Love City

アイ・シティ

5.91(3K votes)

Ranked #11451Popularity #7875

episodes

Type

Movie

Status

Finished Airing

Aired

Jul 26, 1986

Studios:AIC, Magic Bus, Ashi Productions

ActionSci-Fi

Synopsis

It's sometime in the future and the story starts off with Kei and Ai running for their lives. Ai is a little girl who holds a terrible secret which could destroy the current world. The world is now populated by Headmeters, people who have psychic powers and their strength is shown on their forehead when they fight. However, Kei was an experimental subject and his strength never went above level 5 while other surpasses his ability effortlessly. While escaping, when in desperate moments, Kei could increase his ability to infinity when Ai is in trouble. The one who's after her have a deep secret, aided by a small dwarflike man living in a robotic suit. Eventually Ai is captured and Kei, a sherlock holmes detective and another Headmeter who was converted to the good side when Kei unleashed his horrible powers through Ai must go and rescue her. Together they must save Ai and the secret which she holds. What is the secret of Ai? Who is she? (Source: AniDB)

8,264 Members

Worth Watching? — Global Verdict

4.9/10

Average Review Score

43%

Recommend It

Reviews Worldwide

International Reviews

RobdeFR

Recommended

Interesting movie we got here, despite it’s clichéd synopsis of the esper guy who has his limited powers and only can use a great amount of power when cornered like a mouse. I’m sure I’ve watched something with a similar synopsis before. The thing about Ai City despite it’s clichéd synopsis and corny title is it does have more inside than meets the eye, especially it’s visuals, the animation is pretty good and provided some very interesting scenes and allied to the esper/psychic nature atmosphere of the anime, it had some very good scenes in it. It tried to include a wide concept into one hourand half, due to that, some stuff was compressed and left outside of the anime, some other stuff was left unexplained [spoiler] I’m still am trying to figure out what happened there. [/spoiler]. But due to it’s crazy aspect about espers and psychics, I think that the random crazyness of some scenes can be left aside, and better than that, can be widely enjoyed. A pretty decent 80s anime movie that will please your hunger for the sci-fi genre of it’s time. Rate; 6.7/10

23 found helpfulNov 30, 2009

ObscureObsidian

Community Discussion

Sometimes, people criticize something saying it doesn't make sense. With anime this happens a lot. You can say that sometimes people just don't get, or didn't want to, but sometimes, when someone says something doesn't make sense, it's because, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Ai City is a good example. Imagine an anime whose script didn't have any sense of pacing, without explaining or exposing anything to you jumps right to an action scene which you can get engaged or excited because you're still wondering what the hell it's going on. That's your first scene. Yeah, didn't sound very promising, but don't worry, the restis worse. But the premise, if it wasn't for the weird story telling, if there's some story to tell here, is actually pretty conventional. There's an evil scientiffic organization that creates superpowered humans, the most powerful one, who's a little girl, escapes, and the organization want her back. Yeah, pretty cliché. Flash-backs are used pretty commonly on anime, and sometimes can be really helpful to understand characters' motivations, make them more synpathetic and give us clues about the plot resolution. But here? Flash-backs suddenly interrupt, and many of them, until they end, you won't know they were flash-backs, making it even more confusing that it already was. But the worst part is the climax, when, suddenly, cheap and misinterpreted phylosophy starts to get throw to viewers eyes and minds, showing that the screenwritters didn't have any idea about what really those phylosophy tesis where, which is pretty funny because it's actually really basic. Many animes has attempted to talk about the darkness in human nature, but dear God, this it was the most cheap, clumsy, hammy and poorly-written example. Evan in the more shallow aspects the movie can't redeem itself. Animation and soundtrack are pretty dated, and even the cheesy nostalgia factor can save the music. Ai City is a pretty obscure title, and it's perfectly understable why. The few people who had seen it rather erase the memories they've watched it, and i'm one of them.

gknight

Not Recommended

Totally messy action movie with sci-fi, comedy and a bit of romance thrown in. It has potential but eventually the story organization is so bad it's just gonna leave you confused and exhausted. From scene one it's hard to tell who the main character is, there is a protagonist but the screen time is divided between his sidekicks and the bad guys as well so there are lots of characters which gets needlessly confusing. To make it worse most of them aren't really interesting or important. At the 1st half the story is shallow yet fun, the bad guys want to kidnap the hero's girl and thegood guys try to protect her. her memory was long erased and the movie starts with her believing the hero, her ex lover, is her father and he plays along with it. this was an interesting story line which disappointingly didn't reach a climax to wrap it up. The last act of the story is incredibly scattered and lacks of reason, just one big wtf full of deus ex machina and there are maybe 4 "final boss" fights. It gets to a point, several times indeed, that is laughably weird and effortlessly explained. The over all production was actually fine, I love the art and coloring of characters and locations, character design of both good and bad guys were nice, the animation is good and also the music had a nice trashy 80s feel to it to fit the cyberpunk mood.

17 found helpfulApr 26, 2013

Typ055

Mixed Feelings

Even as an 80s nostalfag I really couldnt get into this. Its trainwreck, really. Its like they took every bad cliche of the time and threw it in a pot and this came out. Plot is all over the place and the soundtrack is really bad. They also repeat the same tracks too much for a 90 minute movie. Also, way too many flashback scenes. Again, this is a fucking 90 minute movie. We dont need this. It does have some pretty colorful psychedellic scenes though, and the first car chase sequence was pretty cool. But franky, only watch this if you have OCD about seeing every 80scyberpunk movie/ovas out there. If not, stay away

8 found helpfulSep 7, 2019

FongKanCheung

Recommended

I read the manga version many many years ago.....since then I forgot the name of that already, I tried to search without a clue for long. Once in a while, I came across with this anime version and recognized the plot and the characters. Thanks to the awesome Internet (and MyAnimeList), I could finally put my long-time search to an end. This anime version is somehow different than the manga version, and I am not going to include so here. And I want to say that, this Ai City anime kind of makes me like the bad guys more than the good guys, which isa rare case to me. Despite the fact that Ai City was made in the 1980's, there were some revolutionary sci-fi ideas being added to make this a unique classic. Lastly, I just want to mention again that, I was able to retrieve the manga name of Ai City, all because of my discovery of this anime version.

8 found helpfulApr 16, 2018