I'm All Tied Up In Your Love, Valentine

Review: Loveless
Updated: 12/27/05

Story&Themes/Manga/Anime/Fandom

Reviewed by: Lianne

Title rating: PG-16/R for too many inappropriate things to list in such a small space. For the love of God, don't watch this if you're young.

-12 anime episodes (2005; soon to be in English through Media Blasters), complete
-5+ manga (2002-present; soon to be in English through Tokyopop), still running in ZERO-SUM
-1 OST (complete)
-3+ anime drama CDs (2005-present, still running)
-3+ manga drama CDs (still running?)
-"Loveless Mind Map" (some sort of artbook, and assumedly more are coming...)

I'd like to apologize in advance for this review, which is probably harder to follow than most of the reviews we have posted on this site. Loveless is a circular series, one that there really is no easy way to explain, so its review is appropriately a bit on the crazy side.

But to summarize: Loveless is the story of a 20-year-old bishounen making out with a 12-ear-old cat boy while the two of them are chained together. It has magic powers, masochism, abuse, and lots and lots of butterflies. It's also a thoughtful commentary on perception and identity, and involves a world that's just close enough to Earth to make us question hidden facets of our own society. Loveless, in my mind, is an incredibly important series on a philosophical level, but one not everyone will want to experience because of the pedophilia/shounen ai/furries/annoying comic relief. If you want an easy little romp about magical male hotties, go watch Tactics or pick up a copy of DN Angel. About 80% of the benefits that can be gained through reading/watching Loveless can only be gained if it's read/watched with a critical eye.

Okay, so why is Loveless important? The themes and messages seem to weave between the manga and anime versions of the series, so I'm going to discuss Loveless in general before commenting on its separate tellings. This may take a while.

Story & Themes

Once day, when cheerful Ritsuka Aoyagi was 10 years old, his personality did a 180 and he became an angsty little son of a bitch. Nobody's quite sure what happened--he lost all memory of his time before the switch, and he seemingly retains few traits from his "former life" (such as likes, dislikes, and a general happiness about being alive). Two years later, whilst regularly visiting a shrink and struggling through his psychotic mother's attempts at beating the angst out of him, Ritsuka finds out that his only confidant--his older brother Seimei--has been suddenly and mysteriously burned alive and left at Ritsuka's elementary school seat. So…time to switch schools? Time to switch schools.

Ritsuka and Seimei, before all the horrible.

Now that 12-year-old Ritsuka has to deal with his personality disorder, an abusive mother, and the haunting murder of his brother nipping at his heels, something even more fun shows up--Soubi, a beautiful college student without his virginity (because he has no cat ears, you see) who claims to have been a friend of Seimei's. Soubi promptly confesses his love for Ritsuka, explains that now the two of them are going to be an unstoppable magical fighting team, and starts coming onto the sixth grader with nothing hindering his pedophilia other than the claim, "I won't actually have sex with you until you're older."

At this point, most audience thoughts can be summed up thusly: "What the hell is this sick little series?" For anyone who takes Loveless literally, there's a lot to hate here--romaticiszed pedophilia is #1 on the "Inappropriate" list, but there's also all the abuse, and so very many underage furries. *shudder* But Loveless is a symbolic tale, a commentary on society and relationships and sex and power, and all the magic powers and twisting little mysteries are just the pretty soapbox on which the mangaka (Yun Kouga) stands. But for those of you who (understandably) avoid Loveless for its disturbing traits, keep in mind that a critical read/watch can reveal layers of social analysis and an exploration of underrepresented facets of the human condition. Since I don't want this review to get too long or too confusing, I'll just discuss a single example that represents Loveless's symbolic--and significant--nature.

Soubi, quite literally, is a beautiful man who likes a little boy. But he's not really much of a man, with his yaoi-cliché flowing hair and women's coats, and he's not really much of a pedophile, since the biggest reasons he's drawn to Ritsuka are emotional (although it can also be argued that the sex is more for Ritsuka's benefit (-_-;), Soubi comments on his own feelings pretty non-sexually: "This skin that separates you and me…it is a nuisance"). If one follows the series, one can see that Soubi is a personification of the secret struggle--both internal and external--that many people regularly have with dominance and submission and interwoven identity issues, a message that probably rings most true with the ladies in the audience. He's like that beautiful and mysterious girl whom everyone wants, that girl who doesn't talk much so all the boys project their own ideal personalities onto her. If she thinks the only way to be liked is to be what they want, maybe she'll be demure when she's actually confident, or a minx when she's actually scared. Is being dominant for the sake of being liked actually submission, and is choosing to be submissive actually an act of dominance? And how much of ourselves is actually ourselves, if we only live our lives in constant power plays with our environments? Is Soubi much of a person at all, or is he just a beautiful animal trapped in a balance of power?

A lot of the themes in Loveless work in circles (particularly since the anime has an open ending and the manga isn't yet complete), so we'll stop there. Maybe I'm giving Loveless too much credit--but with all the manga I've read and all the anime I've watched over the years, I'm willing to give a lot of credit to any series that keeps me up thinking at night. Loveless is for those people who like fiction to push them into reflecting long and hard on reality.

…Of course, Loveless is also a decent enough series that it can be watched and enjoyed on a literal level, so let's get into that.

Manga

Yun Kouga first became famous some 20 years ago with her series Earthian, a blasphemous shounen ai tale that was animated once or twice and even released domestically (the anime, at least--the manga is just coming out in English now, through BLU). Loveless is currently running in the ZERO-SUM phonebook manga magazine alongside series like Saiyuki Reload and Weiss Kreuz, and has only spawned about a half-dozen volumes of manga so far.

The thing most people notice about Yun Kouga is her intensely interesting art. It's very pretty, and creepy, and can be hard to follow. Her cover images and color art tend to be the most interesting/disturbing--the cover of Volume 3 of the manga involves Soubi strolling around with Ritsuka slung over his shoulder, and then there's the lovely image of Soubi wearing fake cat ears posted above. This manga can be a difficult read, even in an aesthetic sense--besides the fact that the storytelling isn't particularly straight-forward, the paneling can make the eye work a bit. But Yun Kouga's style is undeniably appealing, and like Basara or Escaflowne: The Movie, the art of Loveless is so rich and ethereal that sometimes the reader feels more like s/he has fallen into someone's dream-inspired painting and is just looking around as opposed to following an actual story. Considering Loveless's success as a symbolic work, that type of storytelling is actually appropriate.

I had to erase the dialogue in those bubbles, but it had something to do with the puppies in Soubi's van.

The story is a lot more complicated than I described in the Story & Theme sections, and the manga in particular contains a lot of world/plot details that make Ritsuka's adventure surprisingly compelling. But that's something best left to an actual reading of the series--Loveless is a mystery seen through the eyes of a confused 12-year-old, so going in without much information will result in a fun mind trip. Just don't feel stupid if you have to read it more than once; lots of people do.

Tokyopop is going to start running the series in English in about a month, and the release has already garnered a lot of marketing and even more word-of-mouth press. I know the Tokyopop editor for Loveless (who is an awesome human being) understands the care such a series needs, so here's hoping for a really good domestic release.

Anime

Don't ask me who the hell thought an artistic shounen ai manga about magical pedophilia was ideal for TV animation, but Loveless seems to be riding the wave of the new "Let's get an older female audience for anime" mindset going on in Japan right now (Paradise Kiss TV, Honey and Clover TV, etc.). If I had to guess, whoever picked up Loveless was somebody who really, really liked it, not only because it was picked up, but because the anime is fantastic.

Big props to the Loveless TV production team for turning a difficult manga into a linear, gorgeous anime with great directing and fantastic music. It took a lot of talent to bring Loveless to the small screen, and I cringe at the thought of a cruder team (like the one that animated Peach Girl?) having gotten their hands on it and turning it into a shallow, callous fangirl tale. Although Loveless TV occasionally does dip into the "Was that really necessary?" territory with its edgy material--something the manga itself also does, of course--it's largely a mature work that successfully draws a mature viewing from its audience. It's also delightfully self-aware at times:

Soubi's best friend: Be careful around Soubi. Regardless of what he looks like, he's totally got a Lolita complex.

Pre-pubescent magical boy Soubi picked up: We know.

Pre-pubescent magical boy Soubi picked up #2: And he's a pretty serious masochist, too!

Getting hit with a magical attack results in you getting wrapped up in magical chains. Effective and kinky!

Pros of the anime include beautiful magical battles (that mostly just consist of "strong wind!" in the manga), an awesome director, and a fantastic crop of voice actors with unique voices--Ritsuka and Soubi are both stellar, although also of note are the teacher who sounds like she's whispering everything and magical boy Youji who's got the perfect bitchy, underage, J-Drama boy voice going on. The music is amazing; I know I'm not the only one partial to the lovely opening and ending themes, and many of the BGMs, including a beautiful and cryptic French piece as the theme for dead Seimei, are perfect. The Loveless OST is the first anime soundtrack I've picked up in a long time, and I want those Drama CDs (since I heard they feature the anime seiyuu). Curse my lack of a money tree.

Unfortunately, the anime does remain rather vague on some of the story points, and most viewers will find themselves returning to the manga to clarify that Ritsuka actually has multiple personalities and that the cat ears actually symbolize virginity. I understand that the anime was done in a pretty minimalist style and therefore couldn't spell everything out for the audience, so I don't really blame it for that vagueness…but still, the average viewer will probably be squinting a bit during his/her initial viewing.

The Loveless anime is a short 12 episodes and starts its Region 1 release on, ironically, Valentine's Day. Since it's coming out through Media Blasters, I heard it may not contain a dub, but I hope that's not true--I'd love to see a company try and dub this. I just sincerely hope no one chooses to have an actual child voice the child.

Fandom

Loveless has its share of strange fans--the otaku who seem to think Loveless is a "great mainstream shounen ai title" (?!) or spend all their time squealing about the LESBIANS KISSING in the middle of the series. But there's also a large percentage of intelligent fans who realize Loveless is about a lot more than pretty cat people: as of right now, I really like this pretty spoiler-ish analysis and discussion on the NOATED forums, which brings up points I didn't notice the first time I watched the show. Of particular note are the detailed reviews of Loveless's many forms (including the Drama CDs!) on The Usagi Incidents blog, which include lots of spoilers and even a bit of analysis for the Loveless anime, manga, OST, anime CD dramas, and manga CD dramas. If you want a quick fanpage with cool pictures, Image Garden is a good place, and I can't seem to stop watching this on an endless loop. I know the Loveless fandom is a decently large one and can only grow with the domestic release of the anime and manga, but that should get your started.

Overview

Loveless is a surprisingly intelligent, intriguing, and thought-provoking series, but it's also about a grown man kissing a little boy, child abuse, and lots and lots of "teh GAY." Enjoy responsibly, all right? And I'd recommend watching the anime first and then using the manga to fill in the plot details and continue on with the story. Coincidentally, the last episode of the anime is titled "Endless"--and with the questions this series brings up, that appropriately describes the nature of Loveless's philosophical debate. 4 stars out of 5.

Happy Valentine's Day!