A-Girl

lethargilistic★ 7

The main thought I had while watching "A-Girl" is that I bet this is someone's favorite show. It's sort of a Minimum Viable Favorite Anime, which got me thinking about what that means. There is not a whole lot to this. Not to imply that there's not much to silent film, but this is a silent film, so it conveys its narrative through pictures and title cards and the music selection. The relationships it depicts are archetypical enough that you could probably understand even without the cards. The character designs look somewhat similar to each other, enough so that it can take a second todifferentiate secondary characters. But there's so much emotional imagery compressed within this OVA. And I don't mean that in the "you're supposed to cry here" sort of way; you couldn't even call this story sad. I mean it walks us through an impressive number of different emotions and caters each scene to expressing that feeling and making us share in it. That was impressive and a wonderful approach to animating this story. It felt fresh and unique enough in a way that could make me absolutely understand someone finding this and going "This is my favorite thing ever."

ooReiko★ 10

This film presents us a gentle approach to the subject of romance and relationships. First thing that comes to you at the start of this film is the immediate strong musical presence, that is only complimented by the visual presentation. That already sets this film apart from many other anime and films. However in addition of the strong visual presentation and musical aspect that is present throughout the film, you can see that the film is composed of segments. There are several layers of these segments and together they form the narrative of the film that is partly told through the visual presentation and in partthrough the musical atmosphere. The combination of these segments and how they play into each other I'd say is one of the strengths of the film. There are multiple songs used throughout the film, usually change of song signaling the dawn of a new musical segment in the narrative of the film. Another type of segments consist of black screens indicating the use of silent dialogue. As opposed to the segments relying on audio, these segments are purely visual. These two kind of segments together form create a sense of harmony and conflict within the audiovisual experience. They are separate from each other but they somehow managed to weave both of them together forming a magnificent audiovisual experience. The art brings beautifully life the designs from the manga and the struggle of the characters romance is portrayed thoroughly through both visual presentation and through musical performance. I'd say this approach that taps into multiple layers individually enables emotional connection to the setting and characters that cannot be obtained from a single layered experience. There is just more depth in the setup of the experience when the output is on multiple layers. Overall the content and design on the film I'd say that the multilayered audiovisual setting reinforces the context on the scenes and the allows the film to have one of a kind impact to the viewer, which is something I value.