Love Me, My Knight

Synopsis

"Ai Shite Knight" is set in Osaka and tells the story of Yaeko "Yakko" Mitamura, an 18-year-old girl working in her father's Okonomiyaki restaurant. One day Yakko meets a little boy named Hashizo and his odd cat Juliano. Hashizo had lost both parents when still a baby and has been brought up by his elder brother Go. Go Kato is the lead singer of the emerging rock band "Bee Hive." When Yakko meets Go and his friend and "Bee Hive" member Satomi Okawa, an unexpected series of events and a tangled romance unfold. The main narrative of "Ai Shite Knight" is essentially a love story, but has interesting and innovative elements introduced to it by Kaoru Tada, most notably the portrayal of the Japanese music scene in the early '80s. In creating characters such as Go, Satomi and their band "Bee Hive", Tada was inspired by well-known bands of the time such as "The Stalin", "Novela", "Primadonna" and "44Magnum." Tada also plays with sexual provocation and sexual ambiguity, mainly embodied by the character of "Kiss Relish" vocalist Kazuma Kataoka/Sheila, although these elements were considerably toned down in the anime version of the story.