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Live-Action Video Girl Ai Series Gets Spinoff Special on January 18
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
TV Tokyo announced on Sunday that Den'ei Shōjo ~Video Girl Ai 2018~, the new live-action television series based on Masakazu Katsura's Video Girl Ai (Den'ei Shōjo) manga, is getting a new spinoff special that will air on January 18. The Den'ei Shōjo ~Video Girl Ai 2018~ Tokubetsu-hen special will air late at night (effectively January 19) from 12:52 a.m. to 1:23 a.m.
tofubeats will perform the theme song "Fumetsu no Kokoro" and will again compose the music. Kazuaki Seki (music videos for Perfume, Gen Hoshino) is returning to direct the special, and Kohei Kiyasu is returning to pen the script alongside Yoshitatsu Yamada. Returning cast members include: Nanase Nishino (Nogizaka 46), Shūhei Nomura, Marie Iitoyo, Hiroya Shimizu, Karen Ōtomo, Jun Murakami, and Shigeyuki Totsugi.
The live-action series premiered on TV Tokyo and its affiliates on January 13, but episodes streamed one week earlier on Amazon Prime Video in Japan.
The live-action television series resets the original manga's timeframe to modern-day 2018, and it centers around Yōta's nephew, high school student Shō Moteuchi. Shō harbors a secret crush on his beautiful classmate Nanami. One day, he discovers an old broken videocassette recorder at his uncle Yota's home. He fixes the recorder, and a mysterious girl named "Video Girl Ai" springs out.
Katsura published the manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1989 to 1992. Shueisha published 15 compiled book volumes, and then reissued the manga in nine volumes for its keepsake and trade paperback editions. In addition to the six-volume 1992 anime, the manga also inspired an earlier 1991 live-action film. Viz Media released the manga and its 1992 original video anime adaptation in North America.
Sources: TV Tokyo, Comic Natalie
