Answer: simply put, after OVA 1 one of the co-producers hiroki hayashi left. Kajishima thought he could do the story better than he could with hayashi and he just wasn't all that into the project enough to stay on he was replaced with Kenichi Yatani who also worked on bubblegum crisis. kajishima also switched script writers from naoko hasegawa to Yousuke Kuroda if you pay enough attention to the characters and feel of the show you can notice the change.
anyways AIC which had the assets of the former studio artemix wanted to start producing TV shows
instead of OVAs presumably because they are cheaper and have more mainstream appeal but that's all opinion and conjecture
they started with these four titles:
El hazard is the project Hiroki moved onto it's his equivilent of the Tenchiverse and considered a cousin series.
Tenchi in tokyo was originally intended as a second season of universe but... that didn't happen that way and it ended up its own wacky thing...
Hasegawa went on to write her own novel series... and then it got a manga....
and it's been AIC's flagship franchise ever since then so that is why...
It is their batman if you will. Their bread and butter that they pull out when times are hard and their new products are failing and they own the rights to so they can have anyone make a tenchi series.
anyways AIC which had the assets of the former studio artemix wanted to start producing TV shows
instead of OVAs presumably because they are cheaper and have more mainstream appeal but that's all opinion and conjecture
they started with these four titles:
El hazard is the project Hiroki moved onto it's his equivilent of the Tenchiverse and considered a cousin series.
Tenchi in tokyo was originally intended as a second season of universe but... that didn't happen that way and it ended up its own wacky thing...
Hasegawa went on to write her own novel series... and then it got a manga....
and it's been AIC's flagship franchise ever since then so that is why...
It is their batman if you will. Their bread and butter that they pull out when times are hard and their new products are failing and they own the rights to so they can have anyone make a tenchi series.
| Tenchi Universe | April 2, 1995 | December 24, 1995 | Adventure, Fantasy, Harem | 26 | Remake for television of the first 6-episode story arc in Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki. |
| El-Hazard: The Wanderers | October 6, 1995 | March 29, 1996 | Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Science fantasy | 26 | Simplified version of the original OVA storyline, stretched to twenty-six episodes and eliminates or alters several of the OVA's major characters. |
| Magical Project S | October 4, 1996 | March 28, 1997 | Comedy, Magical girl | 26 | Based on the Magical Girl Pretty Sammy character and the OVAs. |
| Tenchi in Tokyo | April 1, 1997 | December 23, 1997 | Adventure, Fantasy, Harem | 26 | A reboot of the franchise set in a different timeline to both Ryo-Ohki and Universe. |