#Keep your hands off eizouken how to#
#Keep your hands off eizouken free#

While they all get on, and care immensly about each other and their work, the show mines its drama out of the mistakes one makes when they’re learning, their shared misunderstanding of each other’s roles, and the reality that what it takes to finish something is quite often different from what we find satisfying.

#Keep your hands off eizouken how to#

It’s acknowledgment that the joys of the work are inextricably tied to the pains come through clearest in its satire of the culture of overwork that is endemic within the industry: Asakusa, the team’s director, choosing to sleep under her desk because ‘it’s what all heroes do.’Īlongside her are Mizusaki, the lead animator, trying to figure out how to fit 48 hours’ worth of animation into a single day and Kanamori, their producer, who resorts to bribes, blackmail and all out threats to secure the future of their little outfit. The closest thing we get to a villain are the same ones that dog our own working lives: deadlines, poor production pipelines, management miscommunication. Eizouken! as a show rejects this impulse. If we could cut the bad actors, then the problems would be solved. It’s the villains out there (Tommy Wiseau, and overdemanding studio heads in the aforementioned examples) that are corrupting the process. The work is good and noble and pure, we tell ourselves.

Shin’ichirô Ueda’s moderately charming film One Cut of the Dead fares better, but which too decided to flatten much of the drama contained within its otherwise engaging premise, turning it into a somewhat empty exercise in style. You needn’t look further than James Franco’s recent The Disaster Artist to find an example of a film where the director’s love of a subject completely overwhelms anything interesting or important in the material. It’s all too easy for a love-letter to become a hagiography. Or, if not bad, too cloistered and self-referential to be of much interest to anyone outside of the industry. Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! (Science Saru)įilms about filmmaking are usually bad. It might be the best piece of work I’ve seen about making art these past few years. The show is, in essence, a love letter to the medium, the frustration of building a world out of pen and paper, and the determination and drive of those who dedicate themselves to making this impossibility a reality. Its twelve episode run depicts three high school students forming a film club out of a ramshackle and abandoned warehouse on school grounds, so as to chase their dream of producing anime. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is the latest anime show out of Science SARU, the studio behind 2017’s fantastic Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, based on the manga by Sumito Ōwara. I stare at my computer screen and get increasingly angry and upset at myself every minute those words fail to come. This is the time, we are told, to create something great - and yet every time I sit down to write, I can’t.

#Keep your hands off eizouken free#

I’ve found myself with more free time than I’ve had over the past five years. Thankfully, between savings, last month’s pay and government assistance, I am in the fortunate position of having my head above the water. Both of my workplaces have closed with no clear indication of when they plan on re-opening.

I have not worked for money in over a month.

Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! paints a beautiful picture of artistic collaboration and success, making it the first truly great anime of 2019.