Back when I had frequent access to the TV, I'd watch the Toonami block on Cartoon Network. I'd come home from school (it occurred in the afternoon at the time) and veg out for two hours.
These were the days before there were hundreds of series available online for viewing. You had to take what the network gave you. So I watched the limited repertoire of anime that Cartoon Network had for viewing. One of those happened to be Tenchi Muyo.
To be honest, I didn't get "Tenchi". There were too many cultural elements that I wasn't familiar with. That, and I wasn't able to catch it everyday. But I still watched it, mostly because of the cat/rabbit/spaceship, Ryo-Ohki. Hey, I got a thing for cute, made-up animals, OK?
Flash forward a decade later, and I found "Tenchi" on Hulu. I thought eventually I'd watch the episodes in order. Well, with the introduction of anime streaming on Anime-Planet, "eventually" happened late last spring (if one could call it spring).
On Anime-Planet, each anime has a series of tags that describes it. For "Tenchi" one such tag was "ecchi".
Wait a sec.
This show aired on TV! During after-school hours! Don't tell me they hacked it to bits like Sailor Moon and DBZ....
I went through a couple subtitled episodes. Nothing too bad. Maybe they didn't water it down as much as I thought. From what I saw, it looked more-less the same.
Then I got to the hot spring episode.
When that episode aired on Cartoon Network, one of the characters, a woman named Ryoko, was wearing a lavender bikini in the hot spring. When I saw the same episode online, she was completely naked. Now, it wasn't graphic or anything. Still it was very apparent that she wasn't wearing any clothes.
Suddenly everything made sense. Except for the fact that Ryoko has a tail at some points, but at other times, she doesn't.
