Ryo-ohki 3rd OVA. What happened?

[D-V-L]

I've recently watched Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki over the weekend for old time's sake, and I gotta say, episodes 14 to 20 just let me down so much.

Out of all the Tenchi canon and spin offs, I like the Ryo-ohki one the most. They had some solid plotlines, humor, and dialogue. The characters seem more unique and interesting, and the story a bit more compelling.

What I don't get is why in the 3rd OVA the themes of the series shifted so drastically from their original direction.

The main storyline shifts from following Tenchi as a young hero discovering his hidden powers and relations to the demon-space babes that revolve around him...
...to an inter-dimensional struggle of space goddesses trying to stop a rogue agent with planet exploding powers.

It's so sudden, unexplained, and most of it seems so irrelevant. A handful of non compelling characters are introduced, and the original major characters (like Ryoko and Ayeka) just end up blending into the background. The final episodes don't seem to have any relevance to Tenchi's original plotline of fending off power hungry space baddies like Kagato or Dr.Clay. It's almost hard to consider it a Tenchi story.

So I'm left wandering, WHY? Why did Kenichi Yatani, who did just fine on the 2nd OVA, drift so of course on the later episodes?

Any one else as frustrated about it as I am?

[Austin Masaki]

Indeed, I must say, it was my least favorite series from the Tenchi franchise, it just lacked the Tenchi feeling that everyone loves, I, personally loved the original 1991 OAV the best.

[Manhattan_Project_2000]

I've recently watched Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-ohki over the weekend for old time's sake, and I gotta say, episodes 14 to 20 just let me down so much.

Out of all the Tenchi canon and spin offs, I like the Ryo-ohki one the most. They had some solid plotlines, humor, and dialogue. The characters seem more unique and interesting, and the story a bit more compelling.

What I don't get is why in the 3rd OVA the themes of the series shifted so drastically from their original direction.

The main storyline shifts from following Tenchi as a young hero discovering his hidden powers and relations to the demon-space babes that revolve around him...
...to an inter-dimensional struggle of space goddesses trying to stop a rogue agent with planet exploding powers.

It's so sudden, unexplained, and most of it seems so irrelevant. A handful of non compelling characters are introduced, and the original major characters (like Ryoko and Ayeka) just end up blending into the background. The final episodes don't seem to have any relevance to Tenchi's original plotline of fending off power hungry space baddies like Kagato or Dr.Clay. It's almost hard to consider it a Tenchi story.

So I'm left wandering, WHY? Why did Kenichi Yatani, who did just fine on the 2nd OVA, drift so of course on the later episodes?

Any one else as frustrated about it as I am?

From what I understand, they decided doing the entire series as OVAs was impractical, so they did a more-or-less "best of" where they combined the rest of the series into a disjointed mess, assuming you haven't read the manga and therefore can't keep up.