An intergalactic war between the police force and three major criminal organizations erupts in a conflagration of weaponry and screams. Meanwhile, Ms. Hanabishi, a novice schoolteacher, gets her first teaching position at a provincial high school on the edge of the Milky Way. Discovering, on her arrival, that the school has been closed down, her overwhelming disappointment reduces her to tears. She decides, accompanied by a former student, Nanamiya, who just happened to be accepted to the same school on a sports scholarship, to head back to Earth. Without means to begin the journey, the two fret until out of the sky, as graceless as a falling Walrus, drops Space Trash Paraila, a criminal mastermind who, due to clemency laws on Earth, also wants to get to the blue planet. They reluctantly partner up and head out. Hot on her trail Detective Yokoyama, intent on bringing down the whole Jaoukai organization, longs to destroy Paraila, a former Joukai boss.

Piloted with typical Paraila know-how, the trio's stolen ship crash lands on a remote planet. Yokoyama deduces that because of a treaty loophole placing Earth outside of the police agency's jurisdiction, Paraila must be heading there. To raise capital for their journey, the trio make their way to a marketplace trying to sell a rare coral that Paraila swiped...which happens to be illegal on this particular planet, landing them in prison. A former underling of Paraila's breaks the trio out and the chase renews. Harboring a technological power unique to the Joukai, Paraila beats off the pursuing Yokoyama.

Crash landing on yet another marginal planet, Ms. Hanahishi and her companions get scooped up by some generous fishermen who rescue, feed and shuttle them to land. On land the fishermen are promptly sucker-punched and robbed by Paraila. With this new found wealth, Paraila plans to gamble her way into a fortune for the purposes of both getting to Earth and living the good life while there. Losing all of the money on her first game, Paraila's hopes are restored when Hanabishi's beginners luck proves outrageously successful. Instead of buying tickets to Earth, though, Paraila's greed spurs her to bet Hanabishi's money on the most high stakes game of them all.

Having stolen yet another ship, the now quartet can't seem to get the environmental controls to work and so all don revealing makeshift clothing as they scurry about in search of the controls. The search turns up another scantily clad character, Elaine. But there's more to the identity of this fifth wheel than meets the eye.

Hailing from the tradition of wacky, absurdist humor which makes anime such as "Urusei Yatsura," and "Kodomo no Omocha" so much fun, "Tenamonya Voyagers" slapsticks through its intricately complex plot with all the grace of a three legged elephant. Punch lines without set ups, a laboriously plodding plot, an incessant, "Hitchhiker's Guide"-esque voice over which fills in mundane details, and disturbingly ambiguous character motivations that change with the wind, castrate the concept's innate comedy and inoculates the engrossing galactic politics at work in the background of this journey tale.

Borrowing from a plethora of genres, "Voyagers" assembles its cast with strategic precision: Ms. Hanabishi, a meek, semi-prudish school teacher whose self worth depends on her success as an educator; Nanamiya, a cocky high school sports star with a college scholarship; Space Trash Paraila, fugitive on the run with mob ties and a mysterious power; Mako, Paraila's obedient, resourceful lap dog whose giddy vacuity belies her sharp acuity; and Chief Yokoyama, a grizzled, raspy cop passionate about destroying Paraila and her band of misfits - by far the most interesting character in the bunch.

And Masashi Ishihama's character designs depict these overt personalities with stylistic flare. The villains, a harem of provocatively weird mob bosses portrayed with angular minimalism and always eerily entertaining, Ishihama designs with appropriately contrasting darkness, but each also maintains an individuality and comes off with some of the best lines in the whole show.

Each character, then, provides a breadth of opportunities to play off the others' idiosyncrasies and, every once in awhile, those jokes land. However, entangled in an asinine script, which rather than using the comic gimmicks afforded it by these characters, gets tethered by tangential situations designed not only to land a joke, but to drill it into the ground. Only in episode four, after Yokoyama's failure to eradicate her nemesis drives her into philosophic retrospection, in which she regains her emotional footing against the sly Paraila, does Ryouei Tsukimura's script ripen. But the sheer amount of ill-timed, purposeless and blatantly unfunny material garbling the telling of any cohesive story could easily spoil the mounting tension between Paraila and Yokoyama.

Giving "Voyagers" the benefit of the doubt, its madness maintains a charm all its own. Plot, character development and thematic potency aside, the groups' incessant abuse of Ms. Hanabishi pushes the fragile schoolteacher into an insanity that finds her spouting poetry and investing profound meaning in absolutely meaningless things. And Paraila's grossly ephemeral solutions to getting out of sticky scenarios elicit a chuckle or two. This running gag evokes genuine humor. Other running gags - Paraila's overconfidence, Nanamiya's brattiness, their squabbling over whose plan is better, the ability for Mako to acquire a getaway mecha at every climactic moment, rampant non-sequiturs and Ms. Hanabishi's whining - simply fall flat from overuse.

A bundle of frenetic energy without the narrative foundation on which to exploit it, "Voyagers" achieves very little by spilling quite a bit onto its canvas. The responsibility of carrying this anime into loftier terrain falls on the well-wrought characters who may, in future episodes, channel this creative team's vigor into developing a more palatable and engaging story.