Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

First year high schooler Midori Asakusa loves anime so much, she insists that “concept is everything” in animation. Though she draws a variety of ideas in her sketchbook, she hasn’t taken the first step to creating anime, insisting that she can’t do it alone. The producer-type Sayaka Kanamori is the first to notice Asakusa’s genius. Then, when it becomes clear that their classmate, charismatic fashion model Tsubame Mizusaki, really wants to be an animator, they create an animation club to realize the “ultimate world” that exists in their minds.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Yuasa Masaaki’s adaptation of Sumito Oowara’s manga series, is an exuberant, splendidly mounted meta-anime that immerses us in the feverish world of anime production. With three oddball protagonists who represent various facets of the profession, the series showcases not just the intense creativity and technical knowhow that go into making a successful animation, but also the practical negotiations with all stakeholders that determine its final shape.

Produced by Science SARU, the series swaps Yuasa’s typical young male protagonist for a trio of high-school girls, but it doesn’t emphasise their gender. The focus is instead on their synergy and infectious passion. As their scrappy team grows from strength to strength, reality and fantasy seamlessly blend, expanding their quaint coastal town into complex, colourful worlds. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! celebrates the incomparable joy of sleepless nights spent on creative collaboration.

– Srikanth Srinivasan

Film stills: ©Sumito Oowara, Shogakukan / Eizouken Committee

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