Headscratchers / Tenchi Muyo: War on Geminar

aka: Isekai No Seikishi Monogatari

• What's the point of imposing a limit on the Seikijin? They seem terribly fragile and difficult to repair. On top of that, if the other nations had more Seikijin they might have been able to stop Babulun from destroying several capitols.
  • Seikijin can defeat armies of conventional troops at virtually no cost (the only limit is their pilot's endurance), so they're the "nuclear deterrents" of Geminar. The whole point of the church was that it had control over the production and distribution of Seikijin: since the Neglectful Precursors destroyed the world with them, they had reason to try to prevent proliferation or a large-scale war — which backfires.
• Is it just me or do the bad guys have a way easier time repairing their Seikijin then Kenshi and the crew? Mest's mech gets fucked up constantly but sometimes within a single episode it'll be back to good as new.
  • Apparently there's a ritual pilots can go through to gain the ability to repair Seikijin themselves; IIRC, few to none of Kenshi's harem has that ability. Also, since the appearance of Seikijin depends on the pilot, Mest may have been switching to fresh units after trashing one earlier.
• Is Lashara still a monarch after Kenshi becomes the king of his own country?
  • She's probably still the rightful successor of the Streyu empire, but Babalun's thoroughly taken it over at that point, so the Swan is the closest thing to a kingdom she had control of when Kenshi asks her for it. Call her a "princess-in-exile".
• How did the Choushin not get caught sending Kenshi off to God knows where?
  • "ANSWER UNCLEAR; ASK AGAIN LATER". The only things we know are the text-only dialogue of the Omniscient Council of Vagueness at the beginning and the end of the series. The leading theory is that Tokimi and Kenshi's mother Rea arranged to send Kenshi to Geminar, possibly with the approval of Tenchi, Washuu, Tsunami, and/or Kenshi himself. If Kenshi's trip was planned, presumably his brother and "sisters" were ready to help if something happened that he couldn't handle.
    • Also, the series subtly tells you that Rea was from Geminar. So perhaps the genetic link helped.
    • If you read the doujins and extra work put out by Kajishima-sensei, it seems that Kenshi was getting a bit too familiar with one of Tenchi's girls, namely Sasami, and so the Chousin got together and sent him to another universe to prevent this. also, the Chousin and Tenchi do provide help for Kenshi in the form of the Tenchi mountain and Tenchi lending him a light-hawk wing.
    • Which doujin was this in?
    • That seems like a over reaction. I mean sending him to another planet?
    • Given this was pretty much the same solution Seto Kamiki Jurai had when something like that started happening between Yosho and Misaki Masaki Jurai and was hinted that that was aranged under orders of Tsunami it's pretty par for the course. Note this is the same time that ended with Yosho and Airi hooking up.
    • Rea had always planned on sending an offspring of hers to Geminar to make sure that Gaia was completely defeated, made worse when (after Kenshi was born) Tokimi confirmed that it still existed. That and Rea's bio-programming was starting to give her excruciating pain because the child was not sent back as planned. She tried to keep the episodes of pain a secret but Washuu easily found out and had her tell everyone. Part of the reason that Kenshi was so well trained was because everyone pitched in to train him - including those in the ridiculously extended family. The fact that he was getting a bit too... chummy with Ryo-Ohki (in her adult human form, not Sasami) was more of the last bit of the puzzle in making him ready to go.
      • Considering Kenshi's effect on the local Koro population it's more likely that Ryo-Ohki was the instigator in those incidents (Ryo-Ohki playing "Ryoko" to Kenshi's "Tenchi"). It was a good thing he had this "Fate of the World" business to take care of on another planet, otherwise he may have become a victim of forced-mating.
• I get that he’s a really nice guy and all but WTF? isn’t he just too easy on them? You’d think he’d call them out on their treatment on him as being unfair and treating him basically like a dog to be owned, not to mention the sexual assaults, ok so yeah a male Seikijin is very rare and the fact they are used as bargaining chips for political reasons (which if you think about it, it pretty much show’s up in every Masaki Kajishima works, kinda gives you the impression he’s trying to tell the viewers something like “people aren’t free just tools for the rich and powerful”) but he was SENT to their world not summand, so therefore they have no legal standing to even THINK of owning him, so WTH doesn’t he get mad and voice his own opinion?
  • It is a recent trend for male characters in harem settings to be butt-monkey nice guys(Love Hina, Seta no Hayanome, Zero no Tsukaima)- I hate it, but I've come to move past it if the series is worth it; even Tenchi got mad and put his foot down during the good ole days (as did his peer Ranma). They are trying new things with this series to stay 'fresh' and to not regurgitate OAV/GXP plots as much as can be helped. The sexual assault and gender reversal are themselves tropes/trends exploited as much as fanservice by the creators, because some dudes get off on that, and its those dudes that buy them figurines, posters, and merch. The rest are plot devices (to drive Lashara's character point of being a personality that's trying too hard in order to compensate for experience and circumstances) and suspension of disbelief: case in point, Kenshi would logically have been executed or sent into deep incarceration in the opening episode. Hell of a series if they went down the common sense path.
  • Count how many unimaginably powerful and carefree females are there in the Masaki household. This is like *every day* for Tenchi Masaki (and Kenshi can see that), but with the stress levels dialed way down. Considering his relatives (and how he looks up to his 'sisters'), Kenshi's benchmark for 'being useful' and 'intolerable hijinks' is set way the hell high.
• How is it confirmed that Lan was killed by Emera? Granted, the story was that Lan's group was left to fend for themselves, and you see Emera with a knife, supposedly to make sure that nobody interferes in the match between Kenshi and Dagymer. I'm well aware that Lan would probably want to kill Dagymer for leaving her high and dry, and Emera would easily make quick work of somebody that sucks at fighting, but after you see a frustrated Lan pounding on her podium in the cockpit, you don't see her again, or any sign of conflict. To me, it's a What Happened to the Mouse? situation.
  • Lan was planning on killing Dagmyer because not only was she utterly screwed by joining with him & Babalun, but she lost her mother & whole bandit crew. Emera had no reason to not kill her; so it's the same kinda of strong implication as with what happened to Cliff & Cordyline.