A high school student named Shō Moteuchi is secretly in love with his beautiful classmate, Nanami. Living with his uncle after his parents divorce, Shō discovers an old, broken videocassette recorder in the house. When he repairs and plays it, a mysterious girl named Ai Amano materializes from the screen. She is a Video Girl, a being created from a magical videotape designed to cheer up lonely hearts and help them find love. However, because the VCR was faulty, Ai is defective, gaining a more assertive and emotional personality and the ability to fall in love herself, which a normal Video Girl is not supposed to do.

Ai’s mission is to help Shō win over Nanami, but his efforts are complicated by the fact that Nanami has feelings for his friend, Tomoaki. As the three months of Ai’s existence tick down, her growing affection for Shō conflicts with her programmed purpose. She becomes entangled in the real world, living with Shō and attempting to guide his romantic life while struggling with her own emerging feelings. The situation becomes more dire when representatives from the mysterious video store that created her, known as Paradise or Gokuraku, realize she is a faulty unit and move to recall her before her tape runs out.

The narrative follows the classic love triangle complications as Shō navigates his crush on Nanami and his growing bond with Ai. As Ai’s time in the real world begins to expire, Shō must decide what love truly means to him and whether he can fight against the magical rules that govern Ai’s existence to keep her with him. The story resets the original manga’s 1990s setting to a modern-day high school environment, focusing on a new generation while featuring the original protagonist, Yōta Moteuchi, now an adult and Shō’s uncle.