Alright...here's my review on the manga series Princess Ai.

    I thought at first when I read Vol. 1 of Princess Ai that it was an okay manga.  The art was good and the plot was so-so since I've seen a few anime/mangas with that similar plotline (or that I've been readin' too much fanfiction...or it could be both).  Character designs are well done by Ai Yazawa. The outfits Ai wears are also beautiful and the lyrics are splendid. Some of the problems for me with this manga is the plotline as I mentioned earlier, but it's also the art as the story goes along. Within each volume I noticed that the art started to become gradually more disproportionate.  Vol. 1 was just fine. By volume 2 it started to show a bit, and by Volume 3, it just seemed like the artist just got plain lazy and didn't care if the characters weren't proportionate (ex: one page Ai has normal length legs and then BAM! she has legs like a giraffe on the next panel/page). In my opinion, the proportions are so bad in Vol. 3 that Ai now looks like an anorexic Barbie doll with implants. 
    Another thing that bugged me was Ai herself. Yes, I know she’s supposed to be Courtney Love’s “alter ego”, but the character is a spoiled brat. Who would like to have a spoiled brat as a main character? It just gets plain annoying after a while seeing her having temper tantrums because things just doesn’t go her way.
    Also usage of cliché is just too much to the point where I struggled in pain to finish Vol. 3. Vol. 2 was just the start of the clichés like for example: Ai's singing able to suddenly convert Tess from the bad side to the good? Come on people...isn’t that a little bit cliché?  Vol. 3 had the most obvious clichés I have ever seen in my life. Jen’s death, yes it’s supposed to be sad....but they just killed it. Another one was at the end of the series:  Kent being saved from the arrow by the pendant Ai gave him....it was a little obvious for it to happen. It’s a romance story and it seems like the authors aren’t the type to kill off characters.
    The story also seemed a bit rushed. It could’ve been better, but it might’ve been the cause of rushed deadlines since its only three volumes.  I was also hoping for a better ending to leave the story at least on a good note with me after all of the bad proportions and horrible clichés within the plotline. Instead they left it incomplete and it just disappointed me even more. I appreciate Courtney Love making a manga, but it just didn’t work. She needs to make sure that the story will flow correctly and that the storyline doesn’t go crashing like a plane on fire falling towards its doom. I might be a little bit harsh, but this manga seemed to have great potential to be better. I know so many people I’ve seen love this manga, but I guess I’m one of the very few who wasn’t impressed very much.  It was disappointing, a little obvious, cliché, and Ai is not a likable character.

 
My rating: 2.4/5