Know Your Audience: A Brief Review of School Babysitter's OVA.

Wholehearted anime is nothing new in this industry, but it's always nice to have a cleanser between action-packed or darker shows. While some people aren't fans of realistic slice-of-life shows, School Babysitters has been a welcome change of pace for me. As such, seeing that there was an OVA to go with it made me a little nervous. After all, not every OVA will be as good as the show itself (not to mention my fears of one particular character being brought in made me wary). However, I can state that those worries did not come to fruition, making this side story a favorite above the show itself.

I will be writing a separate review for the rest of the show, but for the sake of this review, just know that

Spoiler, click to view

Tomoya Yagi

does NOT make an appearance in this OVA, which I'm grateful for. Instead, we focus on Ryuuichi and Kotarou's relationship with Saikawa and the Chairwoman for 2/3 of the episode. I thought the main story didn't really showcase their relationships between each other as overtly, so getting dedicated time with them was appreciated. This does mean that the other children don't get as much screen time, but they get plenty in the show proper so I don't mind them getting reduced roles for this episode. The animation style matches what the main show had, which is also a relief as I've seen OVAs that have a completely different animation style from their counterpart show in the past. Overall, these short parts of the OVA feel like an extension of the main show, which made the transition from show to OVA less clunky and provided character interactions that were missed.

The last 1/3 of the episode is completely different, which is where the score dips. It's a reenactment of Snow White with characters from the show, but it feels like the production staff ran out of things to do for the episode and needed padding. It's so disconnected from the rest of the OVA that I feel it should've been it's own thing with maybe another adaptation to make it a full episode. I appreciate making an adaptation of something other than Alice in Wonderland which so many anime do, but it doesn't blend with what we saw for 2/3 of the episode. Cut this piece out, and I would've scored this higher.

Overall, the extension of the story that we got for most of this OVA was one that I approve of and felt meshed well. I wouldn't have known it was a separate OVA without being informed as such by the description and AniList's separation of this with the show. Subtract the Snow White portion, and this would've been a near perfect score from me. Otherwise, I'm sticking this at an 85; if you liked the main show, the OVA may exceed your expectations as it did for me!