Original reason for stopping production?

[Sushi]

Why did they originally stop producing Tenchi Muyo after the second OVA series? If anyone can enlighten me that'd be great.

[WarOmnimon]

Why did they originally stop producing Tenchi Muyo after the second OVA series? If anyone can enlighten me that'd be great.

Hey, someone's asking the serious intellectual questions around here. +1 to your Useless Points.

I can't actually answer your question (If someone knows the answer, please enlighten us!), but I can contribute to this discussion with statistics. Production actually originally stopped after Tenchi in Tokyo (Or Daughter of Darkness, depending in if you count the final episode of Tenchi in Tokyo as being the last thing produced or not), and then stopped again after Tenchi Forever. Even after OVA 2 ended, there was a consistent stream of Tenchi content being produced for a few more years. You can determine this by looking at the release dates for the spinoffs that came up during OVA 2's run and before Tenchi Muyo! GXP. Good news is that I got those release dates from ANN for reference purposes.

Everything in the list below is the Japanese release / air date of the first episode of the season (Or movie) in question save for Here Comes Jurai (Which is the final episode of OVA 2 and is included in the list for consistency reasons) and Payback (Which is the final episode of Tenchi in Tokyo, again included in the list for consistency reasons).

Tenchi Universe: April 2, 1995
Here Comes Jurai: August 25, 1995
Pretty Sammy: August 25, 1995
Tenchi Muyo in Love: April 20, 1996
Magical Project S: October 4, 1996
Tenchi in Tokyo (First episode): April 1, 1997
Daughter of Darkness: August 2, 1997
Payback: September 23, 1997 (The first break came after this)
Tenchi Forever!: April 24, 1999 (The second break came after this; bigger than the first one, and we didn't get anything else until GXP)

[Sushi]

Woo! Thank you for both the response and the point! I guess I'm wondering more specifically why they didn't go straight into OVA 3 after the second was done. The question haunts me. I think they lost some magic in the interim.

This being said, I didn't realize Here Comes Jurai came out in '95! I've never stopped to think about how OVAs are very slow to release even back then. Thanks for collecting that info!

[Nonsuch Ned]

I just posted a"Kids these days" response to someone on crunchyroll who posted "Who thought it was a good idea to release these months apart!?"

In MY DAY we paid $30 dollars for a single episode a year on VHS without a guarantee there's be more. And we liked it!
(also, in my day... we knew this was an impression of Dana Carvey's SNL character "Grumpy Old Man")

...not that I ever did that. I only bought US DVD singles as they came out for two shows. Both at the very end of that bubble. One was OVA 3. The other was actually School Rumble- the show that got me back into anime after a dry period.

[GP cadet 87]

Yeah, that takes me back. I remember going to the local mall, heading to the small anime section at the HMV, and seeing Bubblegum Crisis being sold for over $90 (CDN).

The high cost of anime has always kept my collection very small. Though with streaming and cloud storage, I could conceivably see myself owning, say, Dragonball TOS and Hunter x Hunter digitally, but never on DVD or Blu-ray.

Honestly, considering that we're now currently in the middle of the 5th OVA, it's even more surprising that Tenchi was on hiatus for so long, considering the fandom is clearly still alive and well in Japan, it seems.

[Sushi]

I'm so surprised it's remained a mystery after all these years!

[Eff Efferson]

"it's a mystery!"
tenchi universe air date:April 2, 1995 – September 24, 1995

They quit making Ova series and started making Tv series. Less money per episode, greater exposure, less having to publish awkward tales of space incest