After one iffy release, followed by a so-so follow up. My expectation for the 3rd release of Ai Yori Aoshi hasn’t been all that high. Thankfully I was proved wrong with this volume… well kind of.

Finally the story is starting to thicken and get a bit more serious with more, stories and less fan service. I guess during this point during the series, the producers got all the ratings they were looking for. Right at the start, we are introduced to another girl, Mayu, who has returned to Japan after living in Europe for such a long time. She may be 16 years old, but she's is smart enough to attend university… and smart enough to try and move her way into Kaoru’s heart… well try at least. I’ll stop right there, because things just get very amusing for this point on in the series. A lot of the events that unfold on this disk, places heavy stress on the relationship between Aoi and Kaoru, which will leave you wondering… Will they have the power to make it through? Or will he end up with someone else?

Outside of the interesting story, these 5 episodes provide quite a bit of laughs. There’s still some fan service here and there, but like I said before, it’s quite a small amount in comparison to the last release. But overall, a good watch.

Visually, the animation is still looking slick, even if it does manly consist of cute girls with slightly large breasts. Can’t go wrong with that, further more, much of the outfits the girls wear throughout the episodes will please many fanboys. And… oh yes, Tina still gropes women’s breasts… well mostly Taeko.

But moving away from the anime for a sec, Pioneer did make sure that this will be as amusing to look at… while not watching the anime it’s self. The packaging like the last release comes with revisable covers. One cover, of course being the default one, with Tina and Maya fighting (Something they do a lot). The other, one with Aoi wearing her grandmother’s Kimono. It also comes with a nice insert in which, if you unfold it, you get a cute picture of Aoi. 

As Matt discovered in our first review, the video is more or less flawless. Nothing wrong with it what so ever. This is good, because the last thing you want is aliasing to mess up such great looking animation. I haven’t had many problems with the audio; everything plays clear with the stereo mix that is included for both Japanese and English tracks. I took the time to listen to this in both the English and Japanese audio. In terms of audio quality, both sounded clear. In terms of voice acting? I regret having listen to the English, many of the character voices just didn’t seem to match up very well. Not sure what it is, but something just didn’t seem right. Plus this is a Bang! Zoom Entrainment dub… I think this is the first dub from them I was disappointed in.

I didn’t quite feel for the extras on this as well. There were more or less the same as the last disk, with Creditless Endings, nicely done Art Gallery featuring pics of Taeko and Mayu. Most of them good quality images. Episode 15 special ending, Pioneer promos and the revisable cover… then again I mentioned that already… the cover that is.

Well one thing I do like is the menus; Pioneer has put together some good looking menus for this. I to some extent like the transitions it goes through when you make a selection. The overall design and layout for them looks pretty good as well.

It certainly took long enough to change my thoughts of this series. At first I wasn’t too sure about its future, but now it seems to be getting very interesting. Though I have a good idea how things will end, there’s still that chance it might not, thus making me want to stick around much longer. But despite all that, I still can’t recommend it to everyone, just those looking to finish the series, and those that want to see lots of cute girls.