Paradise War is a canon spinoff in the Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki universe from creator Masaki Kajishima. Paradise War consists of three novels, the last published May 30, 2014. It takes place between the events of Tenchi Muyo! GXP and the events of War on Geminar.
Prologue
A slight flash-forward of Shou marveling at the beauty of Banjo Island
Episode 1
“Hey, how would you like to live on this southern island?” This is the question Shou Kukoma's mother suddenly drops on him when he comes home from school. Her friend Kyoko Yamada, via a Yamada supermarket, gave her a pamphlet advertising the island's need for emigrants and she and her father think it's a great opportunity for all of them. Shou tells them he has no intention to just run off to live in the middle of nowhere, and he's still in school. But his parents perform some pre-arranged dramatic scenes for their son demonstrating just how unhappy they are and how they could remake their poor lives on a tropical island. When Shou sticks to his position, his father says that if he wants to stay, he'll have to do it alone, or move out of the house, get a job, quit school, and fend for himself. Just like that, it is decided that he's moving to the avowed paradise, Banjo Island. His parents decide to send Shou first, so he can start up at his new school. His friends give him a going away party and his best friend, Takeshi, tells him he has to take this final chance to confess his feelings to his childhood friend, Himeko, who is also the daughter of the owner of the town's biggest company. He does, and she tells him she likes him but couldn't love him because she couldn't stand to live like his poor family. She also rather bluntly describes how, now, she'll need to look for someone new to do the "menial tasks" for her.
Shou takes a sea-sickeningly long boat trip to the island with the island's chief caretaker, Minamida (Seina Yamada) and his cabbits (Fuku, Miki, D, and Kirche) He is welcomed by the energetic and ditzy Dird Shank, sharp-togued Alea Balta, awkward and shy Apuesta Daluma, and calm and collected Palty Jurai. Dird lets slip the confusing exclamation "Finally, the last participant has arrived!" After a somewhat inappropriate physical check-up by the young, beautiful, and oddly perverted Miron Pham, the island's only doctor and also the school teacher, the girls then take him to his "house."
Passing few people and only meeting the sharp elderly shopkeeper, Tomi, they arrive at his home, revealed to be only a bare field overlooking a small cliff. His boxes were accidentally delivered straight to the bare field a week earlier, left to the elements and rain, ruining all of his books and electronics. The pamphlet mislead him to think that modern houses were provided but actually it will take a while, and until then he needs to camp in a tent, fish, scrounge, or kill his own food, and go to the bathroom in the jungle or ocean.
The girls help him on his first night and they have a meal together. Minamida arrives to apologize and explain that hs parents misunderstood what he told them, and now that they know, won't be joining him anytime soon. He also warns him some that loud construction will be going on that night and he shouldn't leave his tent. That night he is woken up by loud bangs, but he really needs to go to the bathroom and comes out to find a mean looking Dird in torn clothes, who is suddenly shot by a ray weapon, has her arm blown off, and falls off the cliff. Alea then arrives and knocks him out. Overnight, he has hazy memories of odd conversations as Miron apparently treats injuries he suffered.
The next morning, a perfectly fine Dird wakes him up to feed him breakfast and takes him to school. He is confused and she asks if he had a bad dream. He is convinced that it must have been one.
Episode 2: New Life in Paradise
After some panties-related hi-jinks from Dird and Miron, he arrives at their one room school shared by twenty foreign kids of all ages, and he meets a couple of guys who can speak Japanese, Mike and Ichiro. He is also introduced to the futuristic equipment used in class (this is the early 2000's), such as an electronic blackboard and personal tablet computers that open with your fingerprint. He makes a joke about it being nice that he won't have to hear chalk scratching the blackboard and everyone in class get strangely tense. During lunch, he has to purchase lunch from Tomi's school store and he impresses everyone by beating her in Janken (meaning he doesn't have to pay), which no one else can do.
Over the next week, the girls wake him each morning and eat with him at his campsite. A drunk Miron often joins them and passes out in his tent. They gift him a couple baby chicks, Pi and Piyo, in a portable incubator.
Shou takes a part-time job helping Apuesta with her highly in demand second-hand merchandise market with supplies she receives periodically. The normally shy Apuesta becomes in-charge and demanding, running the girls and Shou ragged retrieving the orders she takes. It seems the entire town comes to get her supplies on the days she opens shop.
One night, a submarine is on a secret mission to investigate the island. After failing to see something shaped like person in the water (Seina in Zinv), "something goes wrong" and the next morning they are found run ashore on the mainland.
One night's picnic brings unexpected problems when Alea brings out her favorite snack of noxious fermented food. The girls run, Shou passes out (he describes it as being a near-death experience) and the odor is so strong that it drifts out into the bay and causes Miron to pass out while driving her yacht. She crashes on the shore below Shou's cliff.
Miron decides it would be easier to buy a new yacht (she is extremely rich) and to convert the one on the shore into a stationary house. Spare wood from this project is used to make a private toilet/outhouse at Shou's campground.
To commemorate Shou's first week they decide to travel to a hidden cove. Shou reveals that he used his pay from his job to buy the girls some swimsuits he knew they wanted (on the first day they were admiring them at Tomi's store), . At one point, Shou falls from a broken walkway and into the ocean and very nearly drowns. He is saved by a mysterious girl he has not met. After resuscitating him, she runs away, leaving him on the beach for the girls to find.
He later contemplates how naturally he can talk with all these girls, something he could only do previously with Himeko.
Episode 3: Paradise War
That same evening, Minamida arrives to show Shou something he needs to see. Two cabbits, who startle him by suddenly talking, land on Shou's shoulders and, together with Minamida and the other two cabbits, fly to a spot where they can see the girls and his other fellow classmates fighting with energy weapons. Shou remembers what happened a week before and realizes it was not a dream after all.
At the campsite, Minamida explains the situation to the stunned Shou. His classmates are all alien representatives who are fighting a proxy war to determine who will lead a new nation made of a currently unorganized group of space pirates. Shou is being asked to be the Earth's representative in the war.
From conversations with Minamida, Mike, and the girls, he discovers it is like a survival game with a low risk of actual injury. The proxy war is a way for the pirate guilds to avoid actual intergalactic war. Smaller guilds forge alliances with the four most powerful guilds, represented by Dird, Alea, Apuesta and Palty. To represent their different strengths, the more powerful groups are given access to more powerful weapons. At this point, the girls' comparative power has the proxy war in a stalemate. The girls also embrace the proxy war like a sports contest. It is a competition, but also a way to meet friends they couldn't otherwise. They also realize it is a way to unite them in peace.
No matter what they say, Shou is hurt that the girls have kept this from him, worried for their safety, and doesn't understand how they can be so friendly while warring with each other.
Minamida and Miron also explain some facets that must be kept secret from the other representatives. They tell them that Minamida (he never uses the name Seina with him) is the person most responsible for breaking up the galaxy's pirate guilds. Also, there should be no danger in this situation for Earth, only protection and profit. Also, if Shou were to win, it would allow him to travel in space. Miron also reveals she is observing things for an Earth faction that knows of the aliens on Earth. Furthermore, she admits that she will seduce anyone who will help her travel in space.
While Shou is contemplating whether or not to join at all, each girl separately asks him to partner with her, each telling him how they would value him and keep him safe. They ask him to meet together at the school at night. Shou tells them that he won't partner with anyone because he doesn't think they should fight at all and he couldn't stand to fight any of them himself. Dird declares that if he will not voluntarily partner with her then she will force him to be with her. She turns on her guardian system, then the other girls follow, ready to fight and ready to make Shou surrender to whomever captures him.
Dird's guardian has gauntlets and anklets to punch and kick, Alea's guardian has a rifle on its shoulder, Palty has a two-armed broadsword, and Apuesta has a ball at the end of her arm meant to capture and deactivate other guardians.
In the confusion, Shou runs away. Dird comes after him and tries to grab him but Shou instinctively activates the guardian system he didn't know he had. As each try to capture him, by attacking him, they discover that he is very skilled at shielding himself from each of their different attacks. Still, all he can do is deflect and run and when all four attack he can't block them all and they start wearing him down. Each girl desperately begs him to give up and join her. Even as he yells that he can't join any one of them he is backed into the classroom. Apuesta is about to disable his guardian with her disabling tool when he reaches back and accidentally scratches the chalkboard with his fingernails. The sound actually stops all of them as they react as if they are in pain. MInamida then bursts in telling them to all stop.
Epilogue
Minamida scolds them all as Shou realizes they all went too far. Battles are scheduled and the school is completely off limits. They all, including Shou, bow and apologize when faced with the stern rebuke. Minamida softens a bit but warns them that if anything like this were to happen again he would be forced to adhere to the rules of the proxy war and disqualify them.
The girls all then reproach the confused Shou for scratching the blackboard. They explain to him that there are some things so horrible that no one should do them in any circumstance, and that is the worst (it is explained in the GXP novels that space travelers have an instinctual fear of the sound because it replicates the sound of a ship's hull scraping, threatening to break).
Shou then declares to Minamida that he will join the battle, joining no guild, hoping that he can come up with some alternative way to win.
Characters
Introduced
Returning
- Seina Yamada as Minamida
- Fuku
- Miki Steinbeck
- Kirche
- D
