Ai no Kusabi

On the planet Amoi, a person's status is primarily dictated by the color of their hair. This society is run by the AI supercomputer known as Jupiter and its governing board of perfect blondes, referred to as Blondies, living in the capital city of Tanagura. However, the darker-haired humans live out their lives in the golden "pleasure city" of Midas and its outlying slum Ceres. They are known as "mongrels," and most cannot progress out of the slums.

Three years ago, a boy named Riki disappeared from the slums of Ceres. Once the revered leader of the gang Bison, a sudden encounter with an elite Blondie, Iason Mink, forced Riki to abandon everything he had cultivated. The boy was snatched from his home and forced to become Iason's pet. Riki has spent the past three years enduring numerous blows to his pride, his time in Tanagura nothing but a form of torture.

Now that Riki has returned, Bison once again rallies behind him. The risk he finds himself in, however, is much greater than ever before—there is always someone ready to sell him out.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Mink, Iason Main

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Riki Main

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Katze Supporting

Tanaka, Hideyuki Japanese

Am, Raoul Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Gai Supporting

Tsujitani, Kouji Japanese

Kirie Supporting

Nakahara, Shigeru Japanese

Daryl Supporting

Sid Supporting

Hori, Hideyuki Japanese

Jupiter Supporting

Kyal Supporting

Kashiwakura, Tsutomu Japanese

Hasegawa, Yasuo Producer

Akiyama, Katsuhito Director

Nishimori, Akira Director

Iwanami, Yoshikazu Sound Director

Reviews

Jan 10, 2009

bluebrainfreezy

Recommended

I have just a few seconds ago finished watching Ai no Kusabi, but I think I will remain breathless for quite a while.

I was expecting a not too heavy yaoi story involving hot boys in chains, but I got so much more. The story is pretty intense to sit through but its worth it. It has characters whom you actually feel for and a story that fits the old adage of leaving you wanting more.

By the end I was quite taken aback at how good the story was, don't mistake it for a shallow or superficial anime, at its core this ... is one of the best love stories I've ever seen. Regardless of gender, genre, live action/animation, the story has enough integrity to hold its own as a love story.

The art is very earlier nineties style so its a bit nostalgic but if thats not your thing, try to see past it for the sake of the story.

It's a little slow starting but give it a chance, there are some very hot scenes in this short anime & I'd recommend it to anyone who's willing to watch it.

I am now looking forward to seeing the remake when it comes out.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 21, 2024

Gsarthotegga

Mixed Feelings

Funny

I actually watched this one blind, so I had no idea what I was getting into here or that it was a yaoi, which is definitely not something that appeals to me. With that said, I think people who aren't into yaoi would probably be able to appreciate this more than most other titles in the genre, especially those who have a taste for sci-fi and cyberpunk; it helps that the animation is often decent, and the early '90s OVA art is solid. Whatever sexual elements there are tend to be delivered quickly and it's all plot-driven. Unfortunately, to appreciate this to the fullest extent, ... you'll probably have to be into yaoi, or I suspect your appraisal will be low to middling unless you really adore the setting and themes and like obscure 1990s OVAs. While this isn't without artistic merit, it's still on the fetishy side, with a touch of cyberpunk and biker gang b-movie vibes.

Ai no Kusabi doesn't explain too much about its world directly, preferring to suggest meaning and to relay information slowly. Not unlike popular cyberpunk novelists like William Gibson, there's quite a bit of jargon: achilles, trippers, pets, furniture, blondie, mongrel, etc. You can probably guess what a few of those mean easily enough—ESPECIALLY pets and furniture—yeah, it's fetishy alright, and there's a master-slave and bondage schtick going on.

Most of the surroundings are excessively gritty. It seems every wall is textured and filled with holes and cracks. While it's difficult to have a sense for locations and the world building is pretty compressed, these seem to be the slums, where the mongrels live; they lack citizenship, often living as two-bit criminals or shopped around as pets or whatever on the blackmarket. Perhaps we're served an insular part of the world, but it feels as if this seedbed offers nothing but crime, shady bars and back alleys, and oodles of sweaty buttocks for the taking...

There's a strong contrast when it comes to the blondies that control society and are, well, blonde; and the mongrels, who have darker hair and reside at the bottom of the ladder. I'm pretty sure I noticed some blonde pets and some darker haired people of decent status, so I don't think it's a totally black and white setup, but, in a general sense, blondes are in the master relationship and brunettes and the dark-haired are in a slave relationship, and while I'm sure there are those who want to talk about class and artificial distinctions concerning genetics, this is literally just some female author's fetish, to be totally honest... The class setup of the haves and have-nots is just a theme meant to add "depth" to the BDSM play between the main and the "antagonist." There is one question that must be asked when constructing this world, which the authors probably didn't even think of, because their motto, evidently, is to never let a good fetish go to waste. Is hair dye banned and is it even feasible to do so, given the DIY methods that can be used? BOOM! World building destroyed, LOL!

I've probably made this 2-part OVA sound like the grimiest gimp suit sleaze fest, but it's actually tasteful enough for most of the running time. It has a dark, depressing mood kind of reminiscent of something like... I guess, Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, only with the sci-fi trappings of his 2046 and the biker gang from Akira—oh, and don't forget some bondage gear... the imagery is often solid, especially some of the nocturnal scenes drenched in shadow and colored light, replete with plenty of flicked cigarette butts, long stares into the distance with monologue quickies, and characters moping around in the middle of garbage dumps for some reason.

The characters are not terribly interesting, but they sulk enough, if you're into that. I can't see anyone buying into the LOOOOVE here, which is pretty vapid and pointless, coercion aside. Blondie will sacrifice everything to be with his boy toy, but the relationship has the depth of a random encounter with a prostitute with bits of chit-chat every week. The main is basically the reluctant piece of meat who plays the tough guy and then gets drawn looking a bit feminine when he's dominated. You have the humorless, stone-faced, tall, blonde bishonen who snaps his fingers when he wants the trousers to drop, while delivering his lines with such disinterest he might as well be reading from a grocery store list. Then there's the other guy who touched the main character once upon a time and wants to touch him again, but only after they rub all the filthy blondie residue off with a bar of soap. They're basically stock yaoi characters injected with just enough "ennui" and depressive chain-smoking to not seem like complete cardboard.

Within the context of this OVA, the ending is surprisingly strong. About as emotionally impactful as a banal boy toy bonanza can get, and serviced by arresting visuals and fitting dialogue (ahem, relatively speaking). This is an OVA that ended as a satisfying and complete project, unlike the shoddier looking second adaptation of the source material that came out in 2012.

I'd say this is more in the 4-5 range, but perhaps higher if you like both sci-fi and yaoi with a dark early '90s OVA style. I'm giving it a 3 because not only do I not like yaoi, but the OVA is simply too straightforward and slow-paced and thematically a bit sterile. The art to fetish ratio leans more on the fetish side, and while this feels sort of fresh and original in a way, it's really just the same old cyberpunk themes and imagery repackaged with boys love and ball gags.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Nov 23, 2023

bizarreparadox

Not Recommended

Spoiler

i don’t usually leave reviews on this website, mostly because in general i don’t tend to feel the need to state ‘this was good’ or ‘this was bad’ after watching something, but after reading other people’s positive reviews i felt it necessary to leave my negative one.
frankly, this felt like a waste of my 100 minutes. to be fair, my friend and i weren’t taking the idea of watching it entirely seriously, but once i was strapped into the rollercoaster ride of the story, i was hooked, except… not in a good way.
when i say i found this endlessly frustrating to watch, i mean ... it. it’s not that i’m not willing to engage with media that delves into darker topics, or that sympathizes with bad people. but this just… wow. i’m honestly incredibly confused by how people are giving this such good reviews. to be fair! the backgrounds are quite nice, great coloring, and decent small bits of animation throughout, even if the version i watched had very low quality.
but even then the story itself just… it’s not that it’s hard to follow. it’s actually very easy to follow. and it’s not that i don’t get what it’s *trying* to do, it’s that i literally just can’t agree with what it’s trying to do.
i cannot take it seriously at the end when it tries to frame this as some tragic yet beautiful love story. maybe *i’m* the idiot, but if there’s some nuance from the manga here im missing, or maybe i just “watched this wrong” but im just not seeing whatever everyone else is.
lots of yaoi is toxic and, frankly, compared to others, this isn’t even technically the worst that exists, morally. but just because the OVA itself likes to justify it by comparisons, i’m not going to excuse unethical romance just because there’s worse options out there.
ultimately, i cannot take it seriously. it tries to paint the slaveowner, as the one who’s just misunderstood and while possessive, he’s just a guy in love, he only treats riki like shit and not a human being cause he’s so in LOVE with him. god, i could vomit.
i know plenty of yaoi has the whole rapey thing going on, but christ, it never gets more comfortable to watch a character get treated the way riki does throughout this entire thing. i was so incredibly miserable for him the entire 100 minutes, and was frankly incredibly annoyed with the author clearly trying to get me to sympathize with his abuser and dislike the guy who’s trying to save him- it feels EXTREMELY obvious as they try to go ‘see, the guy making riki his slave isn’t SO bad!’ and ‘see, the guy who wants to save him is ACTUALLY not as good of a person’ as if this is some kind of deep nuance when it felt silly to watch. not even that i couldn’t believe the characters were realistic, but rather i couldn’t buy what the OVA was clearly trying to peddle me.
all in all, the world these characters live in is a miserable and unethical one, in which the story is trying to convince me the “”love”” between a master and slave is *ACTUALLY* something tragic, beautiful, heartbreaking, etc. i just could not buy it. and nothing about the characterization of the slave owner was making me go ‘oh wow, he’s not so bad AFTER ALL!’ honestly, i doubt anything could have, but certainly not hearing the other characters talk about his allegedly good personality traits. like sorry no, i’m not going to take you waxing poetic about how it lowers his standing in society to have a ‘mongrel pet’ is actually a ‘risk’ for him, and use that as some ridiculous reason as to the way he treats riki is actually BEAUTIFUL in a way. like give me a break lol!
maybe one day i’ll understand why people like this. it’s not that i’m against the idea of complex, nuanced, dark topics but this just felt like 100 minutes of an unethical, frankly miserable-to-watch experience. i don’t even my media to be ethical, or even good. but something about it has to work for me, and other than the music and some of the visuals, nothing here was working for me.
to round off this, frankly too long review, if you like it because you’re seeing something in the story i’m not, that’s fine. even if you like it just cause it’s what you’re ‘into’ (if you get what i mean) that’s also fine. but for me, i just could not find anything to enjoy about this story and honestly, feel like i was going insane reading all the positive reviews. this is just my personal experience that i wanted to share. thanks and have a good day, if you somehow read a review THIS long.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Ai no Kusabi Episode 2 Discussion suki78787 - May 22, 2009	31 replies	by RenaPsychoKiller »» Mar 27, 8:39 AM
	Poll: Ai no Kusabi Episode 1 Discussion Hannah_Ana - Jun 24, 2010	3 replies	by PxHC »» Jun 24, 2023 12:18 PM
	Intense. 25letters - Apr 27, 2007	6 replies	by MaxCrazy7 »» Mar 29, 2009 11:34 AM

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