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Princess Ai: Encounters
The latest exciting Ai Anthology from Tokyopop! Featuring a peek into the Tokyopop universe, this volume showcases TP's wide range of original creative talent by throwing our characters into the mix with Princess Ai and her friends! Whether Ai is rocking out with Ein from 'A Midnight Opera', playing at the high school prom for the cast of 'Rhysmyth', or visiting Pamela at 'The Tarot Cafe' to solve a mystery, it's our beloved rock sensation as we've never seen her before!
192 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
1 person is currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
D.J. Milky
83 books32 followersD.J. Milky is the author pen name of creator and entrepreneur Stu Levy.
Born in Los Angeles, Stu is the founder, CEO, and Chief Creative Officer of the manga media company TOKYOPOP. Stu also produces, directs, and writes for graphic novels, film, and television. His preeminent work "Princess Ai" debuted at #1 on the National Bookscan charts for Graphic Novels.
Stu’s creative works include writing the children’s novels “Sailor Moon – A Scout is Born”, “Sailor Moon – The Power of Love”, and “Karma Club”; children’s books “Stray Sheep” and “Kung Fu Klutz & Karate Cool”; and the graphic novels “Juror 13” and the “Princess Ai” series, created with Courtney Love. He has also translated manga volumes of “Parasyte”, “Sailor Moon”, “Ice Blade” and “Magic Knight Rayearth”. He also has written and produced a series of songs including anime theme songs and a soundtrack from “Princess Ai”.
Stu holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics/Business from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. He studied at Tokyo University and Keio University in Japan and is a California attorney. Currently, Stu chairs the Producer Guild of America's International Committee and was previously a Board Member of its New Media Council. He is fluent in Japanese.
Born in Los Angeles, Stu is the founder, CEO, and Chief Creative Officer of the manga media company TOKYOPOP. Stu also produces, directs, and writes for graphic novels, film, and television. His preeminent work "Princess Ai" debuted at #1 on the National Bookscan charts for Graphic Novels.
Stu’s creative works include writing the children’s novels “Sailor Moon – A Scout is Born”, “Sailor Moon – The Power of Love”, and “Karma Club”; children’s books “Stray Sheep” and “Kung Fu Klutz & Karate Cool”; and the graphic novels “Juror 13” and the “Princess Ai” series, created with Courtney Love. He has also translated manga volumes of “Parasyte”, “Sailor Moon”, “Ice Blade” and “Magic Knight Rayearth”. He also has written and produced a series of songs including anime theme songs and a soundtrack from “Princess Ai”.
Stu holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics/Business from UCLA and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. He studied at Tokyo University and Keio University in Japan and is a California attorney. Currently, Stu chairs the Producer Guild of America's International Committee and was previously a Board Member of its New Media Council. He is fluent in Japanese.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 17, 2019
This second compilation book in the Princess Ai series is sadly not as successful as Rumours From The Other Side. Whilst the individual stories have a higher page count to flesh out an interesting story, they now have the added issue of tying Ai into a completely new setting and make you interested in picking up another series. Unfortunately the success is limited.
The book starts strong with Ai teaming up with The Tarot Cafe to save a kidnapped Kent. Sang Sun-Park's art style is gorgeous, detailed but still easily readable, and The Tarot Cafe's magical and fallen angel characters are a great match for an Ai storyline. Most importantly for a cross over manga, it actually made me want to pick up a copy of TTC.
The MyCatLoki entry leaves less of an impact. Ai and Kent's relationship is sweet as they sneak away from HTA for a day by themselves, but then we meet the MCL characters. This was a chance for Kurkoski to attract some new readers, but all we learn is that there's an artist who owns a shy cat, hardly a character reveal to get us hooked, and ultimately come across as very dull. And the art Ai commissions from him looks like something a tween would post on deviantart. Yikes.
Re:Play spends more time on the author's original characters, and whilst they have a serious case of same face, they are a lot more fun than those in MCL. As the characters are in a band they're able to have some interesting conversations with Ai about music and fame in a way that doesn't feel too forced.
Rhysmyth is clearly aimed at a younger audience, following a high school love triangle so it seems harsh to he too critical of the storyline. Just because it's aimed at kids though, doesn't excuse the basic art style, full of floppy noodley limbs and flat faces. Given that the plot of Rhysmyth seems to involve a cross between DDR and twister, its bizarre that artist Lincy Chan doesn't seem to know how bodies work.
Steinbach's art was one of the standouts of Rumours for its detail and scale, but in A Midnight Opera it becomes uncontrolled and difficult to read what is going on. The story is a good match for Ai (another supernatural singer) with some good moments of humour, and is one of the few stories where you might end up buying the artist's original series.
Campbell and Mebberson's entry in Rumours was one of the funniest, showing Mika's bitter version of the events of the first trilogy. They tread similar ground again in their Divalicious story, making some fair criticisms against Ai, but it increasingly seems like they don't actually like the series for which they're writing, and the 180 turn at the end sounds half hearted and insincere. Their entry seems less like they're trying to make you interested in reading their own manga and more like they're trying to convince you not to read Princess Ai, leaving the reader with a bad taste in the mouth.
The Battle Of The Bands story is just . . . odd. I've no idea how representative it is of the original work but to me it was more frustrating than entertaining, though that's likely down to personal taste. Objectively though, Kent's characterisation misses the mark by a wide stretch.
The book finishes with a preview from Prism of Midnight Dawn, the next Ai series. The art is beautiful as you'd expect from Kujiradou, but the story that we see is light weight at best. Instead if following Ai's return to Ai-land and the end if the war we skip ahead a year to where things seem more or less okay, but Ai is in a song writing slump. Princess Ai has often glossed over more interesting and difficult stories but here it feel particularly egregious. Obviously a lot of fans enjoy the relationship and music plotlines, but with such a richer and larger story ready to be told, it's a disappointment.
Whilst not actively boring the reader, Princess Ai Encounters is sadly both a less fun and interesting read than the previous compilation book Rumours, and a poor advertisement of other TokyoPop series.
The book starts strong with Ai teaming up with The Tarot Cafe to save a kidnapped Kent. Sang Sun-Park's art style is gorgeous, detailed but still easily readable, and The Tarot Cafe's magical and fallen angel characters are a great match for an Ai storyline. Most importantly for a cross over manga, it actually made me want to pick up a copy of TTC.
The MyCatLoki entry leaves less of an impact. Ai and Kent's relationship is sweet as they sneak away from HTA for a day by themselves, but then we meet the MCL characters. This was a chance for Kurkoski to attract some new readers, but all we learn is that there's an artist who owns a shy cat, hardly a character reveal to get us hooked, and ultimately come across as very dull. And the art Ai commissions from him looks like something a tween would post on deviantart. Yikes.
Re:Play spends more time on the author's original characters, and whilst they have a serious case of same face, they are a lot more fun than those in MCL. As the characters are in a band they're able to have some interesting conversations with Ai about music and fame in a way that doesn't feel too forced.
Rhysmyth is clearly aimed at a younger audience, following a high school love triangle so it seems harsh to he too critical of the storyline. Just because it's aimed at kids though, doesn't excuse the basic art style, full of floppy noodley limbs and flat faces. Given that the plot of Rhysmyth seems to involve a cross between DDR and twister, its bizarre that artist Lincy Chan doesn't seem to know how bodies work.
Steinbach's art was one of the standouts of Rumours for its detail and scale, but in A Midnight Opera it becomes uncontrolled and difficult to read what is going on. The story is a good match for Ai (another supernatural singer) with some good moments of humour, and is one of the few stories where you might end up buying the artist's original series.
Campbell and Mebberson's entry in Rumours was one of the funniest, showing Mika's bitter version of the events of the first trilogy. They tread similar ground again in their Divalicious story, making some fair criticisms against Ai, but it increasingly seems like they don't actually like the series for which they're writing, and the 180 turn at the end sounds half hearted and insincere. Their entry seems less like they're trying to make you interested in reading their own manga and more like they're trying to convince you not to read Princess Ai, leaving the reader with a bad taste in the mouth.
The Battle Of The Bands story is just . . . odd. I've no idea how representative it is of the original work but to me it was more frustrating than entertaining, though that's likely down to personal taste. Objectively though, Kent's characterisation misses the mark by a wide stretch.
The book finishes with a preview from Prism of Midnight Dawn, the next Ai series. The art is beautiful as you'd expect from Kujiradou, but the story that we see is light weight at best. Instead if following Ai's return to Ai-land and the end if the war we skip ahead a year to where things seem more or less okay, but Ai is in a song writing slump. Princess Ai has often glossed over more interesting and difficult stories but here it feel particularly egregious. Obviously a lot of fans enjoy the relationship and music plotlines, but with such a richer and larger story ready to be told, it's a disappointment.
Whilst not actively boring the reader, Princess Ai Encounters is sadly both a less fun and interesting read than the previous compilation book Rumours, and a poor advertisement of other TokyoPop series.
February 12, 2018
Ouch, did this one take a hit from me. So far I've loved all the other Princess Ai volumes I've read, including the other compilation of short stories from various artists. This one though, fell a little flat for me. I think the last three stories (not including the preview pages for Princess Ai: The Prism of Midnight Dawn) were really what prevented this from being rated higher for me. The short by Hanzo Steinbach in particular was my least favorite; it felt like a very clumsy mish-mash of the lore from Princess Ai and his own work, A Midnight Opera, and worse still, all the characters from Princess Ai came across as being extremely OOC. The two stories following his both sort of fell very flat and just came across as being bizarrely cracky, and detracted quite a bit from my enjoyment of the volume overall.
Suffice it to say that since I've gotten into collecting what material I can for Princess Ai overall, I am still happy to have this volume in my collection. I just wish that the stories had all been more moving and powerful, and sadly, they weren't.
Suffice it to say that since I've gotten into collecting what material I can for Princess Ai overall, I am still happy to have this volume in my collection. I just wish that the stories had all been more moving and powerful, and sadly, they weren't.
August 31, 2025
I couldn’t find where to read the 2nd volume of the main story online, so I decided to read this, I really liked this and the variety of art styles it had because all the stories were so well drawn
February 1, 2014
This second collection of Princess Ai short comics follows on the success of the first post-trilogy collection, proving once again that the story of Princess Ai is too popular with readers to end. In fact, this book also contains a sneak-peak/first chapter of the next Princess Ai trilogy - the Prism of Midnight Dawn. Tokyopop may be trading in on the popularity of the series (and catering to fans' demands), but this collection actually introduces readers to other storylines in the Tokyopop universe. I didn't recognize most of them because I am sorely out of touch with manga publishing, but I was happy to see one familiar series make a guest appearance - the crew from the Tarot Cafe series.
April 3, 2014
The last Ai manga I have in my collection - no more left. Really great tribute to Princess Ai by American and Asian artists, plus it includes a preview of the next manga, volume 1 of Princess Ai: Chronicles of Ai-Land. STILL waiting for volume 3 of PA: CoAL after all this time. Too bad TokyoPop went bust >
June 29, 2013
Join Ai, as she ventures throughout the many mysterious realms of the TOKYOPOP universe! Watch her touch the lives of those in each individual story with her rowdy, yet angelic aura and leave a mark that will never fade.
September 27, 2016
I really enjoyed this anthology. It was nice to see Ai drawn in the style of all the other mangas. It also made me want to read some of the other mangas that she crossed over with.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews