Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

I - Meta narrative

The first thing I can really give this show is that usually I'm stuck wondering when anime characters are watching anime, if they're actually watching live-action from their perspective, but this one makes it perfectly clear and yet still somehow surreal that these anime characters are talking about anime as if it was anime even though they themselves are anime and...
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Loving the enthusiasm with which she describes good animated stuff, being passionate about animation myself, this is right up my alley. It's a realistic and grounded take on the perspective of those who are passionate about animation, not the story, but the animation part of anime, the most important part, and I think Yuasa understands how important animation is more than most directors.

However this is contrasted with a very un-grounded, cartoony and wacky world these characters live in, like a stairway that turns into a slide is completely natural, and this place they live in is just like any other... yet there's detail etched into all of it, especially the backgrounds. They're really not sleeping on making the setting full of life despite the easy subject matter. Even the background sounds of seagulls while they're in a building sells the location.

Also the character designs have genuine variety and unique-ness between them, it reminds me a bit of dragon pilot without the cringe. I'm enjoying all the distinctness here.

I hate the title though. This anime has the worst title of all time. I literally passed it up because of the title, then only realized that it was a yuasa show because of a post @Zed60K made about yuasa, reminding me there was a yuasa anime coming out soon. So i'm gonna just call it Eizouken.

Damn damn daaamn. I wasn't totally even that sold until the show transferred into a concept-art-aesthetic world, where they designed a dragonfly helicopter from inside the drawing, and that transition was so seamless. The coloring is all incomplete and the lines are more sketchy than those in the normal show, giving that feeling of being in a concept design.

This is amazing. I don't even care that it makes no goddamn sense why the bodyguard guys are in the concept art... almost.

Wow, how meta this is, me commentating on how animation is used in an anime with characters commentating on how animation is used in anime. Anyways, this is great. 9/10 so far, really strong and entertaining start.

Making me wish I could draw.
 
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Episode 1:

Unfortunately I don't have the time right now (thanks school) to make a long post, but here's what I have for now:

I didn't know what to expect going in; initially I thought it would just be some silly slice of life thing, then @Gens mentioned it was Yuasa... so right there I knew it couldn't be that simple, albeit I still didn't know how seeing as I've barely seen any Yuasa... But I was happy with this. Even if I'm not in the animation field and can barely draw stick figures, as someone heading into a creative field, the passion and beauty of this is clear. I love the nods to old-school Miyazaki, and it amused me that Asakusa had a Panjandrum (google it) in her sketchbook. All-in-all, I'm definitely in and looking forward to this big time.
 
Oh man...this is the show I didn't know I needed. As someone who is passionate about all things animation (even though I don't have a single art-making bone in my body), I love that this anime is already showing just how exciting and impactful a good concept can be to an anime as a whole. That sequence where they transitioned from Midori finding the sketch of the vehicle to them actually "building" it to them using it to escape was so seamless that I was on the edge of my seat grinning like a moron.

The animation threw me at first because it seemed too simplistic at first blush. But as the episode went on I found myself saying "wow" more and more at the sketch-y beauty every scene brought forth. 10/10 will be watching first every week.
 
Gens said:
Interesting article and something I didn't even really think about with the gender neutral movements: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/in...ector-discusses-making-of-the-episode/.155059

They are really putting heart and soul into this, just like the main characters. 2-4 times more drawings? This is what it's all about man.
Click to expand...

That's really interesting. I know when learning to draw people often emphasize that women move in ways they... really don't (you'll see for instance, a lot of women running in animation in exaggerated ways real people don't run in, the whole flouncing awkward hands to the side bit). And that's super common, no matter whether you're learning from western or eastern artists. So it's really neat to see someone notice the influence of that and move towards more gender neutral body language.

The body language in the show struck me as more realistic than I usually see while keeping the appeal of exaggeration that comes with the territory. It reminded me of people I'm buddies with more, and it's really neat. I think female characters often get the short end of the stick in animation because animators tend to try to avoid them making 'ugly motions' (something directly stated by disney, for one). I'm even more excited for the show!
 
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