Handsome Girl

There are parts of this that look very nice, particularly the very pastel 90s fashion sense and the motorcycle scenes. However, this is first and foremost a romance, and that part of the story never really came together. There's no motivation shown for the leads to get together, not much of a romantic conflict keeping them apart, and not even any chemistry. Their meet cute goes badly, they spend more time together, we're informed that they have warmed to one another, and that's really almost the extent of it. They just don't care much, so I'm not sure why I should be expected to. A significantpart of this OVA is music videos of a minor character singing, and I did enjoy the vintage tunes even if the style isn't my favorite.

The ova is just a typical 90s shoujo anime with nothing that stands out as being particularly interesting. By no means is it egregious in any ways but that's where the fault lies with the show just not doing enough to warrant a watch. It falls into the classic ova trap of trying to cram too much into a single episode which destroys the pacing and rushes character development. If it was presented as a 12 episode series it could have potentially helped with the flaws in character development. Overall if you're looking for a well written romance with a solid plot I would notrecommend, but if you just want something to watch it would be a fun watch.

Can one adapt a romance manga in a single 30-minute episode? The short and obvious answer would be no. But that did not stop them from trying. I haven't really read the source material to be sure, but based on the other reviews I guess this is the full adaptation of the whole thing. I use the words "full adaptation" very loosely here because in any way shape or form can you adapt the source material in 1 episode. In reality, this seems to adapt half of the original story, but even that is unreasonable since every chapter is around 40 pages long. It could workfor an action OVA, but this is definitely it. It just feels this OVA skips so many steps in making an endearing love story. It all just falls flat, especially the drama. There's no time to develop any of the characters or the relationship between the main couple and the drama just feels so forced and awkward since there's not an attempt to make it look believable. Very disjoined and sloppy execution. And I don't really understand why the author used teenager characters in a setting where an adult cast would have worked so much better. But taking a peek at the manga, it feels like they eventually reach adulthood, so it might work in the context of the full work. The shortcoming of the pacing is a shame, because some of the songs are catchy and the animation is serviceable, sometimes even good despite the character designs looking very uninspired-shoujo. I don't really have many complaints about how this looks or sounds overall. For this OVA to be the lovely story it aimed to become, it needed at least 3 or 4 episodes, but even then, I'm not sure the source material is that far from a cliche shoujo love story. Maybe one day I'll find out if I actually give it a read.