Ai yori aoshi 

A naive, traditional girl from the country goes to the city to find the boy she was engaged to as a young girl, and the two childhood friends fall in love.

Stars:

Tony Pope, Karen Strassman, Sôichirô Hoshi

Cast

Series cast summary:
Tony Pope	...	Fish Vendor / ... 24 episodes, 2002
Karen Strassman	...	Bus Intercom / ... 24 episodes, 2002

Storyline

Kaoru Hanabishi is a college student with a mysterious and painful past, involving his wealthy family whom he walked out on years ago. He encounters a young girl, newly arrived from the countryside, and takes her in to assist her in adjusting to urban life. He discovers to his shock that the girl is his childhood fiancée Aoi Sakuraba, whom he was engaged to before he left his family... and who has left her home and come a great distance to be with her betrothed. Can this couple manage to live and survive together in the cruel and harsh world?

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Plot Keywords:

love | surrealism | true love | kindness | innocence | 

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Taglines:

Do you remember your first love?

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Genres:

Animation | Comedy | Romance

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Certificate:

TV-14

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

2002 (Japan)

Also Known As:

Bluer Than Indigo: Fate

Company Credits

Production Co:

Aoao Kikaku

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min (24 episodes)

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Based on a manga series first serialized in "Young Animal", a Japanese men's magazine.

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Crazy Credits

The ending credits for each episode shows a sepia-colored image from that episode.

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Connections

Followed by Ai yori aoshi 'enishi' (2003)

User Reviews

I expected a derivative series, but...

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.