Anime has always been very good at producing shows like Tenchi Souzou Design-bu (albeit sparingly, one or two per season if we’re lucky). Quirky, smart, inherently self-limiting in the audience they’re chasing. Here for a flash, then gone, never to be heard from again. Virtually anonymous even when they existed. But I’m heartily glad to have them, both for the service they do in promoting their source manga (usually), and for the entertainment they provide.
- I pretty much expected the bail when it came to showing God. Maybe save that for the last chapter of the manga.
- The Garuda is an interesting choice for “God’s ride”, since it’s actually a Buddhist mythological creature and this very much appears to be a Judeo-Christian God.
- A cassette-based answering machine? I bet God likes vinyl, too.
- Giant tadpoles, bigger than the frogs? I feel like that rang a bell as soon as I heard it.
- The T-Rex makes an appearance! From an evolutionary standpoint a fascinating development, to be sure. And the link to parakeets is further solidified.
- The lyrebird is one of the most astonishing and fascinating creatures nature has ever cooked up, even by the bizarro standards of Australian wildlife. They ability to mimic almost anything is truly astonishing, though I never really knew the evolutionary reason for it.
- I suppose I should have guessed where the mascot (it looks almost exactly like Nara’s, Shikamaru-kun) thing was headed, but it honestly never crossed my mind.
- Shimoda-kun’s origin story was definitely a good choice for a chapter to close on. It was quite heartwarming in its way.
What a nice way to end a thoroughly charming and enjoyable series. They don’t get much more under-the-radar than Tenchi Souzou Design-bu, but for those of us who discovered it, the rewards were ample. And I haven’t Googled this much in years. It made you laugh, it made you smile, it taught you a few things – and it’s hard to ask for much more from a sleeper than that. I consider it the height of unlikeliness that we’ll ever get another season, but I’m used to that with this sort of anime – just enjoy them while they last and hope the next season has something that can fill the void.
Red
March 26, 2021 at 6:21 pmThanks for preaching the show, it’s the series I’ve enjoyed the most this season.
Guardian Enzo
March 26, 2021 at 7:35 pmAlways nice when that happens.
Jindujun93
March 30, 2021 at 4:56 pmI actually binged the entire anime yesterday because I got curious after taking a peek at 1~2 of your posts about it – and man, did I have a blast with it, because I feel like it was more or less perfectly tailored towards both younger me and the current me, haha. I absolutely used to devour any sort of reading / watching material about various animals back when I was a kid, so a lot (but not everything) of the details that popped up in this anime were familiar to me, but it still managed to surprise me with quite a few things I didn’t fully know about yet, so this was a very cool learning experience for me.
And honestly, as somebody who works in programming nowadays, those workplace situations just felt way too familiar to me – vague requests to create something that even the client doesn’t fully grasp, chipping away at the idea bit by bit through trial and error until it feels right, the whole testing process… it’s completely different subject matter, but the procedures are very familiar, so I got some good chuckles (and understanding sighs from some situations) out of it, too. Very happy that I gave this little gem a chance, it’s been a lot of fun.
Guardian Enzo
March 30, 2021 at 5:24 pmYeah, pretty much the same experience here. Loved zoology all my life and the workplace situations ring absolutely true.
Rita
April 3, 2021 at 2:39 amI may be horribly late but better than never. I had seen the show pop up on Crunchyroll’s recommended but didn’t really think much of it. I also so your posts as I was scrolling through the site and as they got increasingly positive I eventually decided I would sit and binge it after it had finished airing and that’s what I did.
This is the sort of ‘edutainment’ I enjoy and really wish more series can be like. It helps that the biology of animals is usually much more interesting than most people think and I was genuinely surprised by a few of the charactersitics of existing creatures I just didn’t know about (koala cries being at the top of my list now)