Video Girl Ai, known in Japan as simply , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masakazu Katsura. It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 1989 to April 1992. It was followed by a short sequel entitled Video Girl Len, published between April and July 1992. The manga was compiled into fifteen tankōbon volumes by Shueisha published between July 1990 and March 1993.
A live-action film of Video Girl Ai was released in 1991. The series was also adapted into a six-episode OVA produced by IG Tatsunoko (now Production I.G.). The series was released in 1992 by Jump Video. It roughly covers most of the material found in the first three volumes of the manga. In 2018 a live-action television drama called Den'ei Shōjo ~Video Girl Ai 2018~ ran on TV Tokyo. Another series, Den'ei Shōjo ~Video Girl Mai 2019~, was released the following year.
In North America, the manga and the OVA have been licensed for English-language release by Viz Media. It was formerly published in the anthology Animerica Extra by Viz.
As of 2018, the manga has over 14 million copies in print.
Plot
The story starts when Yota Moteuchi finds out that the girl he likes, Moemi Hayakawa, is in love with his best friend, Takashi Niimai. Disappointed by this fact, he decides to rent a video from a mysterious video store that appeared in front of him on his way home. The video store was called "Gokuraku" ("Paradise"). The unique thing about this video store was that the videos in the store contained "video girls", girls which literally come to life and out of the user's television when the video tape is played to cheer the renter up. Not knowing about the video girls, Yota chooses to rent the video 'I'll Cheer You Up!', starring Ai Amano. Ai comes to life with the purpose to brighten up Yota's life and encourage him to pursue his love.
However, Yota plays the video on a broken video recorder, which causes Ai to come out "broken"; among other effects she has the ability to feel emotions. This additional feature of Ai causes her to eventually fall in love with Yota; a feeling which, after giving up on Moemi, Yota begins to return. However, a mysterious man related to Gokuraku known as Rolex enters the story and tries to recall Ai as she is faulty, and the fact that Ai's tape is nearing the end of its playing time makes matters even worse.
From this point on, the story changes focus slightly and concentrates on Yota and Ai attempting to overcome the difficulties presented by Gokuraku. Various other complications come into the story; for example Yota's continuing love for Moemi, and his relationship with a new character, Nobuko Nizaki.
Initially, Ai spends some of her time teasing Yota mercilessly in various sexual manners i.e. pretending to initiate intercourse, or joining Yota "innocently" in the bath "to help him wash". Yota's resulting embarrassment and attempt to extricate himself from the situation results, as always, in some slapstick humor and more resulting sexual tension.
Characters
Portrayed by: Kaori Sakagami (1991 film), Nanase Nishino (2018 TV drama) Beautiful, full of boundless energy. Hard to say what she is really like, versus what she was intended to be. Video girls are generally supposed to be comforting, nubile, excellent cooks and socially graceful, but the malfunction of Yota's VCR has made her tomboyish, at times rude, prone to violence, a terrible cook (actually, she learns to cook all by herself), but full of heart and able to feel human emotion. Her chest endowment has also shrunk considerably due to said VCR malfunction.
Portrayed by: Ken Osawa (1991 film), Shigeyuki Totsugi (2018 TV drama) Yota is the stereotypical loser, unable to declare his feelings to his unrequited love, Moemi, socially awkward, with a tendency to get nervous and clumsy around women. However, he is known to be also very caring, kind, and helpful to those he is close to.
Portrayed by: Hiromi Hamaguchi (1991 film) An attractive girl, though almost hopelessly moon-eyed over Takashi, who is too popular to really appreciate Moemi's affectations.
Portrayed by: Naoki Hosaka (1991 film) The typical "tall, dark and handsome" popular guy. He is one of Yota's best friends, and rejects Moemi's advances because he knows Yota's feelings for her.
A girl, one year behind Yota, who developed a crush on him in art class two years earlier and now, with Moemi and Ai temporarily sidelined, can pursue romantic ties with Yota. She first appears midway through volume 3 and only appears in the manga.