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krpalmerGetting past “a manga first draft of events I’d already seen animated” to “further adventures of the Eizouken” had been encouraging. Dark Horse continuing to defy gloomy expectations and bringing out a fifth volume of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! might have been taken just a bit more for granted. I didn’t rush to read this new instalment of the story. Perhaps it was a matter of “a manga about making anime isn’t quite the same as an anime about making anime.” Sumito Oowara’s artwork is interesting when it comes to the world the characters move in, but the characters themselves might not be “much more consistently good-looking in the more limited number of drawings manga requires” or “getting away with stuff that has to be toned down for broadcast.”
In any case, the fifth volume opens with a lot of local exploration (which had me remembering a few notes to myself I’d made just as the anime was starting, wondering whether “urban exploration” might have made for an interesting story in itself), springing in some part from trying to scavenge food for Doumeki, the late addition to the Eizouken and an audio engineer. She finds an antique, hidden-away clock tower and hurries to record its chime, only for the mechanism to cave in just as the hour’s about to strike. The rest of the volume is about making an anime to raise money to rebuild the seemingly unique massive wooden chime within the tower. “Drawing, drawing, drawing” doesn’t seem to get a lot of emphasis any more, but “a story about sound effects” does seem to work even in this medium.
I had noticed the back cover blurb playing up the appearance of another “anime club” on campus; when its members did appear I was left wondering what all the fuss had been about, but perhaps also distracted in a pleasant way by the club’s newsletter notes name-dropping Flying Phantom Ship. As the volume approached its end I had the impression it wasn’t quite going to offer a “self-contained plot arc” the way previous volumes had, and then Carl Gustav Horn’s lengthy end notes were promising another two volumes would be translated and explaining the members of the other anime club were drawn as younger takes on notable anime directors (including Masaaki Yuasa, who’d directed the Eizouken anime) and pointing out the recent Discotek Blu-Ray of Flying Phantom Ship along with its commentary track from Dave Merrill and Mike Toole. Horn also happens to mention Robotech as something in his own past, making a point of how controversial it was for those in the know but mentioning how it had appeal beyond that enlightened circle. Promises of this story being continued in a way that I can read it are something; it’s also got my attention (in and beyond this manga) that another volume of Emanon might be translated and available for sale soon, and that series had left me aware of all the accusations about Dark Horse being quick to leave manga hanging.
In any case, the fifth volume opens with a lot of local exploration (which had me remembering a few notes to myself I’d made just as the anime was starting, wondering whether “urban exploration” might have made for an interesting story in itself), springing in some part from trying to scavenge food for Doumeki, the late addition to the Eizouken and an audio engineer. She finds an antique, hidden-away clock tower and hurries to record its chime, only for the mechanism to cave in just as the hour’s about to strike. The rest of the volume is about making an anime to raise money to rebuild the seemingly unique massive wooden chime within the tower. “Drawing, drawing, drawing” doesn’t seem to get a lot of emphasis any more, but “a story about sound effects” does seem to work even in this medium.
I had noticed the back cover blurb playing up the appearance of another “anime club” on campus; when its members did appear I was left wondering what all the fuss had been about, but perhaps also distracted in a pleasant way by the club’s newsletter notes name-dropping Flying Phantom Ship. As the volume approached its end I had the impression it wasn’t quite going to offer a “self-contained plot arc” the way previous volumes had, and then Carl Gustav Horn’s lengthy end notes were promising another two volumes would be translated and explaining the members of the other anime club were drawn as younger takes on notable anime directors (including Masaaki Yuasa, who’d directed the Eizouken anime) and pointing out the recent Discotek Blu-Ray of Flying Phantom Ship along with its commentary track from Dave Merrill and Mike Toole. Horn also happens to mention Robotech as something in his own past, making a point of how controversial it was for those in the know but mentioning how it had appeal beyond that enlightened circle. Promises of this story being continued in a way that I can read it are something; it’s also got my attention (in and beyond this manga) that another volume of Emanon might be translated and available for sale soon, and that series had left me aware of all the accusations about Dark Horse being quick to leave manga hanging.