Harbor Light Monogatari: Fashion Lala yori

This anime is targeted mainly for children. If you want something cute to watch with young children give this anime a chance. The anime has very cute art style and lovely music that is fitting for the story. It feels basically like watching a dream of 5-year-old girl. It is basically a retelling of Cinderella and doesn´t have much to offer except that. The voice actors are great pick for the characters. Unfortunately, the characters are very plain and don´t have much to offer although that´s not much of a problem since the story is only 48 minutes long. If you want to get ... a young girl (age 4 - 8) into anime, definitely give this one a try.

This is obviously bad, but I'm generous enough to rate it as average. I watch lots of stuff indiscriminately for encyclopedic and analytical reasons, I'm usually interested in the dynamics of creation themselves, sometimes my inner narrative creeps into the thing thus a subjective one or half points are given.

I love these old OVAs from the 80s and 90s, they're products of a certain era and energy that's possibly not going to come back, the bubble economy was in its resting phase, European aesthetics and obsessions were rampant and explicit, characters moved and looked differently, rather more realistic. Most anime characters now look alien or ... robotic in worst cases, makes you think.

It's a bizarre mess, no doubt. The story is set in a port town with European classical architecture, yet all the characters look like they came straight out of a commercial district in Tokyo, we even have punk gangs with motorcycles who actually happen to be the good guys along the little girl! I rated this higher solely because of Miho, the child who actually weaved the whole thing with her fashion drawings, it's always fun to observe self-referential awareness, especially in these types of low quality projects where you don't expect it at all, that's one of the reasons why I watch many bad stuff if you're ever wondering.

But there's something dark about this as well, the subtle incest and pedophilia. It's like completely different stories are slammed against one another, pay attention to the parts about the old guy and his family, also the sexualization of Miho, so weird and icky but one wants to understand. Then we have the innocent dream of the little girl that saves the whole thing, it's so pure and beautiful if you contrast it with the other aforementioned dark narrative, forget the silly fashion and Cinderella references, they're cloaks for something far more sinister, so strange and haunting if you view it this way.

The art and characters are based on other magical girl series from Pierrot Studio.

Wow... what a disappointment. I really thought it was going to be a cool OVA, but it's bad.

It could have developed a much better story in those 48 minutes of length, but...
I already lost hope when Miho was almost run over bad in a very imbecilic way. But since there was only 30 minutes to go, I watched it to the end.

The story is pretty bad, and I will mention everything that I found shitty.
The story has no focus, and everybody seems to dislike Miho, except Shuri. It could very well unfold the plot with Miho getting to be a designer for the contest instead ... of throwing in a plot out of nothing about a guy (son of another guy who is doing the contest) that nobody cares about and has an extremely vague and unexplored motivation to end up ruining the contest.
I don't even remember this guy's name, but he was mad at his father because his father didn't release something of his. Release what? I really don't know, it wasn't even explained, just thrown out there. Is this guy a singer, a dancer, an artist? He himself goes out and gets a bunch of people to blow things up in town to get revenge on his father, and in the end he and a gang go out and blow everything up in the contest.
It gets worse. Shuri asks Miho to make an outfit for her to participate in the event, and Miho does. But her aunt, who seems to hate her, rips up the outfit she made. Why? Her aunt keeps picking on the girl for what reason? She also loves to underestimate Miho and refuses to look at the clothing designs she makes, without any motivation.
Back to the beginning of the OVA... Some typical Mahou Shoujo bugs are introduced, but they only appear at the end in the most convenient way possible. They appear for Miho to become someone older and go to the contest, which is all destroyed and everyone has already fled because of the explosions. The worst comes now: She arrives from the sky using magic and starts dancing, and out of nowhere a song starts playing... Where did the music come from? Who turned on the stereo with everything destroyed just for a "woman" to dance? And she starts dancing and changes her clothes with magic and nobody wonders how this happened, it is very clueless. It is not only the clothes that change, but also her hair that is long, becomes short and vice versa. In the end she goes flying and a bunch of people (who appeared out of nowhere to see her show) start raising their hands as if they were glorifying a goddess.

Basically this OVA doesn't explore the most important things, it throws things out of nowhere to make it seem like it has a plot, and in the end it does nothing. It's just another bad anime.

The only thing I can praise is the character designs, especially the girls who are beautiful. I really like the design and aesthetics of the 80's, so there's not much to complain about in this aspect.
The animation is not bad, but it is not that good. It is average.
It has some nice music, but I can't remember any of it.

I just hope Mahou no Stage Fancy Lala doesn't suck like this OVA.