Video Girl Ai (電影少女, Den'ei ShÅjo?, lit. "Video Girl") is a manga series created by Masakazu Katsura and published by Shueisha's Weekly ShÅnen Jump. It also has an anime adaptation. The manga is published in English by Viz Communications. It was formerly published in the anthology Animerica Extra by Viz.
It was started in 1989 and continued until 1992, and fifteen manga volumes were produced.
A live-action movie of Video Girl Ai was released in 1991. The plot starts much like the first volume of the manga, but differs later, and the ending is quite different from the OVA and manga. An English dubbed version was released in December 2001.
The Video Girl Ai anime is a six-part OVA series which was produced by I.G. Tatsunoko. The series was released in 1992 by Jump Video. It roughly covers most of the material found in volumes 1 and 3 of the manga (and some of Volume 2). The character designs for the anime remained faithful to the manga style.
Anime writer Jason Thompson stated that compared to Kimagure Orange Road, Video Girl Ai is "more sexual and angsty".
It is commonly speculated that the author, Masakazu Katsura, used this series as what could be described as a pilot; although he wanted to write a straight romantic comedy, he included sci-fi and action elements, so that the series would guarantee to be a success with both his publishers and (teenage male) audience.
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Ai Amano (天野 ã‚ã„, Amano Ai?) 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. Voiced by: Megumi Hayashibara (OAV), Minami Takayama (CD-drama), and by Maggie Blue O'Hara in the English dub. Played by: Kaori Sakagami.
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Yota "Dateless"* Moteuchi (弄内 洋太, Moteuchi YÅta?) 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,
