A Juraian spaceship
is headed for Earth. Aboard the ship, a young man, Yosho, tends the
bedside of a beautiful but sickly young woman. She lies in her bed under
the boughs of a camellia tree, and as the last of her life ebbs away,
Yosho promises her that he will remain by her side always.
Spring
has arrived, and the Masakis are hard at work, sweeping up the cherry
blossoms from the shrine steps. Just like always, Ryoko and Ayeka are
fighting with each other, this time over who was using the spare broom.
Tenchi tries to put a stop to the quarrel, but Ryoko and Ayeka force
him to choose between one or the other. Rather than get involved in
another potential argument, Tenchi distracts them and beats a hasty
retreat into the woods. As he walks, he comes across a camellia tree
in full bloom. When he approaches, he hears a voice calling him, and
the indistinct shape of a woman appears in the tree. He steps towards
tree and vanishes.
Weeks
have passed since Tenchi's disappearance, and the family is no nearer
to finding him than the day he vanished. Washu heads the operation from
her laboratory, Mihoshi and Kiyone infiltrate the Galaxy Academy to
use their computer system, Sasami returns to Jurai to use the royal
tree network, and Ryoko and Ayeka search Japan.
Autumn arrives,
and there has been no word from Tenchi in six months. Washu has narrowed
down Tenchi's location to somewhere in Tokyo, and with the aid of a
short-range wristband scanning device provided by Washu, Ryoko and Ayeka
pick up their search there. They take waitressing jobs in a café
to pay the rent on their apartment, their temporary base of operations.
However, there is still little sign of Tenchi.
In
an apartment across town, Tenchi awakes. He is not the same person as
when he disappeared; he looks older, and he wears his hair long. Lying
on his futon, he watches as a beautiful young woman prepares breakfast
in the kitchen. Seeing he has woken, she draws the curtains and brings
him a good-morning kiss. Tenchi bids her good morning and calls her
by name; "Haruna". After breakfast, Haruna waves Tenchi goodbye
as he leaves for college.
Meanwhile,
Ryoko and Ayeka take the bus to work. They are startled when Washu's
sensor device begins blinking, warning that Tenchi is nearby. Ayeka
catches a glimpse of Tenchi through the trees, and Ryoko leaps from
the bus and chases after him. Tenchi seems not to hear her calling him,
and she soon loses sight of him in the crowd.
That evening, Tenchi
sits drawing as Haruna gazes out of the window of their apartment. His
drawing finished, he shows it to Haruna, who is delighted with his portrait
of her. Tenchi however is unsatisfied; he thinks the drawing looks somehow
unreal. As he and Haruna make love that night, he tells her that just
being with her feels similarly unreal, like some kind of dream.
Morning
comes, and Ryoko and Ayeka resume their search for Tenchi. As the day
draws on, rain begins to fall. Outside the college building, Haruna
waits for Tenchi to finish his classes. When he finally arrives, he
and Haruna shelter from the rain together under her umbrella.
Later that day,
after the rain has stopped, Ryoko and Ayeka look out over the city from
the rooftops. They wonder how the others are holding up, and what has
happened to Tenchi. They share a melon bread (of which Ryoko eats the
bigger half), and they both shout their frustrations to the city at
large. Suddenly, Ryoko's sensor begins to flash again; Tenchi must be
in the area. Ryoko spots him in the streets below, hand in hand with
Haruna, and gives chase. Seconds later she reaches the alleyway she
saw them walk into, only to find they have disappeared completely.
At
work the next day, Ryoko and Ayeka brood over their last close encounter
with Tenchi, wondering particularly about who the woman they saw with
him was. The rigours of searching, not to mention the sight of Tenchi
with another woman, are proving too much for them; Ryoko cannot concentrate
on her work, and Ayeka bursts into tears just from accidentally dropping
a glass.
That night, Ayeka
wakes with a start from a dream about Tenchi returning home, and finds
Ryoko cannot sleep either. Ayeka admits she cannot accept Tenchi has
simply forgotten about them and gone off with another woman, but Ryoko
refuses to give up so easily.
The following morning,
Ryoko and Ayeka are washing windows at the café when Ryoko's
sensor wristband starts beeping again. They spot Tenchi walking into
an alleyway across the street. Ryoko chases after him once again, and
once again she finds he has disappeared without a trace.
Meanwhile, in Tenchi's
apartment, Haruna is cleaning up when she spots a drawing amongst Tenchi's
other sketches. It is a roughly-drawn portrait, little more than a few
lines and streaks of paint, but it is unmistakably the picture of a
woman with spiky green hair. With a look of distaste on her face, Haruna
tears the picture down and crumples it in her fist.
When
Tenchi returns that afternoon and demands to know what she has done
with the picture, Haruna starts crying. Tenchi apologises and suggests
they go out shopping and for a meal together. He first takes her to
a jewellers and buys her a beautiful silver ring, and a matching one
for himself.
At the café,
Ryoko and Ayeka are hard at work when Ryoko's wristband sensor starts
to bleep again. Suddenly, the scene around them changes; the brightness
of day is replaced by the warm hues of sunset. The café is completely
deserted, except for one table where Tenchi and Haruna sit, enjoying
a meal together. 
Ryoko
and Ayeka approach the table, but Tenchi does not see them. Only Haruna
turns to look at them, and regards them with a look of hatred. Tenchi
does not even hear them as they shout his name. Ryoko reaches out to
touch him, and her hand passes straight through him. No matter how hard
she tries, she cannot touch him; her arms just pass through his head
as though he were a ghost. Tenchi grasps his head, complaining of a
headache, and Haruna suggests they go home. Just as suddenly as it arrived,
the scene changes back again. Tenchi and Haruna are gone, and the café
is exactly the same as before.
On
planet Jurai, Sasami is getting ready to return to Earth, having found
no more information in the Jurai network. As she gazes at a statue of
Yosho, Azaka and Kamidake approach her. They mention that, like Tenchi,
Yosho once vanished without a trace. They tell Sasami that he was involved
with a woman named Haruna, but was forbidden to marry her.
That evening, Washu
explains the situation to Ryoko and Ayeka. From their earlier encounter
with Tenchi, and Sasami's information, she surmises that Tenchi must
be living in a parallel world, created by Haruna, which is virtually
identical to his own, but where he never met any of the girls. She also
explains Tenchi has not yet fully accepted this new reality, and the
two parallel worlds still have some vague interaction. However, the
longer they leave him in his alternate reality, the harder it will become
to get him back. Luckily, Washu's plan is already in operation, having
sent Mihoshi and Kiyone to the Galaxy Academy to hack into their dimension
stabilising system. Using this system, she can open a gateway between
realities and allow Ryoko and Ayeka to enter Tenchi's parallel world.
Meanwhile,
in Haruna's world, Tenchi is working on his painting of Haruna. However,
he is restless and distracted by his headache. He idly smears a blob
of green paint on his palette into a spiky shape. A flash of memory,
a recollection of that shape, passes through his mind. He grabs a blank
canvas and begins to draw, recreating the portrait of the woman with
spiky green hair again. Outside, the houses in the street start changing
hue as Haruna's reality begins to collapse. Seeing this, Haruna panics
and runs in on Tenchi, only to find him still working on the painting
of her. Tenchi notices her worried expression, and asks her what is
bothering her. Haruna tells him that she is afraid he might be leaving,
but Tenchi reassures her, and tells her not to worry.
Katsuhito
sits at the foot of the camellia tree where Tenchi vanished six months
earlier, pondering the situation. Washu appears in the fire before him
and asks him about Haruna. He explains that, as a young prince, he left
Jurai with his beloved Haruna, bound for Earth, but during their journey
she fell gravely ill, and died before they reached their destination.
He buried Haruna on Earth and planted her tree, a camellia, over her
grave. When the tree flourished in its new home, he too decided to live
on Earth, and travelled Japan planting cuttings from the original tree.
He later met Itsuki, Tenchi's grandmother, and married her. However,
he believes that Haruna's spirit is restless, and has taken Tenchi from
him to try and experience the happiness robbed from her by her premature
death. However, the camellia tree is dying, drained of life by Haruna
to carry out her plan.
In Tenchi's apartment,
Haruna has found his portrait of the green-haired woman again and torn
the canvas. Tenchi is furious, and confused as to why Haruna is acting
with such hostility; he tells her that he doesn't know who the woman
he keeps painting is, and that it is just a recurring image in his mind.
He storms out onto the balcony and lies down, looking up at the stars
and wondering why everything he has experienced feels somehow unreal.
Mihoshi
and Kiyone arrive back from the Galaxy Academy with the required data
from the dimensional stabiliser system. Washu already has another task
for the police duo, however; helping her to set up energy collectors
on the camellia trees planted by Katsuhito in order to generate enough
Jurai energy to open a portal into Haruna's fantasy world.
That night, Tenchi
begins to notice that the world around him is becoming increasingly
inexplicable; the television persists in displaying nothing but static,
and when he checks his bank balance to see if he has the money to fix
it, he finds the pocketbook filled with meaningless figures. Tenchi
demands an explanation, but Haruna tells him not to worry about it.
Convinced that she is hiding something from him, Tenchi tells her that
he cannot keep on loving her if he cannot trust her.
Meanwhile,
the preparations to open a gateway to Haruna's world are complete, and
Washu activates her network, pulling power from Haruna's camellia trees,
from the Jurai network and from the Galaxy Academy dimensional stabiliser.
Ryoko and Ayeka are pulled through into Haruna's world and appear before
Tenchi in the moonlit sky. Ryoko lands effortlessly on the balcony (although
Ayeka misses and has to walk around to the front). They demand that
Haruna return Tenchi, but Haruna says that Tenchi belongs to her now,
and forces them both back out of her reality. Haruna confronts them
in the void between realities and tells them they are too late to just
take him back. She tells them that they are all after the same thing,
and only the one with the strongest feelings for him will triumph.
As the two realities
drift apart again, Washu realises that her earlier supposition was wrong;
Haruna's reality is not a parallel world; it is running on a faster
time scale so that she could take her time in changing Tenchi to meet
her desires. Worse still, Haruna's world is feeding off Tenchi's Jurai
energy, drawing him further and further away from reality, and there
is nothing that Washu can do to force him to leave.
Tenchi awakes in
his apartment. Lying on his futon, he watches as Haruna prepares breakfast
in the kitchen. Seeing he has woken, she draws the curtains and brings
him a good-morning kiss. However, this blissfully familiar morning scene
is about to be interrupted; Ryoko and Ayeka appear on his balcony again.
They barge into the apartment, ever more determined to bring Tenchi
back. 
Haruna
tells them that they don't deserve the love of Tenchi, and that he has
never expressed the same depth of feeling towards them. Tenchi, who
has finally regained his memories of Ayeka and Ryoko, tells them to
respect Haruna's feelings. They are once again forced out of Haruna's
reality, and the last image they see is Haruna in Tenchi's arms.
Ryoko and Ayeka
arrive back in their reality, defeated once again. Ryoko is ready to
admit that bringing Tenchi may be beyond her grasp once and for all.
Tenchi awakes in
his apartment. Lying on his futon, he watches as Haruna prepares breakfast
in the kitchen. This time, things are different; as Haruna draws the
curtains to another beautiful morning, Tenchi asks her who she is and
where she came from. Haruna realises that his memory has returned, and
that she cannot force him to live by her rules any more. She offers
him the chance to continue living a peaceful life in her reality, but
Tenchi protests; he cannot even remember how he met her, so what good
would it be to continue living in a dream?
In
Okayama, Katsuhito has reached a decision, the most difficult decision
of all. He draws his sword and brings its blade down through the heart
of Haruna's camellia tree. In
Tenchi's apartment, Haruna collapses to the floor screaming with pain.
Tenchi tries to calm her down, but she continues to writhe in agony.
The energy
flowing from the dying camellia tree engulfs Katsuhito, and both he
and Haruna see once again their final moments together. She told him
that, even though the journey to Earth robbed her of her health, it
was worth it to spend just a few brief happy weeks together. In Tenchi's
apartment, Haruna's pain subsides, and Katsuhito appears before her
as prince Yosho, young as the day Haruna died.
Washu, monitoring
the situation from her lab, is startled to see the energy levels in
the Haruna's world falling; the reality is collapsing, and it threatens
to take Tenchi along with it.
Yosho
begs forgiveness from Haruna for the pain he left her with by taking
her away from Jurai, but Haruna tells him that he is not to blame. He
tells Tenchi that, with his help, Haruna was able to become her true
self once more. As Tenchi readies himself to leave, Haruna thanks him,
especially for the beautiful picture he painted of her, now complete.
He tells her that he will never forget her, but Haruna tells him that
it is best that he forget everything. She and her beloved Yosho disappear
from her world, leaving nothing but the silver ring Tenchi bought her.
Back in reality,
Ayeka tries to convince Ryoko to return to Haruna's world one last time
to bring Tenchi back. Ryoko, however, is tired of fighting against the
impossible. But, Ayeka informs her, this time the situation has changed;
Tenchi needs their help, but Washu can only muster enough Jurai energy
to send one of them through. With a new determination, Ryoko heads back
into Haruna's world one last time.
Ryoko
appears in the sky above Tenchi's apartment and lands gracefully on
the roof of a house across the street. She calls him out and, just to
be sure, checks that he remembers who she is. He apologises for putting
her through so much trouble and heartache. As they leave, hand in hand
with each other, Haruna's world fades from existence, leaving only two
silver rings and a wilted camellia bloom.
Katsuhito opens
his eyes on Haruna's camellia tree, to catch one final glimpse of Haruna's
spirit, now laid to rest, sitting amongst its branches before vanishing
completely.
Life
at the Masaki home quickly returns to normal. As the girls cook sweet
potatoes over a heap of burning leaves, Tenchi sits on the hill above
the house and draws. He has, of course, lost all memory of Haruna, but
has suddenly taken up drawing, just like his father used to, because
of the happiness it brings him. Ryoko joins him at the lakeside as he
works. She tells him that she is happy to see him back to his old self,
but both he and Ryoko have changed; they have both grown in their own
way, and become closer together.
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