Juuza Engi: Engetsu Sangokuden - Gaiden Youzhou Genya

Apparently this OVA has had yet to inspire anyone to care enough about it to write a review, so here's a quick heads up on it.

This appears to be promotional material for some game, it's connected to Idea Factory (yes that Idea Factory -- Skelter Heaven, Mars of Destruction, and many more beloved trash heap OVAs), and it's not particularly interesting. It's basically just a flimsy excuse to showcase the main character Self Insert Catgirl Demon (SICD for short) and her expansive reverse harem. It bounces around showing a bunch of different trope characters (a bunch of hot guys and most of them are catboys) ... with very brief explanations of SICD's connections to them. A bit of world lore and history is also provided, though the story doesn't really do anything with it

The way it was written makes me feel like it wasn't meant to be partaken as a standalone; it feels like it expects viewers to be familiar with the characters and their backstories (rather that satisfactorily introducing any of them). Instead, it just jumps straight into them and their interactions with SICD with flimsy-at-best depictions of how they know her.

There's no real meat to the relationships either -- most of them don't even have any reason shown to be interested in SICD, and if they do it's just some trope-y relationship like 'big stepsister' or 'saved my life once'. Nothing even really happens to progress them -- it just advertises all of her potential romance paths in the source (or at least I assume), and once it quickly does that it moves onto the next attractive slice of cardboard.

The character designs are alright, and the music is surprisingly good for how slapdash of a production this feels. Unfortunately, the animation itself is somewhat lousy; it's not anywhere near the worst I've seen but it's still noticeably lazy. The character concepts -- while nothing original -- could be explored more and become interesting. The world-building is also a little intriguing -- the politics surrounding these cat demon people and the warring factions they get caught up in do have potential.

If you're a fan of whatever this OVA's source material is maybe you'd get more enjoyment out of this, but as is I wouldn't recommend watching this to anyone else. It's far more superfluous than actually bad -- for the most part it just doesn't do anything beyond basic shoujo baiting -- but there's certainly many better ways to spend your viewing time. (For instance, if you're looking for something with similar character dynamics, setting, and reverse harem aspects I would instead suggest watching Yona of the Dawn.)