Video Girl Ai

"Video Girl Ai" is an interesting romantic/sci-fi manga in the style of Pinocchio. It's sort of every pubescent guy's fantasy: Striking out in the romance department? Taking comfort in the rental of a pornographic video? Wouldn't it be great if the chick in the video came out of the TV to assist you in finding love?! Well, that's what happens here.

Quirkiness and angst ensue amidst a story of love triangles, magic video tapes, (Google that if you must), and what it means to be human. Is it flesh and blood or genuine emotion that make us what we are? The story itself is the standard boy likes girl, girl likes boy's best friend, boy gets help from a chick who pops out of a TV screen. None of the main characters are that memorable. All are very likeable but have their flaws. There is a decent supporting cast to go with them. It's not really the characters that make this manga good, it's the journey they go on.

The story gives us a lot of soap opera-esque scenarios of "Who is going to end up with who
?" and "How will this romance play out?" but when everything was said and done, I left pretty happy and rather satisfied by the conclusion. The artwork does well in it's story telling and once again that's what it's about. The story. It's a refreshing re-hash of some old concepts and an enjoyable read. Heads up. There is some sexuality and nudity. Nothing tasteless. If you're in the mood for some mildly adult themed comedy romance drama, give it a read. Cheers!

Video Girl Ai is one of the best manga I have ever read and I would highly recommend it to all readers interested in a sweet, passionate and sincere story. I have cried so many times while reading this manga and I have been moved by its characters. I still re-read some chapters of the manga once in a while and the story narrated has a special place in my heart.

In particular, I love reading the final pages of the manga. I am not going to spoil anything, but those pages truly shaped the way I feel about love.

Before writing this review I thought quite a bit and it would be difficult for me to give Video Girl Ai a score lower than 9. The manga is simply that good. I'll try to break it down a bit.

**Story**
This is arguably the weakest aspect of Video Girl Ai. For the first ~20 chapters it's a beautiful story of finding love in the most unlikely of places and overcoming one's weaknesses for that love. Later, however, the manga somehow loses focus and bounces around more episodically, until we reach the well-deserved conclusion. This decrease in focus and shifts in narrative kind of undermine the finale, because at least I wasn't 100% convinced by it. Past the end we have an extra, unrelated volume with a second story - equally heart-warming and beautiful.

**Art**
The most prominent point. The art is simply stunning. Great focus on character design, especially clothing (very nostalgic 80-90s vibes) and lots of zoom-ins on faces. Close-ups are used to portray slight changes in the emotions of characters. That, coupled with a brilliant use of illumination, just works. It's not only convincing, but also naturally evokes strong emotions.

**Characters**
Very human and relatable. The main protagonist is a teenager who honestly struggles with puberty, but also with the kindness of his heart. He's not a peoples pleaser, but genuinely kind. Unfortunately, this kindness often brings him sadness as it's not possible to give love to everyone. The main issue I find with him and partially the story is that as the narrative progresses, it's less and less clear what the main protagonist really wants from life. Who does he really care about the most? He professes love to girl A, but then he's equally in love with girl B and the entire narrative and the motivations of characters align with it.

The rest of the cast is equally believable. The girls are naive at times, but also strong-willed. Oddly, there is only 1 villain, who is less of a villain and more of a plot device, because his intentions aren't always clear.

**Enjoyment**
I struggled to put the manga away and often dreamt about it. I honestly enjoyed it.

**Overall**
Yes, it's a 9, despite my complaints. The manga is definitely worth a read :).

Video Girl Ai was written by the mangaka that did I"S. This threw up all sorts of red flags, because I"S was really, really, really bad. This made me all the more surprised when VGA turned out to be great.

For starters, it's probably the only shonen romance I've ever read where I got the impression who the main character was going to end up with was really, truly up in the air. Hell, for a couple of short blinks, the "Main Character X Nobody" pairing was up for grabs.

The plot in itself is kind of generic, but that can be forgiven because the plot actually moves. Things happen. Relationships change. And they stay changed. "I want to go back" is the exception, rather than the rule. This is the most important thing that makes VGA good and almost all other shonen romance bad. There is nothing worse than a romance story that just spins its wheels, and thankfully that never happens with this series.

The characters are great. I bought all of them as human beings (except Takashi. I don't know what the hell was up with him) and once their personalities were drawn out, they acted in character. It makes some of the fairly generic events that happen have real impact, since you can actually thing of them as people.

There was only two characters where I was truly unsatisfied with how that character was dealt with. Considering the genre, that's actually kind of amazing.

In closing, VGA is shonen romance done correctly. You're doing yourself a disservice if you're a fan of the genre and haven't read this.

The most unpopular guy imaginable suddenly becomes a Jesus and makes every living thing want his dick. Great. He just can't decide which one of them to fuck first. Not great. How did he overcome this then? In no way, whatsoever. The author tried to help him tho by adding new hoes who want his dick too, and some male characters who are more than willing to fuck these given hoes as a replacement for the mc, but it didn't really work out.


Apparently all of this happens because the point of this series is to "find one true love". The problem with this is that our mc is already in love with a girl, and when the feelings finally turn mutual, both of them run away. The male bro because some girl crawled out of his tv and wants his dick more than any real girl in his life, and the female mc because she apparently already made a choice before and making an another one just isn't part of her character. Pretty cool, huh.


This leads us into an eternal limbo where people who want to fuck each others never do, they just search for a replacement -- this time, or approximately 10% of the time, the replacements actually fuck, but typically they also run away for whatever reasons. Often not very fast tho. The manga is pretty much a tease for that matter. Characters are already naked ready to go to business until one of them goes "nah, let's not", followed by 20 chapters of regret and crying and sadness. It was pretty cool on the first time. Next 700 occasions were pretty much not-this-shit-again tier.


I'd go further into details, but it just repeats the same thing over and over again with different characters, becoming a generic harem where the harem lead just keeps changing. Apparently this is a very deep "life moves on reference", how thought-provoking. This tv-girl occasionally disappears FOREVER and this makes mc even more sad, but via the power of epic writing stuff she always gets back in business. Sometimes with amnesia, sometimes with bigger hunger for his dick. The irony is that she still feels more real than any of the other characters. Our mc apparently always learns more about real love and his own feelings when she keeps disappearing. Such character development. Much symbolism. Wow.