Tenchi Muyo in Love Original Soundtrack

By: Kimberly Godwin – Tuesday, July 27th, 2004 (04:22:30 PM)
This review was originally posted on Planet Exile.com

Tenchi Muyo in Love was an anime movie which reflects on some of the most common themes found in countless stories and movies all over the world: the unending fight between good and evil and the universal love of a family that transcends time and space. Such themes inspire heroes and encourage the audience to appreciate their loved ones before it is too late. Every great movie needs a good score to back up the emotion of the scenes to further strengthen the audience’s emotional connection to the scene and to the characters. The score for Tenchi Muyo in Love does just that: it provides the rich musical punch required to strengthen the images and themes expressed in the movie, but as a separate entity it comes across as repetitive and bland. The instrumental tracks pretty much sound the same with little variation save the theme and the one vocal track “Alchemy of Love” that comes across as flat and irritating.

The packaging of this recent release of the soundtrack is rather simple with a medium blue insert with seven small pictures that each feature one of the main cast of the series and white text inside of a normal jewel case. The information in the booklet talks about Christopher Franke and his feelings on writing the score and “Alchemy of Love” for the anime movie. The CD itself has several exclusive tracks with a somewhat cheesy techno beat: “Tokyo Tower!”, “Time Machine,” and “Alchemy of Love (Re-mix).” A previous release of this soundtrack featured a metallic silver colored cardboard case featuring a nice picture of Achika on the front but has one track less and a different bonus track.

Overall, I felt that it is a soundtrack was fairly unremarkable as a separate entity from the movie with a nice instrumental that just runs together with minor variations, cheesy techno tracks and a horrendous vocal track that sounds like it belongs in a much different and much older movie. An avid Tenchi collector might want to pick up this soundtrack on principal but this will probably be horribly disappointing.

Rating: 5.6