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Title: Ai Yori Aoshi
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents might not want their kids to read this series. This series contains detailed nudity that is used in comical and non-comical ways. There is also some bad language to worry about, and flashbacks of Kaoru's past with his family may be too violent and disturbing for younger readers. By all accounts, this title should have gotten an M rating. Fans of silly humor that involves body fluids and boobs will love this series. Fans of drama may be frustrated by the fact that what little drama there is in this series is excellent, yet the drama doesn't show up enough. Chances are good that women will hate this series and men will love it. |
Have you ever gone through a "what if?" conversation in your head? I've found myself doing this quite often in my life. For example, what if Disney had decided to go ahead and make the serious drama "Kingdom of The Sun" instead of turning it into the slapstick comedy that came to be known as "The Emperor's New Groove?" Would it have been better? What would “DBZ”'s popularity be like now had they kept the original music intact in the dub? Would I have won anything if I had bought the Super-Sized Coke over the Large Coke at McDonald's while they were doing their Monopoly contest? What if, indeed. I'd like to add one more "what if?" to my list: how would "Ai Yori Aoshi" have turned out if the author had the balls to write the story the way he originally planned to write it? The story begins with us meeting college student Kaoru Hanabishi, who, unlike most protagonists in shounen manga, has a steady job, gets decent grades in school, and is living an easy and steady life.
One day when he is in a train station, he sees a girl in the train station who has broken her sandal and can't seem to fix it. Being the nice guy that he is, Kaoru fixes the sandal for the girl. He finds out the girl’s name is Aoi Sakuraba, and that she has come to Japan for the first time ever in search of a young boy whom she has been engaged to for many years (this is one of those family-arrangement marriages, for those of you who don't know). Kaoru is worried about Aoi's less than stellar sense of direction, though, so he offers to be her guide in Tokyo. When the two arrive at their destination, they are both shocked to discover that the building they were looking for no longer exists. Well, Aoi is heartbroken to discover this, and feeling bad for her, Kaoru decides to let Aoi stay with him for the night. At one point during the night, Kaoru asks Aoi if she has any clues to help them find the guy she's looking for, and Aoi shows him a childhood picture of her and the boy she's looking for. However, Kaoru realizes that the young boy in the picture is him, and feeling so happy to have found her childhood friend, Aoi asks Kaoru if he will marry her and come back home to live with her and the Hanabishi family!
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This information triggers him to answer "hell no," followed by a "get out of my house" response to Aoi before he promptly kicks her out of his house! At first, this may seem to be a bit on the cruel side, but later on, when we learn more about Kaoru's past, we can see why Kaoru isn't in much of a hurry to go back to the Hanabishi family so easily, and trust me when I say the reasons why are truly heartbreaking to hear. However, it doesn't take long for Kaoru to realize that he probably snapped at Aoi a little too quickly before he really thought through his response to her. After all, Aoi has no idea what Kaoru has gone through with his family, and she was here of her own free will because she loves him. So all is forgiven, and Kaoru and Aoi start living together. When I read the first book, I got very excited about reading the rest of the series. I felt that I was reading a classic romance manga in the making, a series that wouldn't rely on cheap gags, shameless nudity, stupid situations that serve no purpose whatsoever except to break the characters up for a few chapters before they get back together again, and so forth. No, this series started out with a believable relationship in the making, with no obstacles to face, and what little nudity there was wasn't put there for no reason, but actually served a purpose (really, it did). Man, this series started out so good that I felt that the cover was outright lying when it advertised a brainless comedy that would be surrounded by sex. Too bad it doesn't last long.
Cue book two, where Kaoru and Aoi end up living together in a mansion thanks to Aoi's parents. HOWEVER (and this is where things fall apart), Kaoru and Aoi can't let anyone know that they are engaged to marry each other! Why? Because of some conspiracy or something like that. ersonally, I found this to be a dumb story twist myself, but this terrible twist ended up paving the way for the worst monkey wrench to throw into the story: lots of girls! Yes folks, this series went from being a one-of-a-kind romance story to being a POOR copy of "Love Hina" REALLY fast! Within the next two books, we will get to meet Aoi's caretaker Miyabi, the bossy witch; Sakuraba, the maid who tries really hard to be a good maid but is lousy at everything (and she never appears to get any better at anything she does in the series... ever); Kaoru's childhood friend Maya, who is a spoiled brat; and finally, American girl Tina Foster, who likes to grabs everyone's boobs at least once every chapter because... well, because she does, okay? With this cast all living in the same house (and not knowing anything about Kaoru's and Aoi's relationship), the road is paved for hijinks, everyone falling in love with Kaoru, and lots and lots of nudity that does absolutely nothing to move the story forward.
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Once the story started going in this direction, I truly felt like I had been cheated. This series started out so promising, and yet the author decided to take the easy way out in making this series popular. I understand that sex sells, but going from the first book to the second book is a jarring experience since the second book trashes all the respect you'll have built up for the series in the first book. What's even worse is that the author wants to have his cake and eat it too with this series. At times, this series will focus on painfully stupid side stories about photo clubs, festivals, and bath resorts, all of which do nothing except give everyone a chance to look at the girls’ panties and naked butts and breasts, all while not moving the story forward one bit. On the other hand, though, when the author decides to settle down and give Kaoru and Aoi a chance to develop their relationship, this series can get really, really good, and you start to forget why you were annoyed with this series in the first place. However, this series gets even more frustrating because when this series gets good, then it can be a really excellent series to read! However, when this series gets bad, it gets to be a really terrible series to read.
Aside from the fact that the series tends to go from being really good to really bad without much of a notice, Kou Fumizuki can't decide whether he wants this series to be a comedy or a drama, and instead of choosing one genre over the other he decides to go for both (bad idea). Combining genres is not easy, but sometimes authors can pull it off with great success (see "Kodocha" for a great example). However, the combination was not pulled off well in this series, and because the combining of the two genres failed, the series tends to feel like a pretty big mess sometimes. Okay, I was being kind just now, this series IS a pretty big mess at times, which makes me wish even more that Kou would pick a genre and focus all his creative energy into making the series’ world either a drama or a comedy, because doing both just isn't working that well here! But what is ultimately the saddest thing about "Ai Yori Aoshi" is that this had started out as one of the most original romance manga I had read in a long time, and Kou just screwed it all up under the pressure that people wouldn't buy the series unless it had a bunch of naked girls thrown in the mix. Since "Ai Yori Aoshi" hasn't been concluded yet, there is still time for Kou to turn this series around and make it into that special thing I felt when I first started reading this, but until that happens this is an above average mess. When it's good, it's really good. But when it's bad, it's really bad.
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