Keep Your Hands of Eizouken! is proving to be one of those irresistibly fun anime that just leave you smiling. Honestly watching the three girls starting their own not-anime club and watching them get excited and bounce between practical reality and flights of fancy made for a thoroughly enjoyable twenty minutes. How did you find the episode Irina?
Oh this is going to be one of these collabs…one where we agree on everything! I honestly find the series utterly charming and a lot of it is due to simply having three realized characters with individual personalities that can play off one another instead of archetypes or just the same personality tweaked over and over again.
Agreed. Kanamori is the perfect foil for the creative duo of Asakusa and Mizusaki. Even Asakusa and Mizusaki have been nicely balanced, not just by their different drawing focuses but by Mizusaki’s different status and understanding of wealth. The end result is that the dynamic when the three girls are together really works well with each character bringing something to the party. Not to mention, they are all just fun characters to spend time with. Even Kanamori’s less enthused and more practical nature doesn’t mean she’s a wet-blanket and a lot of the amusement comes from watching her reactions to Asakusa. I’d actually kind of like to know how the two of them because such close friends.
Well I can kind of see it. I mean I really identify with Asakusa and I love Kanamori. Those sort of complementary relationships tend to work out best in my experience. And it’s obvious both girls do really like each other. I must say, I quite liked Kana bringing up the issue of finding a genre with mass appeal. We often concentrate on the creative side of anime but a lot of it is guided by the business side. The conversation was shelved but there’s promise for more in the future. Kana is standing in as the industry foil and I am very excited about that.
Yes, it feels more real because while creativity is necessary, practicality and business savvy is also needed for success. Kanamori brings that to the table.
The visuals and animation remained very nicely done this week. The contrasts between the clean and bright faculty room to the shed where they are setting up base and then the transition to their daydream were all very nicely done and these visual transitions help to keep the episode feeling fresh and moving along. I also love how in love with animation the writers of this clearly are. There’s so much passion as they explain older style animation and the equipment used for it.
Two episodes in and both featured heavy rain at some point. The weather effects were really impressive both times as well. It’s a peculiar art style that allows for a ot of animation flexibility and of course there’s the sheer visual interest of the sketch world. I think because of that and of the genre, people may overlook just how wonderful movement is in this series. I’m really struck by how fluid the animation is and how beautifully the anatomic models move. I also like that all of Asakusa’s mechanical imaginations seem to be guided by physically shifting the passengers’ weight around. You can sort of feel the weight in those scenes and it really shows the point they were making abut the windmill animation.
Where I’m probably going to be slightly more critical of this series after two episodes, and it is only a slight criticism, is in the plot. Two episodes in and other than the subject matter and a lot of enthusiasm and passion, from the plot point of view this anime is treading some very familiar footsteps as the girls start up a new school club. So far the characters and subject matter as well as some very cool sequences where the girls create ideas are keeping me very interested while watching but it isn’t really making me wonder what will happen next. Although, I do kind of wonder if they are going to get in trouble over uploading that video.
Oh good, I was starting to think we were really going to agree on everything and that’s just weird. Mind you I don’t disagree. Girls starting a school club is far from novel and there isn’t exactly much happening per see (although that closing scene does seem to spell some trouble for next episode). It’s just that I’ve never been the type to need novelty in my shows and have a fondness for pleasant nothings. So I’m sort of considering these a strength. And even though I just said not much is happening, I’m still eager to find out what happens next. How about you?
I’m definitely looking forward to the next episode.
Thanks for Reading From
Irina and Karandi
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Images from: Keep Your Hands of Eizouken. Dir. Masaaki Yuasa. Science SARU. 2020.