(SKIPPABLE DISCLAIMER: This is a script of a video I made, where I talked about and reviewed one particular gripe I had with the series, if you want to watch the video version you can check it here, otherwise feel free to continue reading!)

So I was reading Video Girl Ai and I wanted to talk a little bit about it. You see, this is a Shonen Jump romcom from 1989, and while it’s far from being the first romcom to ever exist, at this point we’re still moving out of the first era of romcoms, and a lot of the tropes, and influences that we are used to see from the genre nowadays would only form in the years following the release of Video Girl Ai.

In that regard it’s always interesting to read manga from this time, we can see how and why some of the tropes formed and we can find manga that are not shackled by them. You never know what you can find, and what I did find in this particular instance was… one of the worst romcom main characters of all time.

And I know what you’re thinking, that’s a hard act to beat. Romcom main characters are normally considered the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst, the most formulaic and bland of main characters, so… how does this guy manage to beat them?

Well, curiously enough, Video Girl Ai and its main character seem, at first, like a direct contrast and response to the main complaints that people have with long harem romcoms. If you hate how the main character never manages to take initiative, or how the romantic plot never moves, or how the characters just stay in a constant state of limbo, then Video Girl Ai seems like a promising alternative.

But it’s in how the manga moves away from these problems that we start to understand why the authors still rely on these practices and how bad things can really get by continuously trying to keep the romantic story moving in a long running harem romcom.

Before we get into how… Spoiler alert! I’m going to be talking about events from the start, middle and end of the manga, essentially beat by beat. While I won’t spoil the ending, I’m probably going to be talking about events as late as the final three volumes…
Okay, so let's meet our characters!
For the purpose of this video we need to know four characters being, of course, the main character, and his three main romantic interests!
The main character is Youta Moteuchi. When he is introduced, he feels like the traditional weak, sad nerd that can’t get any girl, even being nicknamed dateless, but don’t worry, as we go through the story, his personality will change and be more solidified… as the assholest of dudes.
So, the girls!
We got Moemi, the classic girl next door! She’s Youta’s first romantic interest. This is the girl that he loves when the story starts. Sadly for him, however, she likes his coller best friend.
Then there’s Ai! The titular Video Girl Ai, she appears from a VHS after Youta gets his heart broken and promises to help Youta with his love problems. She is, of course, the main girl of the manga, and as time goes on, also more of a main romantic interest.
Finally, there’s Nobuko, a younger girl that has a crush on Youta. While Nobuko is the last girl to be introduced and the first to be discarded by the story, her role in destroying the balance of this manga is perhaps the most important.

Before her introduction, the relationship between the characters not only works, but it’s interesting!
On one hand we see Youta doing his best to support Moemi in getting in a relationship with his own best friend, despite everything and we can see how both he loves her and how she loves his friend a lot, but through it they grow closer and closer to each other.
Even leading to interesting dynamics as Youta’s friend does not want to even give her a chance because he knows Youta likes her, which causes a very interesting friction between the two of them.
And on the other, Ai’s there to help and cheer Youta out herself, and while there isn’t a romantic relationship yet, we can see how they actually work really well together, and that leaves us not only wondering which girl is the best for him to end, but also thorns us apart, as we cheer for either Ai or Moemi to be the final girl.

At this point in the manga, not only is the manga enjoyable, but so is Youta. We can see, through his efforts with Moemi, that he’s a good guy at heart, and we can even understand why someone like her and Ai could eventually fall in love with him.
This however, only lasts for the first couple of volumes.

By the middle of volume 3 some things have changed. The plot surrounding Ai starts developing fast, as she and Youta start really developing feelings for each other, but Ai has very limited time with Youta, as when her VHS’s playback time runs out, she will be sent back and her memories “rewind”.
However, after an arc that involves Youta going through extreme lengths to save her, Ai ends up disappearing for a while, and it’s during this while that we get introduced to Nobuko.

The girl that likes the main character from the get go is something that we can see in other manga, like Tachibana Marika from Nisekoi or Kitaouji from Ichigo 100%, two later series from Jump.
What I think is interesting in comparing the later two with Nobuko is that all of them are the third, later addition, mainly introduced to spice up the manga they’re in, but it’s also clear that they are the least likely to end up being the final girl.

That’s all fine and dandy, I see their role, but the difference here is that Youta… dates Nobuko.
And what I mean by that isn’t that Nobuko is the final girl or anything, rather, he starts dating her not too long after she’s introduced, and while this can sound like an interesting development, it kickstarts what will be the main dramatic drive of the story for the next 90 chapters of this series.

At this point Ai is back, and even though she has lost her memory, Youta has grown to a point where he can admit to himself that he loves her, maybe even more than he did Moemi.
In fact, it’s while thinking about how much he cares about Ai that he starts giving Nobuko hints that he might be interested in dating her. He dates her because it’s easy and because he pities her to a degree.

And again, my problem isn't this arc in a vacuum, but it does start to paint our character in a bad light when his first relationship is mostly filled with him thinking about another girl.

This arc is divided mainly in two parts.
The first is all about Youta forcing himself to date Nobuko and learn to care about her, while the interference of Ai and her resurging feelings of love towards Youta.
It ends with Youta, after a very sexually portaid make-out session, gets a cryptid call from Ai in the middle of the night and leaves Nobuko in bed to go after her.

The second half sees Nobuko distancing herself and Ai getting closer and closer to Youta, but with no formal break-up. I should also note that, in a positive light, I find it really amazing how well Youta and Ai’s relationship is reformed without Ai regaining her memory. In fact, by the time she does, almost towards the end of the manga, the impact on their relationship is somewhat minimal.

Moving back to the plot, Nobuko ends up rejecting a guy who ends up being hospitalized, who she blames herself for it, as she thinks he hurt himself trying to deal with the rejection, which… is kinda true, but it turns out it was actually the main bad guy, yes, there’s a main bad guy, he’s not that relevant for this topic, that gave the kid what is essentially a living sex doll and he was just… distracted with her for a week non-stop and ended up over exhausting himself.

Anyways, point is, Nobuko spends most of her days with this new guy at the hospital, while Youta spends most of his days with Ai, and, because this is a time without cell phones, we actually start seeing Nobuko and Youta stop communicating for weeks. Culminating in Nobuko accidentally meeting Youta and Ai in the pool, causing them to fight, Youta slapping her and she telling him that she will do her best to hate him, and running away. You’d assume this would mean that they break up and to be fair, that’s kindaish how Youta acts, moving back to build his relationship with Ai. However, the break-up only officially happens in a later meeting several chapters afterwards.

And well, despite this relationship being completely forced out of nowhere and having spent half of it with the characters separated and kinda flirting with other characters… At least it’s over, Youta leaves it with a stronger relationship with Ai, and while another girl is introduced at this point, she does not serve as a distraction for him. So now he’s free to pursue the girl that he was striving for during all of his relationship.

Except it’s at this point that Youta starts to mainly care for Nobuko, now that she’s gone he suddenly gets extremely depressed over her being the girl that he likes and now it’s over, when the only genuine time it seemed like he actually loved her was when she was in bed with him.
Throughout their relationship, every time he had to pick between going after Ai or Nobuko, Youta picked Ai, but now, when faced with the same choice, he goes after Nobuko, tho getting rejected again, like he should.

With the final, for real end of Nobuko’s arc, we go back to the previous dynamic, we start to focus back on Moemi and Youta’s feelings for her, but… at this point more than half of the manga has been spent with him choosing between two other girls…it’s weird when the manga tries to return to the original status quo as if it was nothing.

That said, it takes a bit, but it works, Moemi has been dating Youta’s best friend, but the love isn’t there, which brings back the rift between them culminating in a very dark arc that involves… a crime almost being committed to Moemi, but her being rescued by Youta.

Moemi becomes, obviously, traumatized by the whole situation and while I wouldn’t say that the manga deals with the trauma perfectly, it at least tries to give it some respect and attention. But it is important to note that the following arcs have a VERY fragile Moemi, and it’s Youta who cares for her, we see that genuine love from the beginning of the series to appear back again, to a point where literally every other character wants them to be together.

Moemi and Youta’s friend finally break-up at the same time as Youta confesses his feelings, which completely destroys Moemi.
However, Moemi does decide that Youta is the best person for her and agrees to start dating.
And this is the moment the last eight volumes have kinda been building up to, this feels like the end of the story for a while.
Sure, there’s still things that Moemi and Youta need to deal with together, specially when it comes to Moemi’s traumas and how it affects their relationship, as well as a couple of aspects into Ai’s Video Girl plot, which we are skipping here, but it’s about half of the manga.

But instead, right from the moment they start dating, Youta starts to feel distant. Going straight back to thinking about Nobuko, which he hasn’t done once since going back to try to get Moemi.Those two do have a weird final conclusion that… it feels like it doesn’t matter at this point, Nobuko hasn't been relevant in volumes.
The manga tries to sell has Youta wanting to move on from the relationship to focus on Moemi, but what it feels like is that he can’t really commit, the moment he got the love of his life, after all the trials that they went through, and after all that she suffered throughout the manga and to finally accept that she would be happier with Youta over anyone else, Youta just betrays her instantly. Not by cheating, but by automatically treating her like she’s secondary.

On the other hand, Moemi’s feelings also change drastically, suddenly she LOVES Youta and will do anything to keep him in a relationship with her, even if he doesn’t love her.
It’s almost bizarre how aggressive she becomes, having in mind the story up to this point, she even goes as far as doing things that she’s not really mentally prepared for, often.
And it’s those things that kinda work with Youta. Rather than any other action, it’s when Moemi shows her legs or makes out with him that he looks at her with a desire that is portrayed as love, but… really isn’t.

Both of them start feeling like the only way their relationship can finally bloom is when they both end up having sex, which is a bad message, but an even worse one when the girl is still traumatized by being sexually assaulted.

Meanwhile the relationship of Youta and Ai keeps growing, of course, with them working together in a children’s book, and spending more and more time together.
But it’s hard to cheer for them at this point. Youta had many chances to commit to Ai, but chose to ignore them completely, and through his choices he absolutely ruined two girls in a very unfair and ugly way.

You’re supposed to feel sad for Youta, for not knowing who he truly loves, for being confused, for suffering through his indecisions. But the reality of the situation is that Youta does not deserve any of the girls in the series, he deserves to be alone. For more than half of the manga I spent praying for him to just… let someone be happy, or at the very least not destroy them further.

Instead he rams heads first into a relationship he doesn’t care about, with a girl who genuinely loves him, and then cries about missing her only after their relationship ends. And then proceeds to pressure a traumatized girl into a relationship, only to emotionally discard her once they’re together.

And that is why Youta Moteuchi is, in my opinion, the worst romcom main character I’ve read so far.