Ai Kora

OhHaiDer :]


Good afternoon all~ (I think I'm in a sugar rush since I needed to retype afternoon 5 times.)
Today I present to you..
Ai Kora!


Ai Kora


Story & Art: Kazurou Inoue
Publisher: Shogakukan
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Synopsis: (onemanga.com) The plot centeres around Hachibe Maeda, a 15 year old teenager who idolizes women's individual parts. When he moves to Tokyo to attend high school, he finds himself living in a shed near a girls' dormitory which has 5 girls ladies that each possess one of the ideal physical features he desires. The story revolves around Hachibe's quest to indulge in his fetishes and his growing relationships with the other characters.


Art Review: 4/5


I enjoy Inoue's style of art. Very pretty, and humorous when it needs to be. She has a pretty adept control over facial expressions. What I find in a lot of manga is that the facial expressions don't really give too much to the actual emotion of the story. However, other male fetishists look mildly creepy, and I was also never a big fan of Ootori's face. No offense, to anyone who does.


Story Review: This is just another one of your run-of-the-mill harem manga. A miscommunication lands one helluva lucky dude into a women's dorm/house/apartment complex, where they will be studying in elementary/highschool/university, where there are many panty shots, half nude scenes, the hero getting the shit beaten out of him by blushing girls, only to miraculously survive every time, and ends up getting every girl to fall in love with him, despite him being an unattractive loser in most cases. What does separate Ai Kora from other harem mangas is this: the border of creepiness. The basic plot and concept of this manga is creepy, firstly. Fetish for only PARTS of women? That could share the same concept as a horror manga. Where the murderer CUTS OFF the desired parts of women, and creepily cuddle them while sitting in the dark recesses of said person's house, laughing eerily while listening to a song track which consists of slow tempo piano/violin spammery. Not sure if that manga even exists to begin with but if it does, I'll say it again; I'm not surprised. Moving along, it's not even just the basic concept of the "parts fetish" that is creepy, it's what happens in the manga because of these fetishes that make it so odd. At one point, I can't exactly remember why, but Ayame gains 100 pounds and turns herself into a giant sack of fat waste, and Hachibe, for whatever reason, decides to "protect her" by eating himself into obesity as well. It's not that fat people creep me out, it is simply that the amount of food they were eating nearly made me consider being anorexic for a while. Mangas don't usually affect me but until you see it for yourself (which I don't suggest you do), you won't really understand why. Another thing that strikes me as odd is the shared leg fetish Hachibe and the old man (I forget his name ._.) share. They both, at one point in time, come up with the most idiotic ways to have Tsubame step on them with her desired "Sunny-Chan" legs. Another thing that astounds me in this manga is the repeated plot device they use in this manga: Hachibe wants Ootori to sing, Hachibe concocts stupid plan that one should not fall into more than once if you're sharper than a butterknife, Ootori, for whatever reason, falls into the scheme. This not only happens once but many times in the manga. It just makes me want to scream at it and throw it at a wall, but unlike some people I know, screaming at inanimate objects doesn't do anything except make you seem like a spaz and frustrate you even more that it won't change itself just because you want it to. What I also don't like about this manga is the way it turned out. I know, I know, a lot of people don't like the endings because so-and-so didn't end up together. However there are TWO reasons as to why I dislike this ending. Firstly, ok, I'll be honest, I wanted Hachibe to be with Yukari, not Sakurabo, because Sakurabo is pretty irritating for the heroine Hachibe is evidently supposed to fall in love with.  Secondly, the ending is general is stupid. I think it would take more than 4 months to hitchhike back to Japan if you accidentally got onto a plane sent to England. I know Hachibe is pretty much superhuman, but that's a little unrealistic. Additionally, usually by the end of the series, the hero is supposed to be a changed man, and everyone's supposed to be happy, super cheesy-ass ending. But no, while hitchhiking back to Japan, he saved a bunch of girls who all have his ideal parts and somehow they all show up as Hachibe and Sakurabo's tearful reunion began. I don't know why, but the ending irritated me to high hell. Overall, this manga was typical, weird, and a little creepy.


6.5/10