Tenchi Muyo!: Sasami Stories (Tenchi: Muyo Series)

Rating:
Summary: Nice But Mostly Recycled Material
Review: * TENCHI-MUYO SASAMI STORIES is a four-part collection of tales
focusing on Sasami, the cute little preadolescent Space Princess
well-known and generally adored by TENCHI-MUYO fans. Three of the
tales here have been published before in early TENCHI-MUYO manga
(comic) collections, including one in which Sasami befriends an
escaped wolf; in which Sasami competes in an Iron Chef competition;
and one in which she gets a walloping case of the hiccups.

The fourth installment is something new, at least for paperback
collections: a set of 74 four-panel TENCHI comix written for a
fanzine. Overall, SASAMI STORIES is a nice little collection, with
attractive (if not generally exceptional) artwork, and entertaining
(if generally light) stories, as one might expect from artist and
author Hitoshi Okuda.

The only real warning, which should be obvious by now, is that if you
have all the first-series TENCHI MUYO manga volumes, you have the
three stories and are only missing the collection of four-panel comix,
which I would describe as amusing but (clearly by intent) sheer
fluff.

One of the more amusing of them showed Sasami surfing the
web and finding a web site about herself. She checks it out,
her eyes get as big as saucers, and the final panel shows her
PC smashed with a big mallet. The title was: THE WEB IS DIRTY.

If you're a real hardcore TENCHI addict, you might think the little comix
enough to justify buying this volume even if you have all the
first-series paperbacks, but if you're not, you might find your money
spent better elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I bought this book expecting what the book description said: "7 all new stories". That is not the case. The book is a compilation of Sasami stories (about 4 of them) that were done in the No Need for Tenchi series. The only thing new about this book is at the end where they featured comic strips that the author drew for a fan club newsletter for many years that were not released to the public before. These strips were basically a marketing ploy and have no contribution to the story of Tenchi at all. I do not suggest this book to someone who already collected the No Need for Tenchi stories. This book is good for someone who is a Sasami fan, or wishes to have all works done by this author.