Bleu indigo

To sum it up quickly, Ai Yori Aoshi is about a college student named Kaoru who meets a sweet, kimono-wearing girl named Aoi. Aoi is looking for a boy from her past whom she has been in love with all her life. Kaoru helps the lost Aoi in her search, and they both eventually realize that he is the boy from her past. There is MUCH more to it than that, but let's get down to brass tacks: the first four episodes of this show rule. They are sweet and touching, and the relationship between Kaoru and Aoi becomes solid in merely these four episodes. If they kept the series with just them as characters, I would be thrilled.

But they don't.

Eventually, Kaoru and Aoi are moved to a big mansion, and this great romance series becomes another typical "harem" anime. Don't get me wrong - the series still rocks, but it GREATLY loses its punch when this happens. More beautiful females with their own personalities move in, and the relationship between Kaoru and Aoi is mentioned less. Normally, the harem motif is awesome, but it slowed down this series. That proves how good this show is. If only the relationship between just two fictional anime characters can draw you in, that means that Ai Yori Aoshi is a winner.

When I put this in my queue at Netflix, I had no idea what this was going to be. I knew that it was supposed to take place after the original series, Ai Yori Aoshi, had finished. The ending was a bit of a let-down for me. It left a lot of questions unanswered and made me wonder if there was going to be a Second Series that would tie up all of the loose ends from the first two. You can't have a series like this without resolving what the gist of it was SUPPOSED to be, at least from my point of view. If you don't understand what I am referring to, then you need to watch the first series, Ai Yori Aoshi, and then watch this second part, Ai Yori Aoshi: Enishi. They left the main question that was the gist for this series unanswered which is not a good thing at all.

I understand Pioneer is going to be releasing the English-language version soon so I will give you a sneak peek based on the subtitled version I've seen.

Polite, traditional Japanese girl Aoi has come to the big city looking for her childhood sweetheart Kaoru with the intention of marrying him. Being naive she has run away from home without even knowing that the boy would accept her. As it turns out she is the daughter of a wealthy family the Sakurabas and he is from another wealthy family the Hanabishis. Kaoru ran away during his teens because the Hanabishis ostracized his mother and tried to erase her from the family history when she died. Since Aoi loves Kaoru with all her heart everything will turn out ok right? Wrong! Since Aoi is willing to give up everything to be with Kaoru the family governess Miyabi sets up a house for them to live in on condition that the two of them not cause a scandal by sleeping together. Their cover story is that Aoi is the owner of the building, Miyabi is the building superintendant and Kaoru is a tenant. Soon we are introduced to the rest of the large cast of characters who are there to provide the comedy. I've seen the first nine episodes (Destiny, Supper, Separation, Live-in, Friend, Housework, Mysterious Demon, Fondness, One Night) and it looks promising. Since this show depends on the cuteness of Aoi I think you will like the Japanese-language version best.

This wasn't a show I'd expected to like nearly as much as I did, but having seen and enjoyed Aa! Megami-sama (Oh! My Goddess), I checked it out. There were a number of obvious parallels here; I wish I could remember which was produced first, AYA or OMG.

In any case, the tone of AYA was more adult, but the underlying characters were quite similar, right down to the two-man-crew who ran the club at the school. However, that did NOT remain the case for long at all; here, the characters drive the plot far more than the action does, and character development comes thick and fast. The comedy elements are much more sparse and low-key, and there's a great deal more mature content, mostly in the form of gratuitous panty shots. Still, somehow, it didn't come off as overly salacious.

I was definitely more impressed with the overall quality of the original Japanese dub of AYA, since so much emotion is passed along via voice rather than flowery dialog; you can't help but lose something in translation.

The clincher for me was the last episode. The final, inevitable, emotional confrontation presents TWO twists: it challenges your point-of-view in an unexpected "Boy-Named-Sue" moment, which sets you up for a surprisingly radically break from the genre stereotypes that the typical male protagonist in this sort of series suffers from. Talk about sticking the knife in and then giving it a good twist. The whole scene is absolutely marinated in traditional Eastern concepts of family honor, but somehow the rising action leading up to it helped even this inveterate Westerner to suspend disbelief. I think my jaw dropped immediately before I got some sand in my eye or something...

So I went gunning for the original source material. The books this series is based on actually ramp up the core conflict more quickly, but then put the action on hold while the peripheral developments that were spread more evenly in the animated version take place almost as a separate bloc. Very little is changed, and a little more is cut by the animated series (although I hear the second season is a little less forgiving in this regard). However, the edits thus far make sense (again, season two may vary).

I give it a 9 mostly for little nitpicks, and for the fact that I left the series feeling like an incompetent writer, a sorry excuse for a real man, and painfully, painfully single.

This is a great harem anime and I loved how the characters were drawn and the animation but this has some wonderful characters.

I liked Kaoru he is still a nice guy despite a very troubled and abused past then there's Aoi a very kind, polite young woman who actually loves him and there is doubt the feelings between them are all too real.

They move in together with Aoi's guardian Miyabi watching over them who can be strict but she does have a good heart, really does care about Aoi and does warm up to Kaoru.

Then other girls come in and I think making this a harem actually made it all the more interesting because all of the girls of Ai Yori Aoshi are nothing short of likable. While Kaoru loves Aoi he does care about the rest of the girls and treats them as friends.

I loved this anime though I also read the manga which is better and tells a more complete story.