ranma and Fist of the North Star. And it was a hit over there as well, it brought something new and fresh to the table that had never been seen before. In fact, this series is one of the precursors of the harem genre. But don't hold it against Tenchi Muyo. This series harem was actually likeable and had its reasons to be there.
So the series was a huge success that developed a large cult following, they made an extra epilogue episode that opened up new plots and set up a sequel hook, and thus the fandom lost its collective shit thinking that we would all have further adventures of Tenchi and the rest of the cast. Of course the company responsible for the anime realized that they had a great brand new franchise loved by millions in their hands and decided to act accordingly.
By driving it into the ground.
In 1995 we got another six episodes of Tenchi. But the series took an abrupt nosedive in quality, both in script and artwise. Some people claim that it was still good, But I remember feeling supremely disappointed when I saw those episodes that only opened up more pointless plots while resolving absolutely nothing.
You see I've been reading and apparently the original 6 episodes were a collaboration between two guys called Hiroki Hayashi and Masaki Kajishima. However after the first series ended, the former left to do other stuff while the latter stayed. Now I don't claim to know what parts of the lore each one was responsible for or whom deserves credit for what. But I'd bet good money that Hiroki was the guy to smack Masaki over the head whenever he came up with too much idiotic bullshit.
So I'm guessing that being left alone, Kajishima pulled a Bender. That is he went all "I'll build my own series, with more stupid harem situations, and retarded plots. In fact, forget the continuity!" And that's exactly what he did. They came up with a TV series set up in its own continuity that reused the same characters, but slightly changed them and gave them different backgrounds and motivations and all that. It wasn't utter crap but it was a far cry from the original OVAs that we'd loved. Meanwhile the original story sat there unresolved. So they decided to make... Yet another spin-off set in another entirely different continuity. And this is where everything went down the shitter. This new series wasn't just bad, it was downright disgusting, it was like taking a spoonful of what you expected to be delicious chocolate ice cream, only to discover you''d just ingested frozen diarrhea. It was THAT bad. This cycle kept more or less repeating itself until 2004 in which they announced a third and final OVA series of another six episodes that would conclude the original series.
And what they made was utter and total shite, a convoluted mess of idiocy, unresolved plot points, pointless and useless new characters that contradicted previously stablished lore and even a goddamn Mary Sue that no one wanted or cared about. Nothing is explained, the pacing is geological, the humour is gone. The questions brought up in former series are finally addressed in the fifth episode and the explanation basically amounts to "just because". That's not even the worst. The animation is awful, the art quality went down the drain and it looked as if it was done by forced slave labor in China and North Korea (which I think it actually was).
So it's basically the anime version of Star Wars, something awesome that you dearly loved, but that years later the creator took a massive stinking dump on. You could even see the corn. So you decide to cherish the original ones, while trying as hard as you can to forget anything else was ever made.
Wow that was long. I guess that shows how much I loved the original series and how disappointed I was at how much they raped it into a broken down pathetic caricature of itself. Or it could also mean that I'm an insane obsessive compulsive rabbit.
Anyways, that's what I had to say and I've said it.
Post edited November 06, 2015 by j0ekerr