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A review by michaelclorah
Video Girl Ai, Vol. 13 by Masakazu Katsura
4.0
The story of the star-crossed, sci-fi-tinged romance of Yota and Ai finally comes to an end, and after a few lackluster volumes, I feel that Ai ends on a reasonably strong note. In volume 12, we found out that Ai's creator spawned the video girls in order to seduce men and then break their hearts. Rather than facilitate love, the video girls were designed to break the hearts of incurable romantics, proving that love is a sham. Because our protagonist, Yota, played Ai's tape on a broken VCR, things don't work out as the creator planned. Ai has fallen in love with Yota, and Yota in love with Ai.
Thus begins our final volume. The real danger is that the creator can erase Ai, destroy her memory, and turn her back into a regular video girl. She'd rather die that lose the memory of her time with Yota. So Yota, Ai and the clerk at the video shop, who betrays the creator, set out to make Ai into a real girl, thus beyond the creator's reach.
The problem with the few volumes prior to this is that Katsura spent too much time recycling the same romantic triangle themes, and I got sick of the characters being so much in love that they constantly sacrifice their own happiness in some mistaken ideal of what the other person wants/needs. Ai and Yota have FINALLY gotten on the same page here, so we can do away with (most of) that nonsense and get straight to the conflict with the creator. There are some interesting twists, including one or two complete heartbreakers, but in the end, Video Girl Ai ends the only way that a story about the power of love can end - with Yota and Ai happily in each other's arms.
The epilogue, which shows how Yota and Ai have affected all the other prominent supporting cast members in a positive way, was pretty good and interesting. The means by which Yota and Ai are ultimately united is a little less fulfilling, rather deus ex machina actually, but I did like the parallel that Katsura established between Ai and the protagonist of the children's book that Yota was writing.
As always, Katsura's art is just killer.
Thus begins our final volume. The real danger is that the creator can erase Ai, destroy her memory, and turn her back into a regular video girl. She'd rather die that lose the memory of her time with Yota. So Yota, Ai and the clerk at the video shop, who betrays the creator, set out to make Ai into a real girl, thus beyond the creator's reach.
The problem with the few volumes prior to this is that Katsura spent too much time recycling the same romantic triangle themes, and I got sick of the characters being so much in love that they constantly sacrifice their own happiness in some mistaken ideal of what the other person wants/needs. Ai and Yota have FINALLY gotten on the same page here, so we can do away with (most of) that nonsense and get straight to the conflict with the creator. There are some interesting twists, including one or two complete heartbreakers, but in the end, Video Girl Ai ends the only way that a story about the power of love can end - with Yota and Ai happily in each other's arms.
The epilogue, which shows how Yota and Ai have affected all the other prominent supporting cast members in a positive way, was pretty good and interesting. The means by which Yota and Ai are ultimately united is a little less fulfilling, rather deus ex machina actually, but I did like the parallel that Katsura established between Ai and the protagonist of the children's book that Yota was writing.
As always, Katsura's art is just killer.