The following is a review I originally wrote on Letterboxd. But before we proceed, I noticed the other review on here attempting to piece together the plot of the OVA, without any knowledge of the source material it is based on. I have no idea if it's a sarcastic review, but it does lead into the missing piece that people are usually unaware of whenever they watch Cipher the Video. Hence the ridicule. Hence the conclusion that this man named Siva is a spiritual being, and not some two-brain-celled twink who playfully bickers with his friends a lot.

Anyway:

Cipher the Video isn't so much an adaptation of Cipher as much at is an adaptation of Cipher's feel. The comic brandished many beautiful establishing shots of both New York and Los Angeles, creative and dynamic paneling, and an immense love for the fun, peppy nature of 1980s American pop culture. It fulfills all of Minako Narita's hopes and dreams by allowing her to convert her renditions of New York into sweeping colored backgrounds, in motion. It especially fulfills her dreams of being able to pair popular licensed songs with her own property. It's a supplementary piece to a lovely comedy-romance manga, working in tandem with it rather than separately from it.

Particularly, the most Cipher the Video adapts story-wise (besides the very beginning in the form of "I want to be your friend!") is an arc where Jake and Roy take a trip to LA to film a football movie. This entails Anise going on a cross-country biking trip to see them, but the OVA instead focuses more on the fictional movie that the comic doesn't focus much on. Besides that, the comic establishes early on that Roy will sometimes take walks throughout the city when feeling down, hence the sequence that occurs when his mother is mentioned. Why the mention of his mother triggers this is something I won't spoil either, but it's to be said that parental issues are a vital theme of Cipher. The OVA also foreshadows the appearance of Levine, who is very important in the plot of the manga after the video's release.

Cipher the Video is something that you need to be a fan of Cipher to truly understand the appeal of. Fans will revel in how every unique attribute of the comic is represented with flying colors, and the ability to tell their confused friends the individual context of every scene. Maybe the movie could've taken the time to explain things [even I had a bit of trouble remembering whether it was Siva who got the ponytail and orange hair in the first LA trip or not], but why ruin the illusion of a mockumentary that embraces the energy of Narita's masterful chapter covers and background work?

This isn't a bad OVA, or "so bad it's good". It's a plain fantastic OVA for fans of the manga. That's all it needs to be. Who cares if it's a more "read the manga" work than One Piece even is at a fanbase level?

Read the manga.

-a big Cipher fan