Video Girl Ai: Difference between revisions

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After making said promise and feeling like crap about it, Youta finds himself in front of [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday|a video rental store he has not seen before]]. The man in charge of the store says that, since Youta truly meant what he told Moemi, he deserves a prize... like borrowing one of the videos of the store. Its name is "I'll comfort you!" and has a beautiful girl on the cover.
 
Youta plays the video in his VCR... and then the girl pops out from the TV! Her name is Ai Amano, and she's come to help him with his woes. Unfortunately, Youta's VCR was broken, therefore Ai-chan's programming is seriously messed up. She [[Pettanko|lost a few cup sizes]], [[Lethal Chef|she can't cook]], she's [[Dojikko|clumsy]], [[BigNon LippedSequitur Alligator MomentScene|she puts her feet in her mouth]], she [[Tsundere|teases Youta mercilessly]]... and for better or for worse, [[What Is This Thing You Call Love?|she develops feelings for him]], when she's supposed to just counsel and console the boy.
 
''Video Girl Ai'' (電影少女,Den'ei Shojo?, lit. "Video Girl") is a manga series created by [[Masakazu Katsura]] and published by Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump. It also has an anime adaptation. The manga is published in English by [[Viz Media]]. It was formerly published in the anthology Animerica Extra by Viz. It was started in 1990 and continued until 1993, and fifteen manga volumes were produced. The first 13 volumes tell Ai Amano's story. The last two volumes, which came years later, focus on a new video girl named Len, hence the new name for these two volumes ''Video Girl Len''.
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* [[Ill Girl]] - {{spoiler|Natsumi, who has a weak heart [[Tear Jerker|and later dies]]. And for worse, according to her doctors, her fragile heart was the lesser of her problems.}}
* [[Important Haircut]]: {{spoiler|Nobuko and later Moemi cut their hair short to imitate Ai, as a last desperate effort to keep Yota with them- Moemi goes so far as dressing like a tomboy and using a rude language, which counts as a 180º for her. Unfortunately, not even this worked. }}
* [[Japanese Pronouns]] - Ai [[Bokukko|uses "ore" to refer to herself]] -- yet—yet another side effect of Youta's awful VCR.
* [[Jerkass]] - Ayumi's handsome yet rotten ex-boyfriend in ''Video Girl Len''.
** Takashi purposely [[Jerkass Facade|tries to look like one]], so Moemi would stop liking him and start paying attention to Yota. Unfortunately, this idea went horribly wrong.
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* [[Off-Model]] - ''Especially'' in the second episode of the anime.
* [[Parental Abandonment]] - Youta's father is never seen and his mother is dead. Natsumi ran away from home at some point.
* [[Pettanko]] - Ai -- yetAi—yet another side effect of Youta's defective VCR.
* [[Poor Communication Kills]]: All. The. Time.
* [[Purity Personified]]: Played as a problem for Hiromu on Video Girl Len: his concept of women was so overly idealized that he refused to believe that girls of his age would do things like burping, smelling, stuffing themselves or even going to the bathroom, so Len's first task was trampling over these twisted concepts and making Hiromu see women as what they really were: just plain, normal human beings.
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* [[Takeshi Kusao]] - Youta, in the anime. One of his first more or less well-known roles.
* [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]] - In fact, you can't even ''see'' the Gokuraku store if you're not a genuinely good person. Youta saw it for his selflesness regarding Moemi; the [[Lovable Sex Maniac]] Toshiki found the Neo Gokuraku along with Hiromu because he truly cared for his best friend, despite his lecherousness.
** Of course, [['''Video Girl Ai]]''''s [[Playing with a Trope|toying with this trope]] is a pretty important plot point in the manga. For instance, Gokuraku Video's real role {{spoiler|is to use Video Girls to obliterate their renter's ability to love. The pure hearted are, in the opinion of [[Knight Templar|the people behind it]], too vulnerable and good to deal with [[Love Hurts|the harsh realities of love]], and destroying their ability to do so through the loveless Video Girls is the only way to protect them. This was ''supposed'' to be Ai's purpose, but the broken VCR did for that.}} Later on, {{spoiler|a rival [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]] opens up across the road from Gokuraku Video named Neo Gokuraku, run by Gokuraku Video's old clerk after he resigned out of disgust, aiming to get to the Pure Hearted first, and give them Video Girls (apparently allowed to have emotions of their own, unlike the Gokuraku girls) who can help them through love's tribulations.}}
* '''[[ThisPunctuated! IsFor! SpartaEmphasis!|I! WONT! QUIT LOVING! AI, ANYMORE!]]'''
* [[Unlucky Childhood Friend]] - Nobuko, Natsumi
* [[Well, Excuse Me, Princess!]] - Ai twists this trope, in that {{spoiler|she wasn't supposed to be the girlfriend, but fell for the lovable loser she was trying to improve}}.
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[[Category:Anime of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Anime]]
[[Category:Manga of the 1980s]]
[[Category:Shonen Jump]]
[[Category:Light Novels]]
[[Category:TV Tokyo]]
[[Category:Twelve-Episode Anime]]
[[Category:Science Fiction Anime and Manga]]
[[Category:Video Girl Ai]]
[[Category:Manga]]