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 to differentiate 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."
