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krpalmerIt actually happened: Dark Horse translated and published the fourth volume of Sumito Oowara’s Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! manga and, as the blurb on the back cover proclaims, we’re seeing where the original story went after the anime adaptation left off. I suppose this might be more a matter of “it’s nice to get to hang around with these offbeat creators for another story arc” than “we can’t just be left hanging!” That in turn, though, does leave me wondering if I can say anything more profound than just summarizing the new dose of plot.
Things picked up in a casual way with Asakusa and Mizusaki heading off into the countryside. There’s a flashback to Kanamori snarling “Why should I have to hang out with you over break? It’s not like we’re friends or anything.” However, she still manages to turn up in short order as Asakusa gets tangled up with tankui, Japanese animals the invocation of “raccoons” in translation provokes indignation from some fans. One enigmatic, magical-realistic, and comedic adventure later, Asakusa has an idea for the Eizouken’s next anime.
As Asakusa insists “we have to get into character motivation here!” and brings up her three previous works as lacking there, I did get to thinking again about how the anime adaptation had punched up its concluding work-within-a-work even as I pondered long-standing personal impressions of apparent risk to letting all “fannish” thought on art slide into working out character motivations and treating works as mere documentary windows into larger worlds. The evolutions of her story and her usual worldbuilding were entertaining all the same, though. I suppose I did get to noticing the grind of making animation hardly seemed dwelt on at all now (and got to looking for “the fourth member” Doumeki, although as it turns out she’s even visible on the front cover if you pay attention). After Kanamori being treated to some urban vistas courtesy of an ambiguous student council member, the casually diverse Sowande Sakaki, there was in any case a lengthy “animation in comics” presentation of the story produced. More urban exploration followed (with another small touch of “this is happening in the future, by the way”), and things already seemed to be building towards another production at the end of the volume.
The lengthy afterword from Carl Gustav Horn continued to promise further volumes to continue the story, along with some discussion of the personal decisions of translation. For all that I did appreciate this further adventure I kept pondering the specific art style being one the animation did add something to rather than just “pointing at the original.” It would be one thing to get more anime, of course, but another thing to get anime “by the people who made the first series so great, or even other people who can do as good a job in their own way.”
Things picked up in a casual way with Asakusa and Mizusaki heading off into the countryside. There’s a flashback to Kanamori snarling “Why should I have to hang out with you over break? It’s not like we’re friends or anything.” However, she still manages to turn up in short order as Asakusa gets tangled up with tankui, Japanese animals the invocation of “raccoons” in translation provokes indignation from some fans. One enigmatic, magical-realistic, and comedic adventure later, Asakusa has an idea for the Eizouken’s next anime.
As Asakusa insists “we have to get into character motivation here!” and brings up her three previous works as lacking there, I did get to thinking again about how the anime adaptation had punched up its concluding work-within-a-work even as I pondered long-standing personal impressions of apparent risk to letting all “fannish” thought on art slide into working out character motivations and treating works as mere documentary windows into larger worlds. The evolutions of her story and her usual worldbuilding were entertaining all the same, though. I suppose I did get to noticing the grind of making animation hardly seemed dwelt on at all now (and got to looking for “the fourth member” Doumeki, although as it turns out she’s even visible on the front cover if you pay attention). After Kanamori being treated to some urban vistas courtesy of an ambiguous student council member, the casually diverse Sowande Sakaki, there was in any case a lengthy “animation in comics” presentation of the story produced. More urban exploration followed (with another small touch of “this is happening in the future, by the way”), and things already seemed to be building towards another production at the end of the volume.
The lengthy afterword from Carl Gustav Horn continued to promise further volumes to continue the story, along with some discussion of the personal decisions of translation. For all that I did appreciate this further adventure I kept pondering the specific art style being one the animation did add something to rather than just “pointing at the original.” It would be one thing to get more anime, of course, but another thing to get anime “by the people who made the first series so great, or even other people who can do as good a job in their own way.”