| Title: | Video Girl Ai.
| | Author: | Masakazu Katsura.
| | Other manga from the author: | Wingman,
D·N·A²,
Shadow Lady,
I''s.
| | Japanese edition: | Shueisha.
| | Spanish edition: | Norma editorial.
| | Format: | 13 books 200 pages each.
| | Qualification: |
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Introduction
Video Girl Ai is one of the most popular manga in Spain, although it is not as popular as Dragon Ball, an isolated, uncommon phenomenon in manga. Both manga are very influenced by the western world and maybe that is what grants them the admiration of so many Spanish readers. This happened also with Akira, whiches movie made famous anime in Spain. It was the first movie ever to be published in Spain as a "mature viewers" title and being considered a good film.
But Video Girl Ai is different. It has some sci-fi touches but, when you get used to them (it will happen early), they will look completely normal to you (I guess that is why, when I go to the video club, I go directly to the adult section, in case I found a Gokuraku Video tape ^_^). When you get used to the manga, it becomes a love story.
A love story drawn in a perfect style, with an outstanding texture grays usage (Mostly gray tones, texture grays let you graduate the fill -and sometimes even the outlines- of a drawing. The result looks much like an anime, normally colored with solid colors, but with several tones of the same color for the same surface, giving some volume to the image. There are many textures with different pattrens, but the most common ones are those with dots or circles).
Masakazu Katsura's art is outstanding because of its good combination of texture grays, getting a great volume feeling. Also impressing are his neat, clean strokes and page composition, which he makes very cinematographic, because Masakazu Katsura loves cinema. All other aspects of his art are absolutely realistic and very schematic, except in the humouristic panels, in which he amuses himself caricaturing his characters and/or his favorite super-hero, Batman.
The characters are as wonderful graphically as literally, since their graphic design reflects their complicated, evolutive and innovative in the manga scene personality. The characters' relationships are the story's center, but both principal dangers of this type of stories are avoided: it does not become a vulgar soap-opera, danger avoided with the sci-fi plugin and the dilemmas left to the reader (almost to the filosophical level); and the story not too light and untrascendental. This is avoided by making the story progressive, in a way every action tends to the next one. This is a long story (13 volumes long, about 200 pages each), and it was easy for it to fall into the errors written above.
Plot
And now I am telling you a little of this story. A lure for those of you who have not already read it, and a small recapitulation for those who have: Moteuchi Yôta is a shy guy who does not dare to declare his love to his classmate Hayakawa Moemi. Because of this, Amano Ai enters his life, from his TV screen! This Video Girl has the mission to console him, because Moemi is in love with Niimai Takashi, Yôta's best friend. But Ai cannot console Yôta because she has fallen in love with him, and because of that she will be in trouble with her superiors.
Apart from this basic planning, new characters, situations and feeling changes appear. If you have not already read it, I recommend you not to conform with this, that is a tiny part of this manga's quality.
The animé
The Video Girl Ai O.V.A. (Original Video Animation) in six chapers has been published in Japan, Italy and France but cannot still be seen in Spain. I encourage you to ask for speed in the Spanish edition of this masterpiece that is not in the future plans of any Spanish company which publishes animé, because of the big difficulties impossed by Sueisha (as always), surely because of the original price (¥4500 each chapter) and production cost.But I think it would not be so hard to release it if they followed the European circuit. This publishing practice has already been used in the Spanish animé world. Many of the titles released by Anime Video have already been relesaed in western countries, and the Dragon Ball TV anime came to Spain from France.
And now you ask: what is this O.V.A. about? Of course, about the same as the manga, but it only adapts the twenty first chapters of its original edition , the first three books, or the ten first numbers of the Spanish edition. The sixth, last chapter includes the original O.V.A. end, different than the one in the manga and very interesting.
What makes this O.V.A. so outstanding is the character design, the animation and the ambientation; all the technical part. So, we must not be surprised if the O.V.A. is so good, if we put all that good technic part together with Masakazu Katsura's original story.
About the soundtrack, it is one of the best musics I have ever heard in animé, and I have heard it a bunch of times, since it has been published in two CDs.
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