The original Laserdisc releases for Tenchi Muyo had pull-out inserts that were also worth reading! The first 6 episodes even had covers that featured bilingual back covers that were basically the English cover glued over the Japanese one!
I have a few of the Laserdiscs (4 episodes of the first OVA series, the Mihoshi Special, the first double-episode disk of the 2nd OVA series, the final volume of
Tenchi Universe,
Tenchi Muyo in Love,
Tenchi Muyo the Movie 2: Daughter of Darkness,
Pretty Sammy OVA 1, and that one Japanese Laserdisc with the music videos). My problem with getting a complete collection was that, by the time I finally had enough money to get a Laserdisc player, it was 1997 and stores were already beginning to dump their Laserdiscs because of DVD even though there wasn't yet much in the way of anime on DVD beyond the
Street Fighter II movie and I think also maybe
Ghost in the Shell and that one
Battle Arena Toshinden OVA.
I like some of the random factoids they included in the Laserdisc liner notes (which were also packed in with the VHS tapes, at least the subbed versions) where you're not sure if they're joking or whether it's meant to be taken as canon, like the exact ethnicity of Mihoshi (or at least the
Pretty Sammy OVA version of her): she has a Japanese father and a half-Thai, half-American mother. I'm not sure if that also applies to the Galaxy Police version of Mihoshi; if you take Jurai to be "Space Japan", which it quite blatantly is, there's probably also "Space Thailand" and "Space United States of America" somewhere in the Galaxy.
Give me the rundown on Tenchi Muyo. I have a copy of Tenchi Universe but ironically I haven't watched it yet. (Long story. I borrowed it in college and never returned it) Is it good? It seems like there is too many series of it
Tenchi Universe is the second timeline where most of the major plot points from the original
Tenchi Muyo! OVA (direct-to-video animation) are the same but a lot of the small details have been changed. It's kind of a mixed bag in that the animation quality for the TV series is a step down from the lavishly-animated OVAs and there's much more in the way of "filler" due to having to fill 26 episodes (but I enjoy filler anyway) compared to just 6 episodes (and 1 in-canon special) of the first OVA series but, on the other hand, the TV series has Galaxy Police Detective First Class Kiyone Makibi who is my favouite character while the OVA just has her partner Mihoshi Kuramitsu.
The
Tenchi Universe timeline only spans one 26 episode TV series and two movies (1:
Tenchi in Love and 3:
Tenchi Forever, with the 2nd movie,
Daughter of Darkness confusingly existing in seemingly its own blended continuity timeline) while the original
Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Oh-Ki OVA series had two sequel OVA series with a fourth one in production now, almost three decades after the first episode was produced, and several TV spin-offs set in the original continuity (
Tenchi Muyo GXP,
War for Geminar, and
Ai Tenchi Muyo if I remember correctly), and there was a third
Tenchi Muyo TV continuity,
Shin Tenchi Muyo a.k.a.
Tenchi in Tokyo, which weirdly has a
Sailor Moon-like archvillainess and her henchmen, but that series is not to be confused with the alternate universe magical girl spin-off
Pretty Sammy OVA series, which got its own alternate alternate universe TV series
Pretty Sammy TV a.k.a.
Magical Project S which then got an alternate alternate alternate re-imagining as
Sasami Magical Girls Club a decade later. And that's all I remember off the top of my head, I may be forgetting a spin-off or two.
The rundown of both universes is that it's about a temple boy in western Okayama prefecture who somehow find himself the center of attention of alien pirate girls, alien princesses, alien policewomen, and alien mad scientist women (but all the aliens are essentially just space humans, with very slight hints that Earth is just one of many planets that were colonized by alien humans in ancient times although that's just conjecture), and then he finds out that his grandfather is actually the Crown Prince of the planet the alien princesses come from and Tenchi himself starts to manifest Jedi-esque powers.
Tenchi Universe has a pair of guardian characters that show up in humanoid form late in the series who are even more blatantly Jedi, though the Jedi themselves are inspired by Japanese ninja mythology to begin with. Well, the
Tenchi multiverse is a franchise that doesn't exactly hide its
Star Wars influences even if it has a lot more in the way of comedy and slice-of-life elements.