It's difficult to resist trying these films associated with long-running series, as many of them have great aesthetics, present interesting themes to tie the series together, or have exciting, well-animated sequences. I would never watch the TV series, for it looks like unwatchable 1/10 garbage. I skipped the recap film half of the other OVA, Eien no Once More, for my viewing of Long Goodbye, but I watched it afterwards and found the context wasn't especially necessary; the characters and story are unbelievably basic, and there's no need to torture yourself by prepping for this OVA finale by slogging through the dreadful TV series oreven enduring the thrown-together recap film, though the latter should be more than sufficient, should you wish to be better prepared.

Probably this is only of interest for fans of Creamy Mami, animation enthusiasts, and for anime industry lore, as the screenplay was written by co-creator of the Creamy Mami series, Kazunori Ito, who worked alongside Mamoru Oshii for many of his most famous films and inserted the famed director into Long Goodbye to direct the film, with a variation on his name. The OVA focuses on filmmaking and one of the key characters is a scriptwriter, who could possibly be seen as a stand-in for Ito, and the few scenes featuring Oshii's doppelganger are quirky and possibly referential to his time working as a director at Pierrot studio, most notably for Urusei Yatsura.

The basic concept is fine, but the execution is less than stellar when it comes to writing and characters. The behind-the-scenes filmmaking is great for stringing together well-framed set pieces, wonderful and vibrantly colored animation, and one of the more riveting fantasy fight sequences of the 1980s, featuring excellent background animation and choreography. I don't have any complaints from an aesthetic standpoint. Despite many scenes being solid, the film is hollow in totality and doesn't have much going on. There's not even the heavy dose of nostalgia I would have expected for a closing film, and the themes circle back to the typical coming of age that must have defined the series, with a struggle between the identity of the middle school girl Yuu and her transformed state as the magical girl and pop idol Mami, their disconnect being represented by the film-within-a-film script's two worlds colliding in a battle to decide which world will be erased. It couldn't get anymore obvious, could it?

Yuu/Mami's crisis, where she can't control her transformations that correspond with the contrasting night and day, lack depth, and while I get that she's only 10 years old and probably a late teen with a much younger mind in her Mami form, she's such an uninteresting airhead of a protagonist. Shingo was infatuated with Mami while engaged to Megumi, but there is no sense of a love triangle at all, and it seems there wasn't meant to be. Megumi is the heroine of the film within a film, and Mami is the antagonist, in a nod to the coming of age anti-escapism themes. There is no conflict or interaction between them off screen, which renders the film as seemingly frivolous, no more than a symbol for the clash of fantasy against reality. The warmer scene where Yuu makes an attempt to bond with Megumi would have also been a lot more affecting if there was more tension between Mami and Megumi, as one would expect from the early portion of the script. Doesn't Megumi at least need to pussywhip Shingo and win her man? Not that Mami wants anything to do with Shingo, but he historically was interested in her.

Was this potential plot thread cast aside because of running time and Ito was more interested in focusing on his presumed self-insert character, Kidokoro, who is indistinguishable from being a Japanese Woody Allen, all the way down to trying to woo the ladies with his ghastly nebbish "charm"? The actual love triangle, oddly enough, involves Nippon Woody, Shingo, and Megumi. Though a woman would probably be certified insane if she had the choice and didn't pick Shingo, there's even a hint along the way that Megumi might actually be interested in Nippon Woody, but she's waiting for him to make a move, as so often happens in these films with the dorky character competing with Chad. It's hard to say, but her supposed interest might have even been an exaggeration of Nippon Woody's imagination, and the fantasy of his script subtly begins to overlap with reality. I'd say that fits in with the themes, but that's speculative, and the film doesn't do a great job of connecting the dots there, as far as I remember, should that be the case.

Due to the film tie-in in of this OVA and how much the character of Kidokoro and aspects of the production resemble the appearance and films of Allen, I think it's worth devoting a few sentences to the latter. The perpetually nervous Allen's favorite kind of film to make, at least earlier on, were nerdy romcoms where he played the lead role, with pretty women throwing themselves upon him. Though there was nothing fantastical about these films, they were quite fantasy-like in the way they depicted a creepy dweeb having his desires effortlessly fulfilled. If Allen's films are wish-fulfillment fantasy, the Long Goodbye takes a 180 and Ito pins the tale on the donkey and snaps him out of his pleasant dreams.

With that context out of the way, Mami's identity crisis is paralleled with Nippon Woody's subplot, which equally involves a feud between reality and fantasy, for Woody is in love with Megumi and knows he'll never succeed, but he writes his script as if to determine fate, encapsulated by the great line from Megumi about how films with a heroine usually have a hero to fall in love with, and the reason this film doesn't is obvious when you consider Woody's motives. The scene and the ideas brought forth are overlooked and fascinatingly prescient, given how they provide brilliant insight into not just developing trends within the mahou shojo genre but also tap into the popularity of CGDCT, a prime grazing ground for the herbivore man and his cautious plan. Thankfully, Nippon Woody fails to consummate his romantic aspirations and is cucked hard! Thanks, I needed that. Fuck Woody Allen.

In spite of many compelling ideas and a wonderful aesthetic, the film simply feels lopsided with all the Nippon Woody buildup only being there for a heavy punchline in the end, knocking him flat out with a much needed return to reality. The lack of decent conflict other than the simple one with Yuu/Mami also leaves this one feeling like throwaway fanservice more than a film. Many good scenes don't add up to an impressive whole, unfortunately. It's sad because I can see this being a minor classic with a director's cut and a more fleshed out script that considered some of my complaints.