At 08:41 PM 6/1/97 -0400, Animest@aol.com wrote:
>Is it stated somewhere, (like in Tenchi 101), that Tenchi was actually blown
>apart? I know it's hard to tell because of the bushes in the way, but I
>didn't think he was ripped apart.  

Tenchi 101 basically tells us that Tenchi didn't die, though he did lose
the lower half of his body.  We can see that Tenchi has his body at least
down to his stomache.

>Also, maybe in Tenchi 101, does it say
>that there is more than one master key.  

It sort of does.  First, it tells us that the King and Youshou both have
first generation space trees, then it tells us that the keys to first
generation space trees are "master keys," so we know that there's at least
two.

The last part of question 13 (What is the Master Key?) also addresses this:

"Right now, the only person who officially has a 'Master Key' that has a
working ship is the current King of Jurai, Azusa. (*In episode 5, although
Youshou did give the 'Master Key' to Tenchi, the Royal Tree 'Funaho' was no
longer capable of becoming a ship.)"


>In the series the tenchi-ken is
>referred to as THE Master Key, yet in a lot of posts there seems to be a lot
>of debate about this.  

That's more due to languististical differences than anything else..  You
see, in Japanese, definate articles (i.e. "the") is not really used, nor is
it really needed for there to be an indefinate article (i.e. "a") in a
sentence such as "What is the Master Key?"  Also, often plurars aren't
needed, so the same sentence above could also have been translated as "What
are Master Keys?"

>It does still bother me that Kagato referred to the
>tenchi-ken as the "King's property".  This seems to infer that this master
>key is one of a kind.

Well, we all know that Kagato's knowledge of this whole space tree / key
thing is still not very reliable, plus I get the distinct impression from
101 that the only reason Youshou has a first generation space tree is
because he was supposed to be the next king, and why no one else (aside
from the king himself) has a first gen ship.

-- 
Glenn Wang <brief@ix.netcom.com>, http://www.netcom.com/~brief/
      Proud member of #SAS# and Co-Founder of #WASHU#
"At that moment, I knew--the spell was broken.  Even if I went back to
 that bench in the park, I would never see that girl again."     -A!MG