Class of 2000
First Pioneer/Geneon Entertainment Show to premiere on Cartoon Network

Second Major Production Edited by Williams Street

Digital Bikinis and Tea

Love stinks, but this show doesn't!

No one ever expected Tenchi Muyo to premiere on Toonami. It was too sexually driven, too chaotic, and just too weird. People, well, stark-raving mad otakus, screamed bloody murder towards Cartoon Network for even trying to air the series, for fear that it would be completely mutilated. Unfortunately, they forgot one little oversight.

Tenchi Muyo would be treated with respect by some of the best hands in the industry.

Williams Street Productions handled the editing duties of Tenchi Muyo, one of the first series they had a personal hand in editing for Toonami consumption and has their names in the final credits for the "Toonami Version." They didn't hack the series the way the jaded otaku thought they would. Instead, they kept the stories pretty intact. Sure, they were edited to remove language and nudity, but the actual stories remained intact and true to the original visions. Like the edits of Gundam Wing, they were pretty much kept to a minimal.

The most infamous edits occurred on Tenchi Muyo. The most infamous ones were the "digital bikinis." Body painting is a pretty interesting business to get into, so the Williams Street body painters must have had a lot of fun painting in those bikinis. In all seriousness, digital bikinis were necessary in this prudish nation we live in (the US for you international readers) because some folks just can't handle naked folks. Plus, Cartoon Network didn't want to face the wraith of the soccer moms of America, so it was best to cover up those naughty bits. Ryoko has the distinction of being the first Toonami character to wear a digital bikini, which was seen in other shows like Outlaw Star, G Gundam, and Evangelion.

Ryoko also has the distinction to drink "tea." Why the quotation marks? "Tea" is really sake, a popular alcoholic rice beverage which is very popular in Japan. Of course on Cartoon Network, you can't drink any alcoholic beverages on Cartoon Network, so bottles of sake were replaced by, um, bottles of "tea." Guess it's Turkey Hill or something.

When Tenchi premiered on Toonami, the series was pretty much done in Japan. However, the Toonami reactions hit Japan, and almost out of the blue, somebody got inspired to tell new stories featuring the popular characters as well as new stories based on elements in the original episodes. Soon, they're coming to the US, and hopefully FUNimation, who now handles the newer adventures of the Tenchi universe, will bring the characters back to television.