魔法少女隊アルス the Adventure 03
Magic Girl Squad Arusu: The Adventure 03
Tweeny Witches the Adventure 03

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: A couple of young witches are playing with a ball on their broom until one whacks the ball far away. Because it is too much trouble to retrieve the ball, the witches leave. This causes a chain of events in which a Gameri egg ends up landing in the meal of young witches Miresu and Miretesu (possibly the witches playing ball earlier). The egg hatches and the Gameri calls them “Mama.” The two witches take the Gameri to the containment facility hoping to cash in, but the adult witches remind them that it is only the horn of the Gameri that is valuable, not the sprite itself. As such, Miresu and Miretesu will have to raise the critter themselves until its horn grows. Luckily, Sheila has already raised one once and can help.

Sheila teaches Miresu and Miretesu how to properly raise Gameri, including finding the milk balls that grow in the woods for the Gameri to consume. So the two work hard on raising the sprite and Shelia is tasked with making sure that all ends well since her own Gameri raising effort is judged a failure by the adult witches. Eventually, the time comes when Gameri grows a horn and Sheila knows what must be done. Miresu and Miretesu are horrified at giving up the Gameri, whom they’ve named Popo-chan and become attached to. So, they flee with the sprite on their brooms.

Sheila gives chase, followed by Alice and Eva. Alice can’t believe that Sheila is actually going to have the sprite sent to the containment center for its horn. Miresu and Miretesu end up in the middle of a sprite area and the sprites think that the duo are attacking the Gameri. Alice has her normal “this is wrong” speech and Sheila remembers how she’d turned her own Gameri in, whom she’d been so close to. Sheila promised the frightened sprite she’d visit it regularly. However, her Gameri turns on her in captivity, clearly feeling betrayed. Eventually it escapes and Sheila’s interference helps it get away.

With Sheila and Alice providing cover magic, Miresu and Miretesu toss Popo-chan into the air so that it will fly away and escape. Unfortunately, a sprite-eating Bakiwa has grabbed it. The witches are in pursuit with Alice popping some offensive magic, but Bakiwa deflects it. Sheila rams Bakiwa with her broom, causing it to release Popo-chan, which Sheila then tosses to Miresu and Miretesu before she falls into the lake below. However, she’s rescued by an adult Gameri, who is the one Sheila raised earlier. Turns out, Popo-chan is the child of Sheila’s Gameri. Parent and child reunited, the witches return home, Alice having nice things to say about Sheila, which creeps Sheila out.

Thoughts/Review: Ugh! The character designs went south in this one. Everyone looks absolutely ugly. Granted, the designs are supposed to be somewhat odd and they certainly were in the TV series, but while the last two OVA episodes have looked nicely drawn, this episode looks like someone just rushed through some rough sketches and then the production team said, “we’ll use those.” So when we see Eva-chan’s little sprite lesson at the end, it is even more obvious because she looks great here and ugly in the episode. Not sure why this happened, but take a look.

From episode 01:

Now, from episode 02:

And now, this episode:

Real disappointing and I hope this isn’t what we are subjected to for the remaining episodes. Frankly, that will make the series much less enjoyable.

As to the episode’s story, it brought in the Alice preaching element which annoyed me a bit in the TV series. Personally, I like it more when Alice, Sheila, and Eva are more of a team and friends rather than Sheila being the obstinate person from the TV series (at least, the first part of it). Seeing Sheila go from hard-lined stance supporting the witch’s goal of collecting sprites to helping one escape is ultra-predictable, more so in light of the TV series.

Still, despite this and the terrible art, I was marginally entertained.