Anime Review: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020) by Masaaki Yuasa

As I have mentioned many times before, I consider Masaaki Yuasa one of the greatest anime filmmakers living today, particularly for his effort to stray away from the rules of the category, as dictated by Studio Ghibli and the plethora of action anime out there. “Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!” may be his greatest work yet.

The story, which is based on Sumito Owara's manga, revolves around three high school girls. Midori Asakusa wants to create an anime but is too timid and afraid to show all her sketches to anyone or move forward with a plan like this. By pure chance, she meets Tsubame Mizusaki, a teen-idol whose parents are even more famous, and she is desperately trying to escape from their influence and become an animator. Sayaka Kanamori is a scary looking tall girl who also happens to be Midori's only friend. Soon the three of them, by effort and trickery, establish a club seemingly dealing with movies, but actually solely aiming to produce anime. Midori is the director, Tsubame the animator, and Sayaka the producer. However, their efforts stumble upon a number of hurdles, including the lack of money, time and the school council and particularly its secretary, Sowande Sasaki, who considers the member of the clubs crooks and does her best to restrict their “initiatives”.

Masaaki Yuasa takes the seemingly high-school drama base of the series and transforms it into a title that deals with all aspects of anime, from the moment they are conceived to their implementation, screening and promotion, and everything between. In that style, the title begins with Midori explaining how what we watch on the screen works starting with image boards, the overlay technique, a number of tricks animators use, the history of mecha anime and the reasons for their decline. The whole procedure and particularly the reasons that the Japanese, hand-drawn technique is back-breaking and time consuming is highlighted in the most eloquent matter. As the episodes progress, “Eizouken” also deals with the ways sound and image are combined and complement each other in anime and the importance of the imagination of the artist.

And while these elements highlight the genius of Midori and the hard-work of Tsubame, the one who eventually takes over the narrative is Sayaka, whose character mirrors the work a producer does in real life. Essentially, it is her tha tpresents all those concepts artists, and frequently the audience, do not want to deal with. Asking and granting favors for cooperation, dealing with the disappointment or the excessive euphoria of the artists, the importance of promotion, advertising, merchandise and having a kind of star quality in a production are depicted in all their pragmatic but also very realistic glory. As we listen to Sayaka stating, “money received is the guarantee of a work standard” or “no point of focusing on the quality of your product alone” the true genius elements of the title come to the fore, which focuses on the importance of the producer in turning the imagination of the artist to reality both financially and practically. That the protagonist of “Eizouken” is  a figure that very rarely receives the laurels deserved, particularly in the movie industry, emerges as the greatest aspect of the narrative.

Furthermore, by having her talk like a yakuza (and occasionally acting like one) and also having a “police officer” character in Sowande acting as her arch-enemy, induces the whole concept with an element of playfulness that works quite well for the narrative.

This playfulness also extends to the technical department, which once more in a Science SARU production, is top-notch. The rather impressive aspect, apart from the unusual lines and the extremely flowing movement, is the way the setting of the city and school comes to life to adapt to the imagination of Midori, sucking the characters in it. Those scenes, and the ones of the anime the trio create, who become better and better as time passes is where the animation work of the studio finds its apogee.

Asano Naoyuki's character design is also excellent, with the various protagonists being quite different from each other, even to a level that touches on the hilarious. The size of each character seems to mirror the size of their courage, with Midori being the shortest and most timid and Sayaka the tallest and the most sure of herself, even to a scary level on occasion. At the same time, their drawing also highlights the context of their characters and their most serious issues, with the lack of confidence of Midori, her desperate effort to get away from her parents' shadow of Tsubame and the self-sacrificial, no punches pulled of Sayaka being rather evident in their drawing and animation also. Furthermore the lack of any kind of fan-service is a rather welcome tactic, with Yuasa highlighting how a bathing scene among highschool girls can be, for one, desexualized.

Lastly, the anime also manages to talk about the concept of parenthood, the way the school and most of all, show business functions, thus adding even more depth to an already quite rich title.

Not much more to say, Masaaki Yuasa proves once more why is at the top of the category with “Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!”, one of the top titles of the year, while it is easy to say, that the opening, “Easy Breezy” by chelmico, will definitely stay on mind. .