Welcome back to our special appointment! This time we talk about a very sentimental manga/anime called Video Girl Ai. As a matter of fact the video girls are three but about this I'll tell you later. Video Girl Ai, created by Masakazu Katsura, was published for the first time in Japan in 1990 on the magazine Shonen Jump and then collected in 15 manga series. They were published by Shueisha beetween the period of 1990-1993: the first 13½ volumes are about Video Girl Ai, 1 volume is on Video Girl Len and ½ volume is on Video Girl Haruno. The Video Girl Ai anime was released in 1992 and produced by the same manga author Katsura and I. G. Tatsunoko. It consists in a series of 6 OAV (Original Anime Video) generally based on the manga and following the story till the beginning of manga vol. 3. But the ending of OAV series shows significant changes with some dramatic scenes. But if you wanna know something more about the story... please read below!
My job here is to introduce the four music videos hosted in today's Special Guest Star page dedicated to Video Girl Ai! They are all very awesome and you can also find them in www.animemusicvideos.org where we invite you to submit your opinion: next to each video there is the direct link to the animemusicvideos' page with the author's note! All the videos are very High Quality and contain spoiler but I think you have to see them no matter if you don't know the ending of the story! ^__^
Many thanks to Ricky "Evil Trunks", Myke Timpe "Mysterice", Lee "Lostboy" Thompson and Cristina "Luna" of Turboneko who were very nice to reply to my emails so promptly and give me the permission to host their music videos in Dragon Ball Arena!
by Veggie

Video Girl Ai - The story
The manga tells of the sixteen Youta Moteuchi who is secretly in love with his contemporary Moemi Hayakawa, but she, unluckily, has fallen in love with Youta's best friend Takashi Nimai, very liked by the girls, even if he seems to be apparently detached.
Disappointed with this fact, our poor Youta, desolate, strolls about the streets of the city and comes upon a video-store called Gokuraku. Once entered, he draws near to the section " adults" and he is stricken from a girl's photo showed on a vhs, a certain Amano Ai. The shopkeeper puts the vhs among his hands, saying that the rental is free and that it will last for three months; he also says that after this time the vhs must be returned and he goes away, leaving the boy astonished.
Returned home, Youta decides to watch the vhs, and he's pleasantly surprised at hearing the words of the sweet Ai that promises to be near him until he will need it. Now Youta is confused: the video girl exhorts him to desire she stands by his side and he, even if incredulous, calls her and... suddenly Ai comes out of the screen under the terrorized eyes of the boy. But she is not just as he had imagined her, because of the bad working of the VCR, has suffered some changes and she seems everything but a sweet video girl! Meanwhile, thanks to Youta's suggestions, Moemi, has got a love affair with Takashi. This situation is a great sorrow for Youta but now there is Ai who has become absolutely necessary to him. Also the girl feels something special deep inside about him, even if she could not! So her inventor, a disquieting guy named Rolex, dressed with a long black raincoat, gets angry and decides to take her away with himself.
Thanks to the Gokuraku shopkeeper, Youta succeeds in following Ai into the Video World, but he must support a very hard test: to reach the video girl, he decides to go up a fragile staircase of glass that represents his idea of love. The boy doesn't discourage him and, despite many wounds, he reaches the top and sets Ai free. Now everything seems to be straight but Rolex appears again and sends Youta back on Earth and imprisons the Video Girl Ai and the old shopkeeper of Gokuraku. The days go by and Youta, returned to school, meets a girl called Nobuko Nizaki, who declares to be in love with him since junior high school. Youta finds again his friends Moemi and Takashi and, unexpectedly, he finds in his same classroom Amano Ai, just that video girl! The girl seems however not to recognize him, so Youta decides to accept Nobuko's love. In reality Ai has forgotten to be a Video Girl and now lives with the oldie, believing him to be her grandfather. When Ai sees another video girl's birth, she starts to remember her past and has from the oldie the confirmation: she's a Video Girl, an imperfect one, cause, unlike the others, she can have human feelings.
But Youta life becomes more complicated when the girl he likes, Moemi, finally falls in love with him. With whom does Youta finally settles with?

The ending...

Youta is very confused: he still feels attracted by Moemi, but the next disappearance of Ai, who has a limited life, terribly distresses him. Moemi doesn't wanna loose him, but she understands that in Youta's heart now there's place only for the Video Girl Ai; so she thinks to move and go abroad with her father. But Ai feels herself ready to desappear to let her friends live a better future. Spring comes: Moemi has decided to remain in Japan, Nobuko has accepted the breakup with Youta, Takashi has moved to stat a new life... and all are very grateful to Ai who helped them to become better...
Youta has finally completed his album of illustrations, when, suddenly, Ai's particles start to come out of his room walls and, little by little, recompose themselves, till Ai appears again in front of him...
... "Kokoro became... a human being!"