Six exotic alien women. One confused guy. Here we go again.
Seemingly ordinary high school student Tenchi Masaki encounters alien babe after alien babe in Tenchi Universe, which is the North American name for the series referred to in Japan as Tenchi-Muyo! TV. It is a 26-episode television series inspired by, but not identical to, the 13-episode OVA series that is legendary among anime fans. KIT is also the subject of a new sourcebook from Guardians of Order. It isn?t a complete game ? you still need the tenchi RPG rules to play. But it is quite interesting.
As is typical in books like this, the book is organized with an introduction to the series, followed by episode summaries and character profiles, along with whatever new rules are needed (There aren?t many, as the Tenchi RPG was quite thorough) and adventure hooks. The episode summaries are quite detailed ? hey even include the lyrics of all the karaoke songs the characters sing (and many of the girls enjoy karaoke). These provide major-league spoilers for anyone who hasn;t seen the series and some surprises fr whose who have only seen it on Cartoon Network (my favorite: the ending of Episode 11, where thanks to the intervention of a magic girl Ryoko and Ayeka get much, MUCH closer....)
This is followed by stats for all the characters, including the changes from the OVA series to the TV series. And there are a lot of those. Forget about things like Mass Power, for example. Or any sort of familial relationship between Ryoko and Washu. The character descriptions go into less depth and detail than their equivalents in the Tenchi RPG. There are two possible reasons for this. One might be that the character are not portrayed quite as deeply and richly in the TV series as in the OVAs, making it a fault of the source material. Another possibility is space ? there simply isn?t room in this book for four-page descriptions of the major characters. In either case, the detail is missed ? the characters are presented more as types than as living, breathing individuals and it hurts the game.
The character descriptions are followed by the changes in the rules, a few new sub-attributes, and some stuff that can be incorporated into the main Tenchi RPG. Tenchi has spawned an entire multiverse ? the OAV?s, three TV series, two manga, audio dramas, and novels all tell various versions of Tenchi?s story. No RPG is going to be able to cover all of them. The effort put into the Tenchi Universe sourcebook is quite good. . The artwork consists entirely of previously published publicity art and DVD screen captures, only this time almost all of it is in black & white. This results in a dark, murky and nearly grim presentation in which it?s sometimes hard to really get a feel for the atmosphere or see what things or people really look like. Still, this does look a lot better than it could have looked had they gotten their captures from lesser-quality sources. Still, getting some original line-art for books like this might not be a bad idea.
The scenarios in the back of the book are up to GOO?s usual high standards for adventures. Tenchi is hard to write adventures for because the most interesting thing in the series is how the characters interact with each other. In both the adventures presented here, outside forces act on the characters, and one of them takes place in a completely paralell world that basically involves the characters acting out the story of Star Wars with the Tenchi cast.
All in all, this book is pretty good but could have been better. And most of the problems are not GOO?s fault, but rather that of the source material which can?t hold a candle to the quality of the original Tenchi OVA series. If you liked the TV series, though, you?ll love this book.
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