This is the first manga written by Ken Akamatsu (of Love Hina fame). Ordinarily, I don't go in for harem manga, but Ken Akamatsu generally manages to actually do a good job with his. Sure, it gets a bit cheesy and predictable, but what manga doesn't these days? Sure, there's a lot of fanservice and a fair amount of unnecessary drawings of girls in swimsuits, but I think that comes with the territory. That would be like reading shonen-ai and then freaking out because there were two men kissing. Sure, it's completely unrealistic, but that's why fans of the genre read it. It's the same reason that a similar audience plays H-games...they want to see an awkward, usually fairly plain looking, nerdy, boring, regular guy get his pick of any number of ridiculously attractive girls. What I like about Ken Akamatsu, is that, generally speaking, his girls have personality. They don't just submit to whatver whim the hero character has at the time. I mean, look at Love Hina......Naru is ALWAYS beating the crap out of Keitaro.....the guy can't catch a break. But let's talk about THIS series....

I haven't finished it yet, but I have read enough of it to have formed a pretty solid opinion. The main thing that you have to remember is that it's kind of old. I mean, it's not 1970s old, but it is early 1990's old. It came out before Love Hina (started in 1994 and ran through 1997), but the art is still classic Ken Akamatsu. In fact, the main female character looks eerily similar to Narusegawa of Love Hina. Our hero in this series (Hitoshi Kobe) is a high schooler who's terrible at sports, a terrible student, awkward with girls, and pretty much has no friends....a classic harem hero. In this case, however, he has one special skill...he's really good at creating A.I. programs. So, he makes "female" A.I. programs to be his surrogate friends/girlfriends. As the series opens, he's working on his best creation ever.....program number 3o, an A.I. so advanced that it is actually capable of rational thought and conversation. And now..........for the completely unrealistic part. After a particularly unfortunate day at school, our hero is talking with #30 and working out some of the kinks, when a freak lightning bolt hits his house and travels down into the computer. Kobe is worried that he lost his program, but, much to his delight, he discovers that she's been transformed into a real live girl. And, just like that, he gets a girlfriend. Fortunately, he lives by himself, so she can now live with him and cook his meals (with paint...and other weird ingredients). She also goes to school, tries to act like a normal high school girl, and helps out Kobe by talking to the computers and doing things like changing his grades and getting him more money. As you can imagine, hilarity (at least moderate hilarity) ensues, and we add more A.I. girls and more A.I. problems to the mix.

A.I. Love You isn't an awesome series (it's certainly no Love Hina), but it's pretty good, reasonably well written, decently drawn, and there are a lot of references to "high tech" computer terms of the early 1990s. For his first manga, Ken Akamatsu has created a series that held even my interest through the first 7 volumes.........and beyond.

Grades:

Art: B
Story: B
Characters: B+
Overall: B+

posted by Yukino at 9:37PM