Tenchi Muyou 3?

randomErr write: "AIC, the people who did the good Tenchi episodes, has announced here that they are doing another series. They haven't said if it would be a based on the OVA series or a continuation of Tenchi in Tokyo. BTW, if you can't read Japanese, Click Here for a bad translation by Anime News Network." You guys know about Tenchi, right? It's about the high school kid that meets up with a demon, and the creepy 700-year-old mummy morphs into a girl space pirate? I love anime.

Comments

Tenchi for the Unitiated

[peterb]

Tenchi is a fabulous series of series. In many ways, each series is a retelling of the same story: Tenchi, a young boy with a past he doesn't no about, collects around him 6 or 7 women from other planets, all of whom are madly in love with him. The humor and tension in the series comes from the conflicts between Tenchi and the girls, and between the women themselves. (And, of course, there's the occasional standard animé "evil alien comes to destroy us and we must work together to defeat him!" plotlines as well.

There are also 3 Tenchi movies. In English, they are called Tenchi Muyo in Love, Tenchi Muyo 2: The Daughters of Darkness, and Tenchi Forever. They are all good, but my personal favorite was Tenchi Forever, since it was in my opinion the one that dealt with issues of love and sexuality in the most mature fashion.

The women of Tenchi are each worth a book in themselves, and it would take too long to list them here, but I'll put in a plug for my favorite, Ryoko the silver-haired asskicking space pirate.

Both the dubbed and subtitled versions of the Tenchi material is good (although I don't like the English actor who does Tenchi's voice.) The American actor who dubs Ryoko is fabulous. On this topic, by the way, I have written an article discussing why I prefer dubs to subtitled animé movies when the dubs are good quality. If you take a look, please let me know what you think!

A Lesson in Romaji

[Valdrax]

You have a trailing 'u' in the title.

Don't try to correct spellings, when you don't know a thing about Romanization. Japanese pronunciation includes what is known as long vowels. When a mora (Japanese syllable) is followed by a repitition of the vowel component (i.e. o-ka-a-sa-n), the vowel sound is held for twice as long. By default, all Japanese mora are pronounced just as fast as each other.

This means that there is a difference between obasan (aunt) and obaasan (grandmother). The Japanese vowels are a, i, u, e, o (Ah, Ee, Oo, Ay, Oh). Combinations like 'ai,' 'ue,' and 'au' make sounds like 'Aye,' 'Oo-Eh,' and 'Ah-oo' (or Ow as in Chow). However, 'ei' and 'ou' are a long 'e' and a long 'o'. In fact, a long 'o' is more commonly spelled 'ou' than 'oo,' and a long 'e' is more commonly spelled 'ei'.

Now for Romanization. Muyou, or "a lack of need for," would be spelled differently under different romanization methods. Most romanization methods would have you spell it either "muyou" or "muyo" with a bar over the "o." Since it's hard for people to type the "o" with a bar over it, which is the most common way of spelling a long "o," people drop it.

However, this is incorrect. This spelling would confuse "muko" (bridgegroom) with "mukou" (beyond) and "oki" (open sea) with "ookii" (large). Few people would drop double consonants (which I haven't covered here), but many drop double vowels. The correct way to handle it is indeed the way that they did for the site. "Muyou" captures the actual pronunciation and kana spelling of "mu" (nothingness) and "you" (use).

Side note, tenchimuyou is also how you say "this side up," or "do not turn over."