At first glance, Video Girl Ai has a number of the familiar elements you would find within many romantic comedies. The character types in the love square consist of the nice guy, love interest, supportive best friend and tsundere. And thanks to Ai, there are moments of fan service and ecchi which she uses to torment Yota in some of the show’s comedic gags. Fortunately, this six-episode OAV series doesn’t dabble too heavily in its perverted content and instead focuses on the problems face by the four central characters in their love square as unrequited love plays a major role in the character drama of this series.

Each of the characters have their own thoughts of whom they want those close to them to love and they become affected by their actions. Yota is conflicted over either wanting to love Moemi or support helping her work up the resolve to confess her feelings to Takeshi. Moemi seeks out Yota for advice on winning Takeshi’s affections despite being unaware of the guy having feelings for her. Takeshi wants Yota to confess to Moemi and feels burdened that Moemi’s feelings are being pushed onto him by his best friend. Ai tries to follow her role as a video girl to provide advice and support to Yota in facing his unrequited love with Moemi despite the fact she’s slowly falling for her client which is tragic in the fact she is forbidden from having feelings of love and she can’t stay with him forever because of her video tape’s limited running time. The intricate character relationships in the series help give it a sense of believability in the tensions surrounding the relationship developments of the four central characters. The end of the series even shows off some metaphorical symbolism in a powerful finale showing the delicacy of being in love when an antagonist appears to wreck havoc on the developments of a potential romance.

All isn’t perfect with Video Girl Ai’s plot. The OAV only covers events from the first few volumes of the manga series which, at the time of its original release in Japan, was still ongoing. As a result, the OAV has a rather open ending as the fate of the newly formed couple is left ambiguous and developments surrounding the other two characters in the love square are left unresolved. Plus, the nature of the antagonist that appears in Video Girl Ai’s final two episodes isn’t too greatly explored.

On the visual side, Video Girl Ai hasn’t aged too well. The colors are a bit drab with scenery and character designs and there were occasions where background designs weren’t too greatly scaled out in outside environments and had simplistic details. The character designs looked comparable to what you would find in a late 1980s TV anime title like Kimagure Orange Road or Maison Ikkoku.

On the sound end, Video Girl Ai has a soundtrack with both touching and dramatic musical choices that do quite well at complementing the high and low points in the complicated love square of Moemi, Yota, Takeshi and Ai. Megumi Hayashibara, in one of her early roles, is the star seiyuu of the series being able to pull off the many sides of Ai Amano very well being convincingly playful, supportive, angry and sad in the developments she undergoes.

While not original and lacking a proper ending, Video Girl Ai is still a worthwhile classic romance title to look into exploring the intricate developments faced by the title’s four central characters in their dealings with unrequited love. (show less)