Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki! OVA 3, episode 1 (2024)

How did you see the first TM!R series? If you were like me, you got to see
them all at once (meaning you had all of the episodes at your disposal to
watch when ready). But back when OAV 1 came out, there was a month between
episodes. For OAV 2, there were three months between episodes.

In episode 1, it ends on a similar cliffhanger note. The oni Ryoko had been
awakened and had spent a lot of time trying to kill Tenchi (from his point
of view). While she conceeded defeat, where does she end up at the end of
episode 1? In Tenchi's bed waiting for him. At that point, all we know
about Ryoko is that she was the demon of legend. She had incredible powers
and was very destructive. Now this oni shows up in his bedroom waiting for
him. What do you think the speculation was in the month before episode 2
came out? I doubt it was that she would try to protect him at one point
(when she's trapped in Ayeka's force field and Tenchi tries to pull her
out).

My point is that episode 1 and 2 are actually part 1 and 2 of a single story
that ends with the Masaki house being moved to the country and Ryu-oh and
Ryo-ohki crashed and no longer able to fly. Episode 3 takes place a week
after episode 2. Episode 2 starts immediately after episode 1. Episode 15
should be the same in relationship to 14.

in

Not to me it didn't. Let's look at Ryoko's progress.

Episode 1: She's the demon of legend who's come back to life thanks to
Tenchi. She knows Tenchi and attacks without thought or concern. While she
could have easily killed Tenchi, she was playing roughly with him. When it
got to dangerous (after Tenchi called her "bake" -- or monster/apparition),
Tenchi-ken came to life (in a still unexplained maner, though I have my
theory about that) to defend him and put an end to Ryoko's attacks.

Episode 2: Now she's the infamous space pirate who attacked Jurai some 700
years in the past causing the heir of the throne of Jurai (Yosho) to chase
her to Earth. With no regards to consequences, yet having some
consideration for Tenchi, Ryoko has his house "beamed up" as they make their
escape. When Ayeka captures Ryo-ohki and thus Ryoko, she does her first
true act of kindness -- she warns Tenchi to stay away from the force field
surrounding her. We learn she is consious about her age. Her attitude is
still the same from episode 1. She causes the destruction of the Seto (sp?)
Bridge and ends up causing the Masaki house to appear on the family shrine
grounds in the country. But at the end of the episode, she's calm and
eating without a care in the world. She no longer seems like an oni.

Episode 3: Ryoko learns how fun it is to tweak Ayeka and make sexual
innuendoes at Tenchi. She still acts without thinking (testing the power of
her fist on the stairs after being felt up by Katsuhito (Jii-chan/Yosho) and
causing the destruction of said stairs). Yet she finds herself interested
in Tenchi for more reasons than just the fact that she needs the other two
gems (Ayeka had the sword at that time). She makes the snide remark about
how friendly Tenchi and Ayeka had become and went off in what could be
described as a jealous huff after being told off by Ayeka.

Episode 4: Ryoko begins working on making Tenchi hers. She tries her brand
of seductive behavior and when Tenchi will have none of it, she gets very
offended. She even reminds Tenchi of what he said about her when he saw her
in Funaho-ki's memory (roughly how scary Ryoko looked). Tenchi still won't
bite and pays the price by having the suitcases dumped on him.

Ah, but later, all is forgotten as Ryoko gets back on track. She flaunts
around naked and when she see's Tenchi in the men's side, she simply
teleports down, grabs him, and teleports him to the women's side. After
that, the first battle for Tenchi errupts between herself and Ayeka. Again,
Ryoko shows her immaturity by summoning a water elemental creature that she
can't control. Now the creature was no real threat to her as she can easily
stay in front of it. She puts Tenchi in danger when she goads him to fight
the beast, thinking it funny. HOWEVER, when Mihoshi's ship creates the
subspace opening and Tenchi is sucked into it, Ryoko immediately gives no
thought to her own life but rushes to save Tenchi. A flying Mihoshi
prevents her from doing this, but the attempt was made. And for whatever
reason (maybe for laughs), Ryoko repairs Mihoshi's "watch". That the watch
works AND Ryoko gave it back to Mihoshi was another step.

Episode 5: Here we learn that Ryoko had in fact been consious and aware for
the entire 700+ years she was sealed in the cave. She witnessed Kiyone
(then the unnamed mother of Tenchi) bring Tenchi by the "forbidden area" of
the Masaki shrine. We see that as a kid, Tenchi spent a great deal of time
there. Ryoko experienced childhood through Tenchi. When Tenchi's mother
died, she tried to comfort the young lad as best as she could. And over the
years, she watched Tenchi grow into the 17-year old young man (which
explains why she knew him in episode 1). We learn all of this information
when she opens up to Ayeka. I think Ryoko was somewhat hurt (though she may
have been exaggerating that) when Ayeka poked fun at her. Ryoko was trying
to score points on Ayeka but in the process she did tap into genuine
feelings for Tenchi. And Ryoko confessed that she liked to tease Tenchi,
but she really didn't mean any harm by it.

Later in the episode after Kagato appears, Ryoko manages to save Tenchi from
an attack by Kagato, her former master. She defied Kagato and forced him to
take control over her. When Yosho freed Ryoko by cutting off her hand
(setting up a serious continuity flaw), she's concerned not for herself, but
for Tenchi. Later on "Souja", upon seeing Tenchi's "death", her grief
causes her to generate enough power to overcome the prison Kagato put her
in. This proved that she had real feelings for Tenchi, so much so that she
could no longer be controled by Kagato.

Episode 6: The "death" of Tenchi may be the first death Ryoko had witnessed
which caused her pain. Remember she slaughtered all of those people on
Jurai and destroyed ships and property. Now, she is very serious and teams
up with Ayeka to kill Kagato. During the battle, Ayeka is injured and
unable to get out of the wway of falling debris which would surely have
killed her. Despite having just taken a beating herself, Ryoko manages to
teleport down to Ayeka and rescue her. As Washu noted, it was the presence
of Ayeka that forced Ryoko to hold back. When Tenchi shows up on the scene
and catches her, she's very much moved by this. She even pleads with Kagato
later on to let Tenchi go and not to harm him. Signs I think of maturity as
well as love.

Episode 7: Ryoko and Ayeka are both back to trying to win Tenchi's heart in
"childish" ways. At one point, Ryoko was even willing to concede defeat and
allow Ayeka the honor of being first. Whether this speaks of maturity or
not, I don't know, but the offer was genuine. What I did think was a sign
of maturity was deciding to accept that she would not be with Tenchi that
night. Granted Ayeka wouldn't either but she did sit with Ayeka in defeat
rather than pointlessly try to tweak Ayeka again.

Episode 8: Ryoko tries her hand at mother-hood along with Ayeka and
Mihoshi. While at first Ryoko is only interested in Taro-chan to try to
score points with Tenchi, she eventually becomes fond of the lad and even
takes him flying. She makes a lot of mistakes, but then the other girls do
too. In the end, she's out washing diapers alongside Ayeka and Mihoshi.

Episode 9: Ryoko still has a long way to go, but her relationship with
Ayeka continues to evolve as sister-friends. When Tenchi is out for the
count, Ryoko goes to join Ayeka for drinks and to discuss Tsunami.

Episode 10: Ryoko continues to show that she's got a lot of growing to do
when upon trying on Kiyone's yukata, she accidently rips the sleave, then
rips off the other one for "balance". But when Tenchi says he hates her,
she is devistated. Later, she meets Tenchi at the gate with Kiyone's yukata
neatly folded up and very remorseful. When she's forgiven, she still wants
to help Tenchi to try to make up for her terrible mistake. In this she made
another first and grew as a character (IMO). Still later in the episode,
when she thinks Tenchi is in danger, she rushes to aid him, though again
doesn't think and gets knocked out briefly.

Episode 11: Ryoko is captured by Zero-Ryoko and Ryoko manages to get a
mental signal through to Tenchi who's deep in Washu's lab (though he doesn't
comprehend it was Ryoko who spoke his name). Zero-Ryoko is a perfect copy
of Ryoko, but where Ryoko attempted to hide her emotions behind her
extroverted nature, Zero-Ryoko was unable to hide these emotions and thus
went all nutty when Tenchi was around. Dr. Clay twice had to put Zero back
on the path.

Episode 12: Zero-Ryoko defies Dr. Clay and doesn't kill Tenchi due to
Ryoko's intense love for Tenchi combined with Zero's new found love for
Tenchi. In the end, Ryoko makes the mature choice and allows Washu to merge
Zero-Ryoko with her. The result was that Ryoko was unable to control her
emotions for a time.

Episode 13: Ryoko is mostly back in control of her emotions and actually
seems to take a step back in areas of maturity. She does apologize to
Misaki when prompted (something she wouldn't have done before).

Episode 14: Ryoko seems the same until the bambi-eyes from the girls get
her to do what she doesn't want to do -- get up and go look for Ryo-ohki.
But once Ryo-ohki starts hugging her as a child would her mother, she begins
blushing and is touched. Why? I think it is because she merged with
Zero-Ryoko. Ryoko had been trying to keep her emotions in check, but thanks
to the merger, they overcame her and her mother instinct finally kicked in.
So once Ryoko was overcome by these emotions, she found that giving Ryo-ohki
a bath wasn't a bad thing. She found that feeding Ryo-ohki was fun. She
found she wanted to spend QT with Ryo-ohki and play with her. And certainly
Ryo-ohki was VERY appreciative of this attention from her "partner". And on
top of all of that, Ryoko didn't tweak Ayeka or tease Tenchi. She will
again I'm sure but not as often as before.

So my point after this LONG blathering is that she was making small progress
prior to episode 12. After episode 12, Ryoko's given a plot device to make
her mature faster.

Tenchi

I didn't get that Kiyone was dying of a disease. My own speculation is that
Kiyone was killed by "Z". While you won't know this from the anime, Kiyone
is the daughter of Yosho and Airi, whom we saw in "GXP". Airi is in the
funeral scene. She's in the middle with the short, light green hair.
Kiyone came to live with her father at some point, where she met and married
Nobuyuki. I'm guessing that while this information hasn't yet made it to
the OAV, it will in episode 15.

As to Kiyone training Reiya, I noticed this as well. It made me wonder if
she knew she was going to her death and wanted to make sure Tenchi had a
mother-figure (and a trained wife for Nobuyuki). While FoT has the opening
radio traffic translated as "protect her", someone else with knowledge of
Japanese said that this actually might be "protect the child". It depends
on who's right over certain words. If it is "protect the child", people
have speculated that Kiyone was sending a message back to Earth and to
Nobuyuki. But we'll know more soon.

She

No, this wasn't in TU. Thank Pioneer for very POOR translations in TM!R.
Originally, they translated the scene as Tenchi crying over the loss of his
grandma. The newer DVD's have fixed this error and several other ones,
though Pioneer still plays pretty loose with a lot of the translations.
BASTARDS!!

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