So I Just Read the P-Anime TM! Comic Run

[DeusChex ^////^]

I was always curious about the P-Anime TM! comic book run's quality.  I was never told anything to inspire great feelings towards it.  I saw the collection on ebay & decided "what the hey?"  I am glad that I own them but I just had a few gripes I wanted to say after reading them.  I'm mostly just typing this for myself, but if you have any thoughts of your own, whether contradictory to my statements or not, I welcome them below.

To start off, it's forgettable at best.  The art is pretty inconsistent.  Some of the art I liked while other panels left the impression of "meh".  I understand that it's only a 6-issue run, each approximately 30pgs. long, but the author tried too much in less than 200 pgs.

I'm gonna go ahead and say there will be spoilers in the text below just in case you care to read this for yourself beforehand tho I won't be explaining the entirety of the plot...

There's too much happening with not enough context.  It seems to be a spin-off of the "Tenchi Universe" continuity.  Kiyone is there.  Nagi shows up for no other reason than to appear for a couple pages.  Nagi really doesn't do anything to advance the plot.

The main "villains" in the run are really shallow.  One is "Rob" who uses his combat suit, of sorts, (which actually looks kinda cool in the last issue) & his own beastly cabbit called "Astroth" to hunt other cabbits for sport.  It's how the first issue opens up.  He seemingly kills them, but it's never shown for obvious reasons since I assume this was aimed at a younger audience.  He also works as delivery postal man.  He uses it to find out where more cabbits are located.  A package is assigned to Sasami, but it is stolen during the delivery (I'll get to this in a minute) & soon finds out about Ryo-Ohki.  He kind of disappears for the next few issues until the last two.  He is only the focus for issues 1-2, part of 5, & 6.

The other "villain" is a wannabe high-class villain named "Dante Mixx" AKA "Inferno".  He just seems kind of a like an incompetent fool for the most part who is not really inherently evil or anything.  He's just a common crook.  His goal is to use a machine that we find out was Washu's later on that fuses people together.  He wants to fuse with Ryoko to become a high-class villain for the fame, I guess.  He has a weird teleport ability that seems to only be of use to quickly advance the plot since the panel transitions can happen almost instantaneously.  One example being as he is in his ship looking at Ryo-Ohki in space & can instantly teleport himself inside the captain's quarters where Ryoko is and kidnaps her.  This ability is never explained whatsoever.  He does complete his goal of fusing & takes a female form called "Inferno".  I actually kinda like her design.  Although, he doesn't seem to ever be in control & it seems like "Inferno" is a completely different "being" from Dante & Ryoko altogether.  It this isn't the case, I didn't notice it.  It's never really gone into detail of whether or not this was the case.  She does kiss Tenchi tho...so there's that.

Both of these "villains'" stories wrap up super quickly, but again, it's only 6 issues.  I'd honestly rather a single, more fleshed out villain than these two.  Rob is ultimately stopped & arrested, but since he's apart of the postal union, he doesn't go to jail for long & only has to pay for property damage.  Dante does go to jail at the galaxy police headquarters since he does become a higher-classed villain & has to share a cell with "Harley Quinn"...yeah.  There's some off-putting cameos in this like "Harley Quinn" & "Batman" from DC comics & "Spock" from "Star Trek" that just appear either in the background (most of the scenery in the end is a mall-like building in space so lots of different creatures pop up) or just shown in the corner of a panel when a reference happens which, to be fair, doesn't happen all that often.

I'm pretty certain both author & illustrator are both American (or at least North American) with names like Jose Calderon & Matt Lunsford.  As far as the art goes, again, it just varies from panel to panel.  Overall, not too many issues with the art since it's all hand-drawn from the looks of it & I can appreciate that.

Wasn't sure were to put this but the whole "Sasami's package" thing I brought up is just a running gag(?) of sorts that takes the entire issue run to make it to Sasami who opens it up and to be blunt, the suspense wasn't worth it.  Simple as that.

Last few gripes I've got with it has to do with the main cast that we know and love.  Tenchi, Nobuyuki, Yosho, Washu, Kiyone, Ryo-Ohki, Sasami are all fine.  Same basic character traits from "Tenchi Universe".  Nothing with their personality changes all that much.  Ayeka & Ryoko don't really change all that much.  Just their bickering is amped up a decent amount more.  There's a panel in the second issue and just shows them in the distance with the text (the kind of text where it denotes one of them talking but no speech bubble) "Bitch" repeated multiple times above their head.  During a particular argument in issue two, Tenchi inwardly states in-between a tug-of-war with Ayeka & Ryoko: "One day I'll have to choose..."  A narrator states "And that day has arrived."  This statement holds no ground in retrospect.  It was in reference to Dante.  Dante phrases capturing Ryoko as a "Date" to his girlfriend who was not given a name & only appears for about 6-8 pages, never to be seen again.  It made it seem like Dante wanted to steal Ryoko's heart possibly?  At first, I thought Dante was going to be a "Hotsuma" character, but nope.  Completely misleading line.

Another character who seemed out of place was the funnily enough, the first one introduced.  Her cabbit is killed by Rob & I had thought she was killed also, but nope.  She doesn't appear again until the last issue, & isn't given a name until page ~21 of the last issue & it is said 4 times on one page.  This is absolutely just me nitpicking this, but it kinda bothered me for some reason.  Like the author forgot to give her a name until the last minute.  It's "Demi" by the way.  Again, her design looks pretty ok.  Good even.

Probably the most egregious problem I have would be Mihoshi's "character".  Think about how she acted in "Universe" & multiply that times 1000.  Nothing she says/does is anything but useless & annoying.  I really like Mihoshi in other media.  But the difference in the other media/anime/manga/etc. & this comic book run is that in the other media, she is clumsy & ultimately of use in the situations that occur.  She is absolutely useless in this run tho.  She contributes nothing to the plot but to hamper everyone else, & to make the artist draw the other cast with either a deadpanned expression or googly eyes when she does/says something dumb.  Really did not like her portrayal at all.

All in all, I'm not sure how to rate this TM! run.  I find it hard to recommend to anyone.  Big TM! might like it more than someone with no prior experience with any of the other continuities.  But on the other hand, I wouldn't ever give this to someone who never seen/read any of the other TM! media beforehand.  It would probably just turn them off to the franchise as a whole.  Ultimately, it felt like a bad spin-off episode of "Tenchi Universe".


Whelp, that's my rant done.  If you've got any gripes of your own or statements that you want to make in favor of this series, please share your thoughts.  For all I know, maybe no one else but maybe one or two other people actually read this or care.

[Ryokos Stepdad]

Jose Calderon & Matt Lunsford

I had to look these names up. From what I saw neither of these men are well known in the comic industry. The former was actually giving me information on a current basketball player in the NBA and comicbookrealm.com only gives me two hits for him (one being Tenchi Muyo! Issue #6.) The latter had more work online but I haven't seen anything past 2011.

Not surprisingly, both Google searches gave me results on Wikifur  but I have decided not to put those in my browser history.

That being said, your description of the run makes it feel very off-putting and probably not even worth tracking them down for collectors value.

[Dr.Soviet]

The "art" for this is just the worst

[جبريل 無道]

Matt Lunsford has a DeviantArt account and I typed with him a few times in the past.  He was nice enough to post an amount of the TM comic art up.

It feels like a fanfic set in a very American comic book, though.

[DeusChex ^////^]

When reading, the art wasn't really a big issue like I said.  Some panels I thought were pretty decent.  Especially when it's a close-up of a face in some panels.  The covers actually probably had the weakest art.  Especially issue 6.  It's got nothing on Okuda's artstyle but for a western guy pulling a Fred Gallagher or Reno Lemaire before they were a thing, he does a pretty decent job.  (Megatokyo coming out in 2000/Dreamland coming out in 2006, and the TM! comic book run coming out in 1997.)  Some of the new character designs I liked (like Demi & Inferno in female form but they were barely shown), but it was the main character's art that I wasn't in love with all the time.  It was mostly the writing that I had a bit of trouble with although I understand you can only do so much with 6 issues at about 25-30 pages.

Mihoshi was absolutely portrayed the worst I've ever seen.  I almost wish she wasn't even in the run.  Mostly all the other main characters were fine.  It was also the new "villains" that appeared.  I understand that you can only do so much with so little time but their motives were just shallow and mostly bland.  The wrap-up of their defeat was also very quick.

[DeusChex ^////^]

That being said, your description of the run makes it feel very off-putting and probably not even worth tracking them down for collectors value.

Honestly depends on how much of a collector you are.  I couldn't find any scans online (or really any info in general) of the series so I wanted them (good or bad) in my collection.  While I couldn't really recommend them to anyone, P-Anime is getting more rare every year since it was really short-lived.


Also, it just hit me that the run was called "Tenchi Muyo!" rather than "Tenchi Universe" since it's a spin-off of the latter & not the former.  There's even ads at the end of the comic books for laserdics & VHS tapes of "Universe"....weird.

[جبريل 無道]

There's even ads at the end of the comic books for laserdics & VHS tapes of "Universe"....weird.

Not at all, when the 'P' in P-anime stands for "Pioneer".  If you mean just continuity, I don't think that ever stopped the Japanese from hawking their similiar products in their own magazines and such.  Tenchi Universe was just what was current at the time.

[DeusChex ^////^]

There's even ads at the end of the comic books for laserdics & VHS tapes of "Universe"....weird.

Not at all, when the 'P' in P-anime stands for "Pioneer".  If you mean just continuity, I don't think that ever stopped the Japanese from hawking their similiar products in their own magazines and such.  Tenchi Universe was just what was current at the time.

I just used the ads as a weird coincidental addition to the oddness that the run was called "Tenchi Muyo!" instead of "Tench Universe" since it follows the latter's general continuity rather than the former's.  I understand that really any advert could find it's way into a comic book as long as it's relevant due to the same publisher selling it or even just because it came out within the same time frame (like what you're referring to).  As an example, I just got a shipment of "Blade of the Immortal" comics and there's a Godzilla advert on the back because there was a run that came out just before "Blade of the Immortal" starting being published in America.

I would be making the same remarks if I noticed that there was a western comic book spin-off of series coming out of "Ghost in the Shell: Arise" & they just titled it "Ghost in the Shell" even tho the story would be a spin-off of the former's continuity.  Other (albeit made-up & probably never ever gonna happen) examples would be calling a run of "Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works" just "Fate/Stay Night" or if "Dragonball GT" had a spin-off comic just called "Dragon Ball".  I hope you understand what I mean.

[جبريل 無道]

I think I do.