I watched Tenchi Forever only a few week ago for the first time. Considering how awful Tenchi Muyo in Love 1 was, I wasn't expecting much. However, I ended up being blown away by this second film set in the Universe canon. It is so far away from the usual tone of the series, but that is what makes it so interesting. It is a sad story, but I wouldn't call it depressing; more melancholic than anything else. While the Universe series already had a great ending, this expansion of the series is more than worthy and ends quite well in its own right.

A movie that has so little to do with it's subject matter shouldn't be this good, but it is.

Well, I was looking for a topic about it specifically, but not being able to find one, I suppose I can place my thoughts on Tenchi Movie 1 here.

To begin with, the whole thing is the most blatant rip off of Back to the Future that I've seen since Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. They even went so far as to have people disappearing from photographs, and Tenchi himself looking at his arm as it slowly dissipates in front of his eyes. Any dramatic tension is replaced by a feeling of "oh, I've seen THIS before."

After the confusing first thirty minutes or so of the movie are done with, we are transported into the past to get a look at Tenchi's mother. Possibly the ONLY interesting thing of importance in the film is watching Tenchi's father's interacting with Tenchi's mother. However, the writers must have felt that a touching story was not enough to make an interesting film, so they threw in Giant Generic Enemy, and Generic Badass Furry into the mix.

Now action has never been the Tenchi series' forte; even when done well, a fight scene isn't more interesting than the usual going-on of the show. In Universe, we had a huge build up to the eventual confrontations with Kagato, which made it fundamentally work. Even the first OVA series pulled off their Villain Introduction well enough. So why did the writers of this movie decide to make up a completely uninteresting villain just for the sake of "Young boys won't watch it unless there's is unnecessary violence"? Oh, and don't get me started on Generic Badass Furry, who does almost nothing in the entire film except get ripped apart for cheesy dramatic effect after saying all of ten or so lines.

Also, in a bit of nitpicking, why is Grandfather Yosho's voice different in this movie than every other dub? Considering it went back to normal in Tenchi Movie 3 (Tenchi Forever), I don't quite understand why he would have turned down the job for this movie unless he realized that it wouldn't do the series justice.

In conclusion, the movie completely dissapointed me in almost every way. Luckily, Tenchi Forever rectified the harm done to the Universe canon, which is why I feel that film is so necessary to the series.

I haven't watched Daughter of Darkness yet, though; better give that one a watch today.

Random furries name is Sabato

Where did you find this? Because everywhere says he has no name or his name is "Operative A", or in fanfics and on the Tenchiboard as Trakal

Well I could be wrong, I got it off of Wikipedia. I haven't watch TMiL for about a month so I don't have the names fresh in my mind, but it sounds accurate to me. I couldn't say for sure unless I watched it again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabato_%28Tenchi_Muyo!%29