Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Twelve: Chapter Twenty: The Spiral Dance of Symptom and Specter
Television screens and computer monitors can be as voyeuristic and ‘objectifying’ as the optical device in Voyeur or the camera in Shutter Love. But screens and monitors frequently bring into play another kind of relation in which the ‘object’ on the screen comes to life, or conversely, the viewing ‘subject’ is sucked into the screen world. Such a relation promises to disrupt a simple subject/object divide. For the object leaping out of the screen is a kind of ‘not one,’ no longer object not quite subject. And the subject sucked into the screen is also a kind of ‘not-one,’ no longer subject, not quite object. Video Girl Ai plays with such a scenario.
The point of departure for Video Girl Ai is reminiscent of Voyeur in that the goal of the boy is to get the girl. But the hero of Video Girl Ai doesn’t yet have a girlfriend. He (Yota) likes a girl (Moemi) but can’t seem to attract her attention enough to ask her out. Appropriately, the opening sequence is a dream that resembles a soft porn video, in which Yota imagines Moemi undressing for him.
While the first page is somewhat ambivalent about who is looking at whom, the second page leaves no doubt that the boy is the viewer. (This translation is ‘mirrored’ to follow English comic conventions: please read left to right.) You can also find the manga on line at http://manga.animea.net/den-ei-shoujo-ai.html
