Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism: Doki! "Goken-darake" no Ian Ryokou

[Bonus Episode: School Trip – Onsen]

Most series will usually feature an OVA in the form of lighthearted entertainment or fanservice. Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism is no different, as this OVA, came bundled with the original manga, is your standard "school trip to the Onsen episode". In other words, a fanservice episode. And if it wasn't obvious enough, then looking at the thumbnail should provide some additional insight.

STORY:

This OVA is a direct sequel to the main series.

As far as fanservice episodes goes, this one was boring and not very entertaining. The first half of this episode featured boring dialogue and a study event where ... Fudou Nomura must pass his exams in order to go on the Onsen trip, but, as usually, he passes the exam. And, then the second half involved a "typical" legend about the Onsen, i.e., the first person to enter the Onsen gets their wish granted, and brief fight scene over which girl will enter the Onsen first. Overall, a boring fanservice episode.

ANIMATION:

The art, background settings, and character designs were all pretty mediocre. There was a short fight scene, but it wasn’t very impressive compared to the main series’ fight scenes.

SOUND:

There was nothing impressive or noteworthy that stood out to me. We have the same voice actors and actress reprising their roles. And, we have the same opening and ending song from the main series.

CHARACTERS:

Don’t expect any character development or additional backstory. If you have seen the main series, then you will know who these characters are, their personalities, and how they will behave. Furthermore, you can expect the same cheesy dialogue and bad jokes.

ENJOYMENT:

It was boring and not very entertaining. Generic fanservice for an overall generic show.

This OVA for Armed Girl's Machiavellism is jut a simple fanservice episode. If you don't like fanservice, don't watch it, if you do like fanservice, then do.

The story continues where the main anime left off. The pacing is quite bad to transition from being in the school to going to a hot spring but the anime does address all steps however briefly. There is no real story apart from going to the hot spring though.

The characters, voice acting and animation are all the exact same as in the main anime.

Overall it's an alright fanservice episode with bad pacing.

When in doubt, hot springs episode. You know the drill, it's a bonus OVA for if you bought the home media release so it's going to be fan-service and pandering the whole way through. Not bad if you liked these characters and you're into that, but nothing really of substance here. It's the kind of episode where after I was done watching it it had already pretty much left my brain, like it was never there at all. I had to go watch parts of it again for this review just to make sure there wasn't anything special about it I might have missed because ... I genuinely couldn't remember what had happened.

Basically you can boil the plot besides the fact that they go to a hot spring down to a pissing match between the 5 swords girls over who can be the most tsundere. Honestly situations like these get so tiresome that's it's refreshing to see one of them just say what everyone is thinking. The girl at the end who actually gets protagonist did so by just admitting how she was feeling and taking what she wanted instead of hmming and hawing about it indefinitely. 7/10 hot springs

Another one of those "bonus" episodes bundled with a manga after the TV episodes have already been forgotten which in my case as soon as the last episode finished. Without any memory of the series that spawned this "special", it felt neither special nor a bonus. The harem cast was pretty much as generic as they come so to pair it up with a bog-standard cliche episode just underlines the typical problem with these type of standalone episodes. Any dialogue or story narrative is secondary, if even that with the emphasis solely to throw as much fanservice as possible on the screen but even that ... does not stretch beyond mildly titillating. A boring way to waste time.