Tenchi Muyô! Manatsu no Eve

Tenchi Muyo! Manatsu No Eve had the opportunity to surpass Tenchi Muyo! in Love, but it failed miserably. The over-all plot was completely overlooked and there's a lot of things that remain un-answered. It was undeveloped and way too short. It needed more detail. I love the Tenchi Muyo! series and I like all the movies, including this one, but it could have been so much more.

Mixture of dark and light is the theme; pain mixes with pleasure, hope with fear, love with hate, innocence with evil. The usually upbeat Tenchi series takes a turn into dark, forbidden areas with this movie. Supporting it is a perfectly matching soundtrack.

Manatsu no Eve only fails in its shortness. At an hour's length, it moves too fast and misses opportunities for deeper development. Much like the Tenchi Muyo series as a whole, it falls just short of its tremendous potential.

Another Tenchi movie, it is wonderful. The animation is good and so are the voices. Well, at the same time, it is another one not based on the OVA version,(I wonder why they haven't thought of making one based on the OVA series? Why?)and the other movies act like this never happened! But yet it still continues to bring the feel of the TV series, and the comedy as well, and this also gives some background to Yosho's childhood, and it would make think, he seems to be like Tenchi, before he was born and when he was young that is! Anyway, this is a wonderful work, gotta love that Mayuka, and the way she refers to her daddy. Recommended to fans of the series.

Tenchi 2, better known as Daughter Of Darkness, skips back and forth from present day Earth to the homeworld of Jurai in the distant past to a young Prince Yosho (Tenchi's Grandfather) during a festival of the planet's living, sentient trees and a young girl Yuszhuka, who was a playmate with the boy prince, and a terrible incident that seperated the two friends.

We switch forward to a typical day in the Masaki household. Sasami cooking, Washu blowing things up, Ayeka sneaking around looking for Ryoko while the space pirate looks to get into Tenchi's bed when a mysterious stranger arrives. A young girl claiming to be Tenchi's daughter!

Her presence sends the more jealous women into a spin cycle of recriminations and energy bolt battles, Sasami taking the child under her wing, super genius Washuu looking to perform tests on the girl's veracity and Tenchi wandering dazed, confused and downright mystified at the miraculous birth considering he is a virgin.

The story's flashbacks begin to tie in the past with the present as the true nature of the girl becomes clear and her connection to Yosho's young ladyfriend from eons past come to light.

It takes a different tack than most Tenchi adventures, and is rather short in comparision, but it offers up another look at one of the most dysfunctional extended "families" in Anime history, with clever and amusing results.

this is my second favorite of the three. at first, it was kind of hard to understand what was going on, i mean, with the little demon. i knew about mayuka and all, but that little goblin girl kinda threw me off. anyway, the animation is good as always, the character development is as good as the first movie, and the story is interesting, throwing some more aspects of yosho's past. overall, manatsu no eve is a good tenchi movie to see (hell, its better than the third one!).