DJ Milky, Tokyopop & Princess Ai: Soundtrack Mysteries Solved

  Hello all, I intend to make a much more fleshed-out post about Princess Ai later, but I wanted to write a blog with some information regarding the Princess Ai soundtrack since a large majority of information is lost to time, or wasn't credited correctly in the first place

For those uninitiated, the Princess Ai is a three-part manga series co-created by Courtney Love, and DJ Milky (also known as Stuart Levy, founder-turned-CEO of Tokyopop) with character designs by Ai Yazawa and manga art by Misaho Kujiradou. It follows a dramatized (and fictionized) Love stand-in alien amnesiac character named Princess Ai, after she falls to earth (Japan) for no identifiable reason.

Photo of the cover for book 1, "Destitution," next to a picture of Courtney Love.

As the manga progresses, it is very clear that the manga writer (who I am pretty sure is exclusively DJ Milky) cared very much about portraying Courtney and aspects of her life within the story, down to the character working in a strip club while figuring out her true calling. It also features nods to her music ( Examples being: naming a radio station Whole. FM, or naming a music interview program Heaven Tonight) and even has one of her songs directly sung ( Hold On To Me off of America's Sweetheart) by Ai. Outside of this feature, though, every other song sung by Ai or her love interest Kent is one specially written by DJ Milky. This added a very interesting layer to the manga, as at first glance, every song is simply words on a page... Until you realize he used his Tokyopop money to produce fully mixed and mastered versions of these songs!

It's fantastic, really. These songs aren't inherently the greatest thing I've ever heard, nor are they the most Love-Adjacent pieces ever, but an effort was truly made to stick to the Love-style vocals throughout.

This may have you asking, What the hell? Why does a manga have a soundtrack? Well, that's the most interesting thing. DJ Milky partnered up with a group of (whom I assume to be, given they show up in other Stu Levy works) friends to create not only music, but a pilot for a Princess Ai MOVIE.

It was to be called Ai-Land Chronicles, and was to be both live action and animated, with the animated sections being done by anime studio Satelite (most famous for animating the Fairy Tale anime). Information on this is deathly scarce, and likewise so is information on this "team" behind the music!

the only CD copy of anything Ai soundtrack related, which only features 3 Ai tracks, with the rest being produced for other Tokyopop works (most of which have animes to use the music in, which sets this apart) which are all credited to "Skye <3 Princess Ai" which as you can tell is a complete nothingburger. the digital release of the Ai soundtrack is also only credited to "Skye <3 Princess Ai" lol?

6 out of the 8 original tracks produced / featured in Princess Ai got music videos, as can be seen here. They fluctuate in quality, with some featuring live action acting, costumes, while some are more AMV-type edits of Ai doll footage or pieces of the manga edited to move. The stand-out track to me is Suicide Ride despite its lackluster video. It is the most Courtney Love out of all of the tracks, even down to the vocal styling. The instrumental is certainly giving a more 2007 song-to-use-in-anime-AMV vibe than Hole-esque, but it's charming nonetheless. Music-video-wise, though, the stand-out is clearly Broken Leash, which is very clearly a prototype for the Ai-Land Chronicles movie. The animated segments are indeed done by Satelite, and all of the live-action bits are done in full costume in front of a green screen. 

And i'm not joking about it being a prototype either! This is confirmed by a quick scroll down DJ Milky's Flickr page, to a collection titled "Ai-Land Chronicles Pilot shoot", where all the photos are clearly from the making of "Broken Leash"...

Photos from January 2006

Now, in seeing these photos, I asked myself. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? Because if they were intended to star in the film and were supposedly also the people behind singing DJ Milky's written tunes, why aren't they credited? To me, it's likely a mix of these people not wanting the project attached to them, or in their discographies forever, and it being a small gig meant to represent a character in a way that "crediting may break immersion" (although I personally think that's a bit dumb). To my knowledge, there is still no article or anything that lists definitive proof of the lineup I'm about to mention, but through information pieced together from this flickr gallery (from the Princess Ai recording session), among other things, I have been able to put together what I think is an accurate lineup.

It goes as follows:

Instrumentals were done by Tony Karlsson and Kevin Brown from the LA-based band Nude, while the acting and vocal talents were supplied by Skye Marsden, also known as Heather Marie Marsden, who also played a character in the Tokyopop film Van Von Hunter. Engineering in the studio was done by Bobby (last name pending), and production was done by both DJ Milky and musician b_nCHANt_d. Tony, Kevin, and Skye are also featured in a couple of the Ai music videos outside of Broken Leash, which cements them as a probable cast for the actual supposed movie production.

Nude is somewhat well archived, but Skye's work isn't at all. Due to this, I have taken the liberty of making all of her work available via a soon-to-come archive! She is incredibly talented and has made a lot of music that I would say is most similar to the works of Garbage, Metric, and Veruca Salt, if that interests you. My stand-out recommendations are Supergirl off of her comp album Pieces Of Skye, and Flypaper from her band DarkBlueWorld's album The Harratt Sessions.

As for the Ai-Land chronicles movie, as of 8 years ago they were still teasing it quietly in the comments of their Ai videos on youtube, but otherwise it has seemingly been lost to a mixture of production hell and possibly past impending bankruptcy on Tokyopop's part, as it's rumored that Stu Levy's infatuation with the Ai film was one of the reasons Tokyopop almost imploded years back. 

If you'd like to hear the entire soundtrack, here's a link to it on youtube:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAA93644E847396B9&si=m5LGEhSc_Ix9HJyw

it features all 8 with the mysterious "Kent's Song" (I have NO idea where it came from. it's not on the Ai soundtrack comp)

As a fun send-off, here are some interesting images from the Flickr galleries:

some photos of Satelite's booth at TAF March 06 (curiously this features not only Ai related things, but also the Japanese release cover of America's Sweetheart by Courtney Love...?)