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<maybe spoilers bellow>

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is a currently airing anime from renowned director Masaki Yuasa. He is well know for his outlandish styles and ability to think outside of the box to develop creative animation. He’s worked on well-known hits like Devilman: Crybaby, Ping Pong: The Animation, and Night Is Short: Walk On Girl. When he started out he was a smaller indie director and now he’s a major name in the anime industry.

Yuasa-san decided to work on this show because he found a forum post whilst searching his own name on Google. The post was from an enthusiastic fan of a lesser ... known manga called “Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na”. The reader thought that Yuasa-san would be a perfect director of anime based on this manga. He researched this manga and fell in love with it. From this, Yuasa decided to try to find a production committee to bring this idea into a reality. The rest is history.

Now, the anime has been airing for a little over two months. With the help of studio Science SARU, director Yuasa-san has created one of, if not, the best anime of this season. To be honest, when the show was first airing and I heard the premise, I was skeptical. It seemed original, a story of three classmates who come together to create their own anime, but I felt like a lot could easily go wrong or be badly paced and end up boring. However, my fears were put to rest after I watched the first episode. The animation is vibrant and the world is endlessly imaginative. There is no boring exposition on the strange, futuristic city the characters live in, because why do we need it? Yuasa-san is a master of the classic rule of “show not tell”. He would rather let the audience experience it, than tell them it.

The show was sitting around a 7 out of 10 for the first six episodes, however, with the recent story arc, the festival arc, coming to a close which spanned around three episodes, my faith was re-established in this show. The build up for the final episode of the arc was huge. We had several episodes of the characters developing and animating their idea for an anime to show at the festival. These lead-up episodes were interesting and highlighted important issues in the industry, like tight deadlines, unpredictable production issues and budget restrictions; However, they were just not as imaginative and fun as the previous episodes were. I feel this was because the story was slowed and pacing was a little bit off, but it always picked up whenever the characters began imagining what they could do with their animation. Director Yuasa-san chose to depict these scenes by having the characters metaphorically enter the animation they were creating and truly immerse the viewer in their imagination. These are always the highlight of the episodes. The main trio bounce off each other gloriously and exposition of ideas was made fun and vibrant.

Once we passed the build-up, the climax is wonderfully executed and the wait was well worth it. The protagonists wanted to use the festival to sell DVDs of their anime as to raise their production budget, which was demonstrated to be very restricting in previous episodes. The issue is that the Student Council wants to prevent the showing of the anime as the trio bribed the ‘air conditioning club’ into lowering the temperature of the theater; Which would attract people to come inside during the hot summer. Yes, that’s what actually happens. The student council then contracts the ‘security club’, which are equipped with full riot gear, to track down the main three protagonists and shut down their show. This is where the show gets fun. There are a variety of crazy antics which all come together to allow them to slip past the students councils grasp and have a successful showing of their anime. The people who they helped in the past by creating anime for them to use in promotion for their clubs come to protect our trio and help them get to the theater. Including a complex operation from the ‘robot club’ to distract and mislead the security club into letting them pass. The final moments of the episode are very satisfying and the trio get the recognition for the anime they worked so hard to create. This excuses the slower paced build-up episodes, as they allowed us to experience the hard work they put into the animation; Making the ending all the more satisfying.

In conclusion, Eizouken is a creative, innovative and, most importantly, fun anime about three classmates wanting to make their own anime. The world is well built and imagined and the over-dramatization of the student council is well done and creates ridiculous situations for the viewer to enjoy. The over the top and use of school clubs which would never really exist is not only creative, but allows for a fleshed out world for us to experience.

Overall, I really enjoyed Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.

8/10 from me.

Your Name is an animated film by Makoto Shinkai, probably my favourite director for anime or just movies in general. Other pieces Makoto Shinkai is well known for include Distant Star and, of course, Five Centimeters per Second. Your Name, or Kimi No Na Wa as it’s known in Japan, is about two high school students, Mitsuha and Taki, switch bodies. Each of them live in very different areas of Japan. Taki being from Tokyo and Mitsuha being from a rural area in Japan. The mysterious events of their body swapping, which happens a few times every week, all begins on the day when a ... mysterious shooting star falls across the sky.

The Animation:
It is clear when watching this film that the animators must have poured their hearts and souls into these visuals. The truly spectacular scenes where this is particularly apparent is when we see the shooting star near the start of the film and the final scene of the movie. The amount of time and effort which must have been put into these moments and the entire film must have been huge. The animators hard work has clearly been well worth it. The level of detail in the light and the shading is astonishing. Another part of the animation which I really appreciate, is the fact that all the places shown in the film are real places which you can go and visit. This even goes as far as the billboards in some scenes being the same as the ones in the real place, meaning someone had to gain the rights to show the real adverts in this movie. So that just goes to show how much effort the animators when through to make this film feel immersive and real.
Overall, I give the animation of this film a 10/10.

Story:
The story of Your Name is arguable simple. Two people having their bodies swapped and living in each others shoes has been done many times before, like in Freaky Friday. But, I believe that even with this somewhat simple plot Shinkai has really used the characters in the story to really make the audience feel for these people. When we see Mitsuha in her home with her family, we really do feel like they are a family and that they feel real like they actually exist. In addition, with Taki, we see and can sympathise with his struggles with balancing his social, school, and work lives. Although Your Name does have comedic moments and serious dramatic moments, it doesn’t feel like the film is “switching genres” halfway through or like one moment it’s all fun and gags and the next it's overly dramatic. It all feels consistent and the humour of the film does not clash with the more heart wrenching parts. One of my favourite parts of the entire film, is the ending. I feel that Makoto Shinkai has given the audience an ending which is satisfying but still leaves enough unanswered to let the audience think.
Overall, the story gets a 8/10.

The soundtrack:
The soundtrack of Your Name is, in my opinion a big part of the film. WIthout the songs from Radwimps I don’t think the film would be as good as it is. Simply just because their songs are used perfectly to fit the scenes to evoke emotions like sadness, relief, and happiness in the audience. Whenever I hear a song from Your Name, I get goosebumps, because the soundtrack really does have a big part in the emotional scenes in the film, so when you listen to them it brings all back.
Overall, the soundtrack gets an 10/10.

Conclusion and final thoughts:
After watching Your Name twice now I really do believe this film could be thought of as a modern classic in anime. So far I would say that this is probably the best of Makoto Shinkai’s works. And I think a lot of people would agree. Your Name actually gained a total gross of 358 million us dollars, making it the highest grossing animated film and japanese film of all time. Beating out films like the Incredibles, Aladin, and all the other classic american and japanese animated films. According to some reports people re-watched the film up to twelve times at the cinema. I can understand that because when i watched Your Name a second time, it was different from watching it the first time because you notice so many different things. Like the red ribbon of fate, the opening basically spoiling the whole movie if you pay attention and little hints at the ending and the big twist of the story throughout the film. I really did love Your Name or Kimi No Na Wa and would say it’s one of, or is, my favorite film.

Overall, I give Your Name a score of 10/10.