I've read pretty much all the Tenchi Muyo mangas, but not the animes. I watched some of them and got bored of it (Especially Tenchi in Tokyo), but I like the mangas. The problem I have with Tenchi is 2 things: It's incredibly formulaic, and the non comedy parts tend to be boring. Super evil villain says some cliche random thing, they fight, someone (Ayeka) gets captured, Tenchi uses super powerful light hawk wings at the last second (Or the villain realizes that what they are doing is wrong, usually because of something Sasami says), everything's back to normal, Mihoshi lands ship in water. Repeat indefinitely.
The characters are pretty cool, though I dislike Ayeka. The only thing cool about her for me is her purple hair, and only the fact that it is purple.