Tenchi Muyo: Ryoko

Ok... Today's featured tribute is to Ryoko Hakubi, a sexy space pirate from the anime series Tenchi Muyo. ^_^

(These are a combination of artwork and cap from the Tenchi Muyo Pretty Sammi Series OVA Episode 1. Tremendous Thank yous to Match25 the "Legendary Master of Sole Shots" and Boss aka Skull for sending in the images for this tribute.)

I only got the chance to watch a couple of episodes of the series Tenchi Muyo when it aired on Cartoon Network awhile back. It's  a difficult series to classify mixing comedy, action and sci fi elements into it. It also sort of falls into the category of Harem anime; a genre where the lead character (in this case Tenchi) has a variety of women fall for him.

The original story arc for the Tenchi anime (which spanned several OVAs and series) was that the title character (a teenager) accidentally releases Ryoko from captivity. Yeah... I know the premise is a pretty common Asian story motif dating back as far as Journey to the West but for series like these it is more about delivery. Anyway, Ryoko, a dangerous space pirate was sealed in a cave for about 700 years. Releasing her draws the attention of many different space beings leaving Tenchi to deal with the aftermath. As the series develops, Ryoko becomes madly in love with Tenchi competing for his affection with several different female characters that the anime introduces.

As a character, Ryoko is really entertaining to watch in action. She's really powerful being able to create energy and manipulate matter using those skills both offensively and defensive. In a fight she can create energy blasts and explosions or focus them into blades (think lightsabers). She can also teleport and summon demonic spirits. Physically she has superhuman speed, strength and stamina and she doesn't need to breathe or eat drawing her energy from three power gems that she controls. 

Personality-wise Ryoko tends to act pretty wild. She's a self proclaimed sadist and tends to be pretty rambunctious. She also very hot tempered and volatile though she seems to know how to have a good time. She can also be pretty playful and mischievous and can be known to tease her allies quite a bit. I think that she would be a lot of fun to be around if you didn't have to worry about her destroying everything in sight. Her affection for Tenchi sort of tempers her a little so when she's around him the universe is significantly safer. :-)

Ok everyone that's basically it for now. As always more to come soon. ^_^

-KSC

Fairy Tale Feeturettes Vol 1: Snow White

Hi guys. I'm introducing a new segment to the blog today called Fairy Tale Feeturettes. This series of articles inspired by the contributor JTurner (who sent in a ton of material from different Fairy Tale adaptations) will look at different fairy tale women. Tonight's featured character is Snow White. :-)  

(These are from Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics Episode 1x08. A Huge Thank You to JTurner for finding and recommending this)

Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics is a Japanese animated series that looks at different Folk and Fairy tales. It was released between 1987 and 1989 and ran for 47 episodes.  This Snow White episode that these caps are from was about an hour in length. I didn't watch the episode completely through but from what I've seen the show looks like a very sweet series that I think children would enjoy despite a little bit of a dated feel to it. (I think that voice acting has really come a long way in the past 20 years.) The animation of the episode still seemed like it is pretty good and I have admit that Snow White looks incredibly cute in anime form. ^_^

When it comes to Disney films, we've been fairly lucky in terms of barefoot scenes (see Disney posts). I like to joke with my friend Match that we have a secret agent at Disney who makes sure to give all their female characters a good foot scene for us. While the percentage of Disney girls who go barefoot are remarkably high, there are two Disney princesses that we haven't been able to post here yet. One is Belle from Beauty and the Beast while the other is Snow White. It's nice to be able to finally do a tribute to the latter albeit a different incarnation of the character.

Ok everyone that's all for now. As always more to come soon.
-KSC