 Alternative TitlesSynonyms: Love Wedge, The Space Between, Wedge of interval, Wedge of LoveJapanese: 間の楔 More titlesInformation Episodes: 2 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Aug 1, 1992 to May 1, 1994 Duration: 54 min. per ep. Rating: R+ - Mild Nudity Statistics Score: 7.051 (scored by 1990919,909 users) Ranked: N/A22 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #3717 Members: 39,133 Favorites: 406 Resources |
Details Characters & Staff Episodes Videos Stats Reviews Recommendations Interest Stacks News Forum Clubs Pictures Ranked N/APopularity #3717Members 39,133SynopsisOn 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]Related Entries  MALxJapan -More than just anime- Characters & Voice Actors Staff "Midnight Illusion" by Toshihiko Seki "Eternal" by Ishihara Shin'ichi Reviews  Jan 10, 2009 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 What did you think of this review? Nice 0 Love it 0 Funny 0 Confusing 0 Informative 0 Well-written 0 Creative 0Show all  Mar 21, 2024 Mixed FeelingsFunny 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 What did you think of this review? Nice0 Love it0 Funny0 Confusing0 Informative0 Well-written0 Creative0Show all  Nov 23, 2023 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 What did you think of this review? Nice0 Love it0 Funny0 Confusing0 Informative0 Well-written0 Creative0Show all Interest Stacks   44 Entries · 241 Restacks   49 Entries · 303 Restacks   Recommendations Recent NewsRecent Forum DiscussionRecent Featured Articles Top 15 Best Yaoi Anime: Why is Boys Love Beloved By Girls? Yaoi anime and Boys' Love (BL) anime are some of the most recognizable and popular genres in the medium. Have you ever wondered why they are mostly aimed at female audiences and what makes them so irresistible? Come to the dark side for a moment and peek into the magical world of BL fandom. |