It's no surprise by now that Siuil a Run: The Girl From The Other Side, I feel, is one of the best manga to come out in recent years. With its rich, intentionally messy artwork, compelling storyline, intriguing characters, and solid worldbuilding, the manga resonated with a lot of people, enough for it to get a short 10-minute OVA, which anyone who's read my review of that will know I absolutely love. So when it was revealed a second OVA was going to be made, a much longer one and with voice acting, I was hyped as hell, as were many others. It took a long time for it to come out, as the blu-ray containing it was bundled with one of the manga volumes in Japan. While it was released in March, only in April was it more available outside of Japan, and Crunchyroll even announced they're going to stream it later. So you can imagine my excitement when this finally came out. But then I saw reviews coming in saying that it deviated a lot from the manga, and arguably not for the better. I wanted to withhold my judgment until after I saw the OVA, and now that I've seen it...they're right. However, just because it deviates from the manga a lot doesn't mean the short film doesn't have any redeeming value.

At first, the OVA tells how Shiva and Teacher first met and how they come to live together as a little family before the latter starts getting concerned about Shiva's overall safety, should she continue to stay with him. After the thirty minute mark, the OVA becomes about Teacher trying to either find a human settlement where Shiva can live in peace, or trying to save her from the curse. So yeah, it's true that the OVA really starts deviating from the manga. Like, a lot. On one hand, this is somewhat understandable, as it'd be impossible to adapt an 11-volume manga into a one-hour-long OVA, so I can respect Wit Studio's wish to not bite off more than they can chew. They say less is more, after all, if stuff like the first OVA or even The Chronicles of Rebecca have anything to say about it. But I really do have to question a lot of the OVA's adaptational choices in regards to a lot of Teacher's decisions, even if the reasons for said decisions are understandable. I don't want to spoil anything, but having read the original manga, nowhere in the manga does Teacher ever consider abandoning Shiva in any way, not even out of concern for her safety. Plus, the OVA depicts some events happening very differently than in the manga, to the point of causing confusion about how they happened and why, and even has some original content that doesn't exist in the manga at all.

That being said, the characters themselves are fine, and they're mostly true to their characterization from the manga, save for Teacher suddenly wanting to send Shiva to a human village. Shiva doesn't act too cutesy moe or overly saintly like some anime children tend to act, and her voice actress honors that characterization. But Shiva herself doesn't really have much to her here other than liking Teacher and her surface-level trauma, and Teacher gets much more spotlight here, though a lot of it is spent on angsting about the curse. Other minor characters appear, but they're barely given much in the way of significance. The voice acting is fairly well done too. Not much else to say there.

Similarly to the first OVA, The Girl From The Other Side thrives on the experimental nature of its animation and the desolate atmosphere it conveys. And really, the animation alone does the OVA justice, not only to the manga itself, but Nagabe's art style. The OVA retains the shaky lines from the 10-minute short, making them more polished, the backgrounds are beautifully painted with loving detail, and a lot of the effects that this film uses—water filters, the muted color palette, jittering shading and outlines, ink blots, manipulating light, and others I don't have names for—are all used to great effect, conveying both the desolate environment they live in, and the two characters' emotional and mental states, all with a kind of ethereal beauty that only The Girl From The Other Side can convey. The soundtrack is also much more muted and ambient, doing its job impeccably, only playing when needed, and mainly restricted to just piano pieces.

In terms of which adaptation of the original manga is the best, I'd say I recommend the 10-minute silent OVA, as that one does its own thing without deviating too far from the manga, is true to the heart of the story, and narrows its focus to just showing a day in Shiva and Teacher's life. That being said, that's not to say the 2022 OVA doesn't have redeeming value. Significant deviations from the manga aside, I think the 2022 OVA is better seen as either an alternate continuity or a separate entity from the manga, similar to how the 1997 Ie Naki Ko Remi anime deviates significantly from the original Sans Famille novel and the 1977 Ie Naki Ko anime to the point of being its own entity. Plus, even The Girl From The Other Side's original manga has some issues, particularly as it gets closer to the end. The best way to watch this 1-hour OVA is to not have your expectations too high in regards to faithfulness to the manga, because it's clearly trying to be its own self-contained story, though it makes some missteps in doing so. Or, on the other hand, you can use it as a way to get people who aren't familiar with anime into it for the first time.

In the end, the 2022 The Girl From The Other Side OVA, while very ambitious and experimental with its animation, deviates a lot from the original source and doesn't make the best decisions in doing so. But at its heart, its still a nice way to kill an hour, especially if you want to watch it as just an experimental art film or take it as just a long advertisement for the manga. Plus, I'd still take this over all the shitty ecchi and light novel isekai anime any day of the week. I kind of hope some company like GKids or Eleven Arts dubs it into English and puts it out on DVD/Blu-Ray, along with the 10-minute OVA as well. That would be great!