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thecomicman
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Denei shôjo Ai (1992)
On Why 'Video Girl Ai' is Not as Good as it Should Be or, It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Ai (SPOILERS)
Yota Moteuchi is in love with Moemi Hayakawa. Unfortunately, Moemi is in love with Yota's best friend and most popular kid in school, Takashi Niimai. Utterly heartbroken, Yota walks the streets of Tokyo until he stumbles upon a video store. He rents an 'explicit' video and takes it home. When he puts the tape in his broken VCR, Ai Amano jumps out to make his life that much more difficult. So begins 'Video Girl Ai.'
As the story progresses, Ai, a magical creature created solely to comfort the man she's with and help him out in anyway possible, begins to fall in love with Yota, turning an already complicated situation almost impossible. The series is funny and heartwarming, and halfway through the fifth episode, the audience wants Yota to forget about Moemi and go with Ai, especially after Yota helps Moemi land Takashi. Even though the audience wants this, they know it is not possible because Moemi is Yota's one true love. Or is she?
After the fifth episode, things take a left turn. Ai's creator, referred to only as 'The Man,' has her recalled because she is defective. A video girl is not supposed to fall in love, something Ai has clearly done. When Yota discovers Ai is missing, he searches day and night to find her. When the video clerk from the video store Ai comes from allows her to speak with Yota one last time, Yota jumps on the chance and follows her into the Video World (not the Dimension of Love, as some of my colleagues have erroneously stated).
The series ends with Yota enduring pain and hardship to save Ai from being crucified and to spend one final moment with her, after being forced to choose between Ai and Moemi. This last episode is where it all falls apart.
The first five episode are all about unrequited love and perseverence in the face of this love. Yota knows for a fact that Moemi loves Takashi, and even though he helps her get Takashi, Yota never loses hope. Takashi, unknowingly the object of Moemi's affections, continually supports his downtrodden friend. Even after he begins dating Moemi, the audience wonders if it is only to further push his friend's cause (Takashi acts like a jerk throughout the relationship and ends it by asking Moemi to make sure she doesn't actually love Yota instead). When Ai enters the equation, she also helps Yota try to get Moemi, even after she has fallen in love with him. Ai gets mad at herself when she does things that jeopardize Yota's chances with Moemi.
This is all for naught, though, because the final episode explicitly states that one should get what one can, when one can. After Yota climbs the glass staircase (a metaphor for love, as 'The Man' deftly explains) to reach Ai, he makes it known what it is he has learned, and that is that one should get what one can, when one can.
This is in direct opposition to the rest of the series. In order for such a turnaround to occur, there needed to be more episodes charting Yota's journey from loving Moemi to loving Ai. And even then the final episode would make no sense. I cannot remember exactly what the exact words Yota utters at the end, but they were akin to 'one should get what one can, when one can.' Even if Yota's decision of Ai were explained more clearly, this last kernel of wisdom would still not make sense in the diegesis of the series. The previous five episodes teach to persevere. Go for the gold, as it were. Pick your girl and never give up. The last episode destroys this by saying that there is no need to get first place, when fifth is readily available.
Overall, this is a very funny, quirky, and sweet story about love and all the hangups that it entails. But the final episode will go down in history as the worst possible way to end a story. Not only does it disagree with everything the previous episodes stated, it also ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, with the audience left wondering what exactly has become of all the characters, Ai and Yota especially.