First of all, I'd like to make one thing clear: this is NOT a review of the Tenchi Muyo in Love! movie. If you are reading this, I expect you to have read my review of the movie by now, and you should already know that I love it to death, consider it one of my favorite Anime of all time, swear to it's amazingly high quality and detail, and so on and so forth. This will be a review of the DVD version of Tenchi Muyo in Love!, and just how well (or poorly) it handles the movie.

More than any other title coming out, Tenchi Muyo in Love! was the purchase that was going to decide it for me, solidify whether I fully supported DVD or became seriously suspicious of it. TMiL is a high-quality, top notch production, AND it's Anime - the two areas where DVD has the most to prove. If a version of TMiL could come out on DVD that blew all other versions away, it should be able to handle ANY Anime with easy, right? And, of course, I'm very serious about TMiL, owning both a VHS and LaserDisc copy... if one of the movies I wanted most on DVD wasn't up to par, what could the other movies do to win me over?

Less than three hours after finding out that the local Tower Records had a copy of DVD Tmil, I shelled out $24.95 (plus tax) and had my own copy in my hands. That night, I sat down, prepared to give this fledgling format the ultimate test - I ran the VHS, LD, and DVD all at the same time, each one playing the EXACT same section of the movie. What I witnessed was more than shocking. Now, I love my LD player, I'm a big supporter of buying LD, and I purchase movies on LD over VHS whenever I can. I purchased my copy of TMiL on LD so that I could enjoy it at it's best, with a superior quality picture and theater-like sound. Up until the moment that I began to watch the DVD version, I was perfectly content with the LD copy and had very complaints. However... when switching between all three version, when comparing one frame in all three different formats, there was absolutely no question to the power and dominance of DVD. Let me make all of this clear in one simple statement: You have not seen Tenchi Muyo the movie if you have not seen the DVD version. I expected the DVD version to be better than the LD version, but not THIS much better. The picture is so sharp, so defined, the colors so bright and crisp; in comparison, the LD version looks like a washed out mess. I never really realized just how much color you're missing from Anime, even on LD, until I watched DVD TMiL. It's shocking.

As far as a package goes, Pioneer really showed what a DVD release should be. When you purchase Tenchi Muyo in Love! on DVD, this is what it includes: English voice track in AC-3, Japanese voice track in AC-3, English subtitles, Japanese subtitles, English Closed Captioning, 4 different original trailers, an interview with Christopher Franke (the composer of the soundtrack), the original Japanese end credits, Director's Comments from Hirashi Negishi and Kaji Masunan, a biography on Christopher Franke, lyrics to the theme song (Alchemy of Love), detailed information on all of the Tenchi TV volumes released in the US so far, and customer service information to contact Pioneer. Saying that a few extras were thrown into this release would be an understatement.

So, there ARE downsides, right? Well, yes, there are. For anyone familiar with DVD, video is compressed using MPEG-2. Due to the current format, movies must be compressed at different rates in order to fit them onto a DVD disc. In compression, depending on the scene, "artifacts" can occasionally be seen. If you've ever seen a jpeg image that has been heavily compressed, and it has blocky, rough areas to the picture, you've gotten a taste of compression artifacts. Well, most DVD titles have had problems with artifacts, though 95% of them have been very rare problems that hardly affected the title. TMiL has it's share of artifacts; however, the amount of time in which the artifacts are bad enough to really be noticed is extremely low, and it's not enough of a problem to hold any negative feelings towards the format. The subtitles are a bit of a sore spot, as while they are more than adequate, they don't follow or flow as well as the English dub (which is odd, because the Closed Captioning follows the dub almost exactly). And, while there is nothing wrong with the packaging for the DVD version of TMiL, it's a little sparse and boring, having no where near the impact or goodies as the LD release.

When all is said and done, the simple fact is that Pioneer's release of Tenchi Muyo in Love! on DVD is nothing short of exceptional, and solid proof that Anime has a bright and limitless future on this up and coming format. The DVD version is so far beyond the VHS and LD versions that it's almost a whole new movie, and Tenchi fans should seriously consider investing in a DVD player just for this title. It's the future, it's here, and it's damn cool.

- Shidoshi

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