2012 Anime Adaptation

Ai no Kusabi 2012

Anime International Company, Inc. (AIC) which had originally animated the 1990s OVAs, announced in December 2008 that it would release the remake of Ai no Kusabi in spring 2009. It was originally announced that the anime will consist of 13 episodes, but it was later confirmed to be 12. However, the production has faced numerous difficulties throughout because of financial issues, most probably due to the global financial crisis. After being postponed to spring 2010, the production was halted altogether later in the year.

Eventually, after the production company was changed, the anime was released in 2012. But after the release of the first 4 episodes, due to lack of funding and poor sales, the production of the OVAs was discontinued.

## Production Issues

### First Announcement

In December 2008, AIC announced a 13 episode remake which would be released in late 2009 by Ken Media. In March 2009, the staff created a blog where they documented the production process. At the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009 in late March, the first trailer was shown. As the year went on, it became clear that they were struggling and the release date was pushed back yet again to the spring of 2010 (still to be 13 episodes). In August 2009, a trailer was released at the Comiket convention. An 8 minute preview video featuring footage from episode 1 was released in late 2009. The same year, a second teaser was released.

The Ai no Kusabi staff organised preview events at Cafe801 between March 20-22 2010 where they handed out promotional materials. In order to win tickets a survey had to be filled. The survey and the promo materials can be found here.

The production was finally halted in April 2010. There was no official explanation as for why, but it is believed that the global economic crisis of 2008 had an impact on the struggling finances, as well as low pre-sales and several severe natural disasters that happened around that time.

A 20 minute promotional video was released in February 2011 which featured the same 8 minute promotional video from 2009 as well as the interview with the director, Katsuhito Akiyama,

### Second Announcement

In September 2011 it was announced that the production will be continued with a new publisher, Pony Canyon, and the remake was slated for release from January 2012. The official website was relaunched on September 22, the e-mail magazine resumed and a twitter page was created to keep the fans updated. The same month, AnK staff had a booth at the Animated Girls Festival 2011 where they distributed promotional flyers and finally showed a brand new trailer. The release dates were announced for the first 4 episodes, but at the time it wasn't confirmed how many episodes the anime will have in total. However eventually, due to financial troubles and low sales, only these first 4 episodes were released. Some fans projected that only about a third of the DVDs needed for the anime to break even were sold.

## Japanese Release

Each episode was released in 3 versions: DVD Standard Edition, Blu-ray Standard Edition and Blu-ray Limited Edition which came with the script for the given episode, a keychain of one of the characters, booklet with settei and staff interviews as well as another goods item which was different for each OVA.

1. OVA 1 ～petere 檻獣～ (18 January, 2012)
2. OVA 2 ～pardo 折翼～ (15 February, 2012)
3. OVA 3 ～congressus 邂逅～ (21 March, 2012)
4. OVA 4 ～Retino 淫縛～ (18 April, 2012)

Those who bought the first-release limited edition Blue-ray of all 4 OVAs could get a booklet with an extra short story, File-0, written by Rieko Yoshihara. Each of the limited-edition Blue-rays came with an entry form, and buyers had to submit all the forms in order to receive the short story booklet.

## English Language Releases

### English Sub

In 2013 American company Media Blasters officially licensed the series in English. They released the 4 OVAs on DVD on April 23, 2013 with English subtitles. However, these subtitles contained numerous mistranslations and spelling and grammatical errors.

### English Dub

In 2017 Media Blasters re-released Ai no Kusabi with English dub, provided by Kocha Sound, on DVD and Blu-ray on December 19, 2017. Aware of the poor translation of the subbed version, Kocha Sound attempted to do a better job of bringing Ai no Kusabi to international audience with limited success. Unable to procure the first 6 volumes of the official English translation, the team had to rely on volumes 7 and 8, which are notoriously poorly translated, as well as fan blogs and resources which, especially at that time, were unreliable. Some new sections were even included based on source material.

This process resulted in a markedly better translation than the subtitled version, but it wasn't without major errors either. For more details refer to the English Dub page.

## Fan Translations

Given no other recourse, fansubbing communities for various languages translated the OVAs themselves:

* English - Due to Media Blasters' poor translations, Aarinfantasy subbed the OVAs into English, which were more accurate.
* French - Yaoi Ouji subbed the OVAs into French.
* Russian - Cat&Lynx subbed the OVAs into Russian.
* Italian - Yaoi801 Fansub subbed the OVAs into Italian.