Above, comparison between the art style of the first 5 novels (left) and the last 2 (right). While the first is not bad, I can’t get over the fact that Rikki looks like some little shota waif. It’s too bad the second style was not used for the entirety of the series, as I find it highly expressive, detailed and beautiful.
Ai no Kusabi fits a number of labels - it is a dystopian fiction, a psychological drama, a dark romance, a tragedy, an exploration of class and societal divides, and a damn good science fiction. I hesitate to simply class it as ‘yaoi’; it would be doing the series a great disservice to limit it to such narrow confines. It would be akin to calling an excellent novel ‘chick lit’ simply because it was written by women for women - even if the technical descriptors of the label are true, it comes with negative connotations that simply do not fit the piece in question.
Considered by many to be one of the greatest yaoi tales ever created, Ai no Kusabi is a true timless classic of the genre. Where the Gravitations and Junjou Romanticas come and go and rise and fall in popularity, eventually replaced by newer things, it is not likely that Ai no Kusabi will ever be forgotten.
For this review I will be looking at Ai no Kusabi: The Space Between, the 8 volume serialization of the famous tale, licensed by June (junemanga.com). As with many fans of the series, my first introduction was the two-part OVA, which I will also be discussing as a true classic of the genre, as well as the attempted 2012 4-part reboot. I only recently got my hands on the novels.
In Ceres lives Rikki, the leader of Bison, the top gang of the slums. He is no ordinary ‘mongrel’, possessing the drive, ferocity, intelligence and charisma that make him an unstoppable force as well as a magnet for trouble and attention. Due to a chance encounter he comes across an Elite, from a world totally removed from his slum existence - the Blondy Iason Mink. And while the name conjures up the image of some sort of low-grade stripper, Iason is a powerful and engaging character. It is the force that binds them together and their inability to part ways that sets the story in motion.
In the world of Ai no Kusabi, males outnumber females 9 to 1 and homosexuality is an accepted fact of life. In the yaoi genre it is a cliché for female characters to be rarely or never seen - in the case of Ai no Kusabi this is an important plot point. It is part and parcel of the character identities, their relationships and why everything is how it is. A clever move on the author’s part. This odd setting impacts the characters in more than one way; the idea of having a child is unheard of for the male slum population, and sex is seen as an act of pure pleasure and not of reproduction. In one fell swoop it is both a creative way of not having females around with the ‘everyone is gay’ dynamic you find commonly in yaoi - but also a way of furthering the dystopia concept and the degradation of the slum dwellers. They do not even have that basic human right of having children, producing new generations, something to hope and pray for and make the world better for.
I am hard-pressed to describe the compelling dynamic between Rikki and Iason. Many yaoi deal with abuse, rape, bondage, S&M dynamics. But it is harder to find ones that do it well. In most cases, the semes are paper-thin alpha-males who are crazed with jealousy over ukes that are hardly more than girls with dicks, wimpy, weepy babies who become sexual slaves to their semes. And all this is normally represented as the pinnacle of romance; he’s only raping him because he loves him too much. It’s a sickening stereotype that has given the yaoi genre a bad name.
There is a quality to Iason and Rikki that brings to mind Katherine and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights. Both characters are highly flawed, yet compelling, products of their environments yet struggling to live their lives as they choose. As much as Rikki is bound by the perimeters of the slums, Iason is bound by what it means to be an Elite - following strict rules and conventions, under the ever-watchful eye of Jupiter, an artificial intelligence unit ruling the planet. As their relationship progresses and their ties to one another strengthen, both of them bear the consequences of breaking societal norms. This is no more a romantic, beautiful love than Kathy and Heathcliff’s love was. Rather, it is a dark, obsessive, destructive thing. Iason literally throws away, piece by piece, his perfect life to have Rikki to himself, in the classic story of the man who has everything wanting the one thing he can never truly possess.
It is this power-play between the two that makes it interesting - Iason has the power, yes, but RIkki dominates his heart, capable of making Iason completely lose his shit. You never wonder why Iason is obsessed with Rikki; it is clear to see his attraction to Rikki’s pride and obstinacy, and on a intellectual level they are equals, capable of understanding the nuances in each other’s speech and gestures. Their strange bond is presented as erotic, but not as a romantic ideal. It’s not framed with flowers and sparkles.
But while Rikki and Iason are the backbone of the series, there is plenty more going on: the novels are filled to the brim with interesting characters; Katze the chain-smoking, black market dealer with the eternal poker face, Kirie with his mis-matched eyes and drive to get out of the slums whatever the cost, Guy, once Rikki’s lover, the sane man in an ocean of chaos, Raoul, the ‘mad scientist’ of the Blondies, perhaps the man closest to Iason, among others. There are shocking revelations about the nature of the world itself and how it is run, what is really going on under the shiny surface of this supposedly ‘perfect’ world. The novels are not just ‘mature’ because of explicit sex scenes, but because they deal with mature, psychological themes. It is bleak and it is dark.
On the technical side of things, being a translation, it is difficult to critique the writing style of the novels - where indeed does the blame lay? Was the translation too precise, too loose? Is the awkward phrasing the result of some idiosyncrasies of the Japanese language, or just poor choices on the part of the translator? It is hard to say. Sometimes the writing is good. Page-turningly, heart-thumpingly good. But then all that is interrupted for lengthy bouts of exposition dumps. Besides the routine exposition in each volume to give newcomers some necessary background, the author often takes a ‘tell, don’t show’ approach for pages on end. We are told more often than we need to be told that Rikki is charismatic, that Katze is poker-faced, that the slums suck ass - but the reason why it works is because though the writing does a lot of telling, it does plenty of showing as well. And while there is excellent world-building at hand with distinct settings, jargon and lingo (terms such as Blondies, mongrels, furniture, pets, pet rings and so on ) the translators chose to insert an unusual amount of English sayings and colloquialisms like ‘diamond in the rough’ and ‘grasping for the brass ring’, which just sound jarringly out of place in this dystopian futuristic setting.
While I recommend Ai no Kusabi: The Space Between as a worthy addition to any yaoi, indeed, any sci-fi collection, it is certainly a flawed work. To complement the series, a watch of the original two-part OVA is a must. The excellent voice-acting and expressive animation bring a gravitas to some of the more awkwardly written scenes of the novels and the ending is a pure masterpiece of inevitable cathartic tragedy. I will continue my retrospective of the series with an in-depth look at the OVA next time.
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