Ranked #1113

Video Girl Ai (Manga)

Video Girl Ai was written by the mangaka that did I"S. This threw up all sorts of red flags, because I"S was really, really, really bad. This made me all the more surprised when VGA turned out to be great.

For starters, it's probably the only shonen romance I've ever read where I got the impression who the main character was going to end up with was really, truly up in the air. Hell, for a couple of short blinks, the "Main Character X Nobody" pairing was up for grabs.

The plot in itself is kind of generic, but that can be forgiven because the plot actually moves. Things happen. Relationships change. And they stay changed. "I want to go back" is the exception, rather than the rule. This is the most important thing that makes VGA good and almost all other shonen romance bad. There is nothing worse than a romance story that just spins its wheels, and thankfully that never happens with this series.

The characters are great. I bought all of them as human beings (except Takashi. I don't know what the hell was up with him) and once their personalities were drawn out, they acted in character. It makes some of the fairly generic events that happen have real impact, since you can actually thing of them as people.

There was only two characters where I was truly unsatisfied with how that character was dealt with. Considering the genre, that's actually kind of amazing.

In closing, VGA is shonen romance done correctly. You're doing yourself a disservice if you're a fan of the genre and haven't read this. read more