Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi-
Fate Vol.1
(Geneon/Pioneer Region 1 DVD)
(2004)
review by Big McLargehuge

Masami Shimoda’s Ai Yori Aoshi is targeted at the same audience as his other title Someday’s Dreamers, er… I think. Although the story, plot, and pacing differ significantly from Someday’s Dreamers, the gentleness and real-life aspect of that story appears here.

Ai Yori Aoshi follows the domestic adventures of girls Chicka-Chan, Taeko, er… the one dressed as the maid… the one dressed in a traditional Kimono… the blond one… and the lone male Kaoru living in the Sakaruba manor.

Okay, I admit it, most of Ai Yori Aoshi went right over my head. I am not a 13-16 year old girl so the entertainment value of watching several young women chasing around one guy didn’t hold my attention. However, Ai Yori Aoshi offers an awful lot of bawdiness within the episodes storytelling. There are plenty of boobie and panty jokes here as the girls alternately make passes as Kaoru, try to embarrass one another, and make adolescent references to lesbianism.

The character design by Kazunori Iwakura embraces the personalities of the girls and offers plenty of cheesecake eye candy to keep the episodes moving along. The writing is crisp and funny too, and the characters are defined by more than uniform, hair color, and breast size which is a welcome relief for an anime title. Shimoda keeps the chibi to a minimum but doesn’t totally abandon the cartoony super-deformed emotives that just make these TV shows so distinctive.

Enishi offers four episodes, the first when Chicka-chan comes to the manor and quizzes the other girls about their feelings for Kaoru, the second follows Chicka-chan and two school friends around the manor as she tries to keep her school friends from meeting Kauro, the third has all the girls play tennis, the fourth follows the girls around to find the source of a haunting within the manor.

The real underlying story is that of Aoi (the one dressed in a Kimono) and her growing love with Kauro, they were childhood friends and recently reunited at the manor. They have a tenderness about them, with Kauro embracing the hard life of a professor’s assistant and Aoi following a much more traditional Japanese lifestyle, almost like she’s a student geisha.

There’s a scene in the third episode where Kauro describes what he thinks marriage to Aoi would be like “we’d shop together, take baths together, we’d sleep together. It would be just the two of us.”

I’d have liked to spend all four episodes with the two of them but I guess it wouldn’t be as dynamic a series. Still, if I am going to get a soap opera I suppose I have to have peripheral characters to round the thing out.

Ai Yori Aoshi, like Someday’s Dreamers has no villain, rather the characters constantly struggle against themselves, and what society has in mind for them. It’s rather refreshing actually to get to know characters that aren’t put into danger every episode or two.

J.C. Crew’s animation tends towards the realistic, but not quite as realistic as Someday’s Dreamers. Since the characters aren’t superheroes, martial artists, or monster fighters, they can spend more time on the subtle stuff, like making pastry dough (no, I am not kidding, stop laughing) and swimming or tennis.

Toshio Masuda’s music never gets in the way of the story, and favors subtle orchestrations and up tempo yet simple piano and strings to accompany the plot. Each episode is titled with an earworm of a track by my current favorite anime friendly band, The Indigo.

Geneon offers Ai Yori Aoshi with English and Japanese language tracks, English subs, and a special extra episode named “Miyuki”, plus the requisite previews of other Geneon titles.

Fun once you can keep track of who’s who, and especially if you appreciate the relationship between Aio and Kauro, Ai Yori Aoshi is very enjoyable. Though, it’s even less action oriented than Someday’s Dreamers.