Ai Yori Aoshi

Title: Ai Yori Aoshi
Alternate Title: Bluer than Indigo
Genre: Comedy, Slice of life
Run time: 30 minutes
Episode count: 24
Vintage: 2004
Review:

Ai Yori Aoshi is a slice of life anime based on two people who were arranged to be married in childhood. With that being said, the anime starts off with the male lead being in college and by chance running into the female lead.

The animation of this series is done quite well. The colors are vivid. The female lead constantly wears kimonos and they are vividly colored as is her hair and the landscapes. It seems they didn't cut corners anywhere in the animating process. If any corners were cut I could not see them.

Ai Yori Aoshi is full of slapstick humor and off the wall cuteness. However, this doesn't make up for the fact that almost all of the characters are one dimensional and never grow. I think that if they did cut costs in this series is was in the script.

Ai Yori Aoshi leaves a lot for the fans to make up for themselves. Constantly you get a small glimpse of the past and what could happen in the future. However, they stick to the slice of life theme. There is so many places this anime could have went that would have made it a tad more interesting, but for some reason the developers were locked on this slice of life story line. This actually hurt this anime, because for a slice of life it is not very original. Its the archetype of harem and slice of life animes such as Love Hina.

This anime is a fun watch if you like anime with slapstick humor, Japanese cuteness and zany characters, however, it falls short of series such as Azumanga Diaoh. Over all I give this a rating of a 7 out of 10 due to the fact that it is a generic series with many plot points unexplored.

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