Thread by @Exalted_Speed

*So Exalted Speed what long thread on a esoteric subject do you have today?

Well this is a direct sequel to my Van Von Hunter thread about the other project by Tokyopop to expand their brand Princess Ai, a manga created written by Courtney Love...and Stu levi.

Now for intents and purposes this is a Tokypop original manga. It's not OEL because it's drawn by an actual well established manga creator. Ai Yazawa famous for Paradise Kiss and Nana.

just to save myself some pain here's the ending theme to the anime version Paradise Kiss in case people never saw it. This is me saying this isn't a lowkey project but Courtney Love should have signaled that.

Now before I begin I should probably talk about her. Controversial does not even begin to sum it up. The wife of music legend Kurt Cobain front man to 90's tv shirt band Nirvana, she's was also a musician herself but honestly it's been buried by a lot of things.

Now do I think she killed her husband? No, but I don't think she helped all that much, kind of encouraging a life stye that Kurt wasn't ready for or wanted. But honestly I would say she's more famous for the after math of it all then anything she did.

by she did, I mean she was a star herself but I didn't know she had her own band, was an actress or anything else, hell the most I remember her for when I was young growing up in the 2000's was being drunk at a Comedy Central Roast.

But my sister was a HUGE Nirvana fan, she liked old school(she was younger then me) music so I got the Nirvana fan side of the story from her, and I never gave her much thought at the time. Then she wrote a manga, or maybe did? I'm unclear on that to an extent.

there are other controversies the women had drive and there are shockingly a lot of songs by artists about her and how much she sucks as a person. I was into Foo Fighters before I heard about Nirvana(weird right?) and man I'm going to talk about the fued because it play into this

Now, let's talk about this Dave Grohl frontman of Foo Fighters was in Nirvana and when Kurt died Courtney and him were in a feud for a long time but by all account made up in 2014...so I kind of feel like a dick pointing out she made a manga saying he was gay for Kurt.

All right that is ONE HUGE aspect about the manga out of the way before I cover it let's talk about DJ Milky . Who is DJ Milky? At first I assumed it was some obscure musician I never heard of since my music taste boils down to "I listened I like it" and not much deeper.

My plebeian music taste aside(I listed to pet sounds) DJ Milky was actually Stu Levi owner of Tokyopop and man this guy is just a weird goblin dude who somehow finds ways to always back the wrong horse.

the most famous manga tokyopop published at the time was actually Fruits Basket, it had other manga but he was not good at picking the stand outs if you look at what Tokyo pop had vs the hits you have to wonder. Still he got a bunch of shojo in the market.

But there are also cases like Initial D a manga that had a fan base and he tried to marker it like THE NEXT GENERATION OF SPEED RACER, trying to make a more mature series(for one the character art is more teen oriented) for kids and censoring and making the names more English.

Now the reason I bring this up is HE SPENT A LOT OF TIME advertising and making a bunch of shit for Princess Ai often at the expense of other maybe more popular picks. For one the Slayers novels were being brought over but I didn't realize that the FUCKS!

It's also said there is a possibility this was one of the things that BANKRUPTED the company, which is honestly not unlikely because I'm going to go through the franchise as much as I can. Yes this is a franchise. BUCKLE UP PEOPLE. WE HAVE SOUNDTRACKS!

Let's begin with the most well known...okay none of princess Ai is well known this is just going to be a weird unique look at it. Most people who commented were shocked this existed at all.

It also somehow took till this year to realize Ai was a joke on the name Love, honestly there is a lot of references here for one her vagina....I mean Heart shaped box.

but the thrust of the story is a girl from ANOTHER WORLD ends up in our world and she runs into TOTALLY NOT ANIME KURT COBAIN Kent. I mean Kent and him have no similarities at all.

I meant it's not like....Never mind....jesus. This is kind of why anyone knows about the manga, it's not really subtle about being essentially Courtney Love's manga fan fic about her life.

For one meet Hikaru, Kent's friend and roommate who IS GAY FOR HIM AND HATES THE PRINCESS FOR TAKING HIM AWAY. It's kind of obvious this is her essentially making fun of Dave Groul and his relationship with Kurt. Man it was like she was in a lawsuit with him or something!

that's because they actually at the time hated each other and they were in various lawsuits over Nirvana's music, despite Kurt being the face and everything he was not the only band member and I side more with Grohl in that case. Whatever you think, Courtney called him gay.

Now there is more to this than that....but fuck if I know what it is..

I should probably explain see Princess Ai is a half human monster who will bring peach to her world but this plot is so undertold it almost entirely...in the recap pages. Yeah if you want to KNOW THE DEEP LORE you have to read the recap pages.

I'm going to be honest here this also has been described as a magical girl series and if that is the case. This is the worst one I ever read. I'm not blaming the artist on this one, but Ai always either runs from her problems or just sing and it's just not compelling.

the reason i don't blame the artist is because she had done good work. But dear god Stu you can't have her do anything other then people fawn over her?

Ai's art though is honestly really good. Which blows because of the story it's attached too. It's sexy, sometimes funny, beautiful and she knows how to balance it. It really sums up why she was something special.

The big problem is that the story starts with amnesia but we aren't given full details on the plot where Ai is from.
which involve
*a war
*humans vs non humans
*AI being a half human hybrid
We only get scrappings of that story and the recap does THE BULK of it.

The manga has a focus on her getting a music career and this is no Full Moon WO Sagashite. The idol stuff is cool and her costumes are nice but this has been done better in SO MANY PLACES.

The manga ends, and it rather inconclusive, she is the savior of the world but she has to go back and well this is to keep it open because this manga is not the only medium Princess Ai story was told in. Lets BEGIN!

There is a novel. I'm not kidding there is actually a princess Ai novel written by DJ MILKY! Honestly I couldn't find much on it and I can't be arsed to read up on the surly special lore made for this series. But reviews are not good.

this also had...a comic strip. I don't know if this was published somewhere online, some reports said this showed up in magazine. This collection shows a younger Ai also meeting other Tokyo pop characters....like Van Von Hunter.

Princess AI Rose and Tattoos is an odd collection of material primarily an art and sticker book(FOR THE KIDS) this also contain poems written by Stu Levi, guy wanted to publish his poetry book. Wow. Man this is a vanity project on two fronts. WERE STILL NOT DONE.

There is a soundtrack too. I heard that they got another singer for it, but yeah if you want too you can hear her music! Her very out of date music. It's not the worst but I'm only bringing this up to lead to..

The music videos, now the Shoji Kawamori stuff makes sense from the Van Von Hunter stuff, this video features animation by Statelight, the animation studio he works with for Macross projects and other things, man this is special.

The reason I bring up Van VON HUNTER AGAIN is because they share the same DNA and were going to get more of it. You have no idea.

The music video Bleeding Heart is actually a crossover watch as YURI LOWENTHAL returns looking more confused as he is forced to be the ULTIMATE CHUNI once again in a music video as VAN VON HUNTER!

Welcome to the princess Ai extended universe of crap to prmote a brand no one has ever heard of unless your like me who paid attention. Considering how much there is for it you have to wonder how worth it it was.

I saw Red Bard's video on tokyopop and man I'm going to give a slight shade on it, this is probably one of the reasons why Pop ended up the way it did. because all of this stuff really took the focus away from the fandom of tokyo pop.

I describe Tokyo pop as cheap before and I stand by that. It made a lot of manga but moving the focus away from that onto these more risky made in house stuff was and the fallout from that took up there cash as well. I mean they MADE A MOVIE AND MUSIC VIDEOS!

So yeah that is Princess Ai, there is also a two volume sequel manga, but I can't find scans of it to post. Is it good? No honestly it's one of the most confusing manga I've read and a HUGE vanity projects, is it a fascinating trash fire? YES!

still I don't like leaving on a negative, like I said this genre has more interesting takes like Full moon wo sageshite, and classic Creamy Mami. Hell if you want one more MECHA inspired you also have Symphogear. As far as I can tell Stu Levi never had a hand in these.