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trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and
longer works I've written.
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is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
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| ai yori aoshi and enishi
review
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| details |
| The Genre: Romantic Comedy |
| The Format: 5 + 3 DVDs from Geneon |
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| The plot: True "Blue" Love. Kaoru
Hanabishi just wanted to help. Aoi Sakuraba just
wanted to find her first love. They never realized
they were looking for each other. Ever since their
arranged marriage 18 years ago, Aoi has been in
love with Kaoru, so she travelled to Tokyo to
find him when she learned their marriage had been
called off.
While Kaoru's impressed by Aoi's loyalty, innocence
and beauty, to accept her affection, he might
have to return to the Hanabishi Clan and the emotional
and physical pain he suffered during his childhood.
Their self-control and their love will be put
to the test when she moves in and he tries to
stay a gentleman! |
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| back
to top |
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| opinion
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| You know, I don't think I've been quite this
disappointed in an anime series in quite a while.
I mean, the series isn't really bad, as such,
it's just it feels like it could have been so
much more.
|
The first three or four episodes of Ai
Yori Aoshi basically only feature our two
main characters--Kaoru and Aoi--and we're
given the fundamental premise. Aoi and Kaoru
were arranged to be married at a very young
age. Luckily, Aoi also fell head-over-heels
for Kaoru, and presumably something similar
is roughly true for Kaoru, although this
is part of what the series goes on to explore.
The spanner in the works comes from the
fact that Kaoru is illegitimate and was
only brought into the family on the condition
he never saw his mother again. He was also
very badly treated by the family and bears
both the emotional and physical scars.
As such, he left the family when he was
old enough, going to University in Tokyo
and severing all ties. This therefore actually
cancelled his engagement to Aoi, which Kaoru
had forgotten about anyway, but Aoi still
loves him and comes looking for him when
she's old enough to marry.
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They meet by chance (or fate, if you're into
that sort of thing) while she's searching for
him and that's pretty much where the actual story
picks up.
Now I don't normally explain the plot in my commentary
section (that's why I have the (stolen) description
section up top there), but I think it's important
here to emphasise my point. The above is a nice,
interesting set-up. We've got a goal and obstacles
to overcome, conflicts of tradition and obligation
with the heart and overtones of Romeo and Juliet,
right?
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Well, yeah, that's why when I was watching
the first disk I really loved it--a reasonably
adult story with a nice traditional romance and
some opportunities for humour and a smattering
of fan-service.
But then, after this beginning, we're thrown
headlong into the centre of a generic harem show.
See, the 'solution' to the above situation is
(apparently) that Kaoru lives with Aoi, but as
tenant with her acting as landlord. This is a
disguise so that the reputation of Aoi's family
remains intact.
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Now, setting aside that this is a bizarre
contrivance that doesn't make a whole lot
of sense anyway, for some reason it also
means that every women Kaoru meets takes
the opportunity to come live with them,
because of course every woman he meets harbours
deep feelings of love for him, as well as
a desire to shove their tits and arse in
his face as much as possible.
I'm exaggerating for comic effect of course--it's
all done a bit more subtlety than that--but
my point is that from the initial plot I
outlined, which is one thing, we're suddenly
thrust deep into another thing, the (admittedly
soft, warm and delicately scented) bosom
of a generic harem show.
Now, don't get me wrong, I've nothing fundamentally
against harem shows. And as examples of
harem go, this is actually pretty good.
There's no reliance on repeating gags like
"female harem member punches male lead
into outer space" or "they all
accidentally fall over and male lead somehow
always ends up with his hands on female
harem member's boobs" ad nausea.
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Plus, Kaoru is actually a pretty nice guy and
seems fairly handsome. Plus he's not a wet fish--he
and Aoi's relationship is pretty solid--and he
generally seems fairly confident. So you can kinda
see why these women like him, though of course
there are too many--but then that's the point
of harem.
I've also no problem with the fan service. Hell,
if you've ever read any of my reviews it should
be pretty obvious that fan service is generally
the win for me.
Ai Yori Aoshi is also quite funny in places.
A lot of the comedy comes from character interactions
and situations, and it's all done nicely enough.
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Heck, while I'm on the subject of compliments,
the show's also reasonably well animated and the
character designs are quite nice, if a little
old-skool. I've no real problems with any of that.
No, the problem is that the mixture for me doesn't
work here. We seem to see-saw between the two
types of show--traditional romance and harem--in
a way that left me a little giddy.
|
We spend a good few episodes on traditional
romance and then suddenly it'll flip to
the harem stuff. This has a frustrating
effect--when it changed I was always irked
that we didn't continue with the other plotline.
And that's another problem--after all that's
revealed in the first couple of episodes,
it feels a lot like we tread water for about
20 episodes until we get to a crunch point
for Aoi and Kaoru's relationship.
It was quite a long time to wait, and I
know there was a lot of character development,
but most of the characters are kinda irrelevant
to the main plot, so in all honesty I think
you could skip to the end and not really
be confused.
The sequel, Enishi, is shorter at only
half the length of the first series, and
this helps to alleviate some of the "padded
to fit" feel of the first season, but
unfortunately it does almost nothing with
Kaoru and Aoi's relationship. Indeed, in
a way it's not even about them, focusing
more on Tina and some of the other harem
members.
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It's reasonable enough, but instead of giving
us a proper story resolution at the end, as would
befit the more interesting traditional romance
side, we get one of those "maintaining the
status quo is best" harem endings. It's a
little disappointing, much like the show as a
whole.
On the good side, I picked both series up really
cheap. The original is actually well packaged
on only 5 disks (I had to check several times
that it was genuinely from Geneon) and 3 disks
for Enishi isn't exactly bad. With the demise
of Geneon you should either be able to grab it
somewhere really cheap... or may struggle to find
it. |
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| back
to top |
|
| summary |
| The Summary: I can do it in one word: disappointing. |
| The Score: 3/5 for both |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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