Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a twelve episode anime adaptation of the manga series written and illustrated by Sumito Owara. The producer of the anime is Masaaki Yuasa, who also wrote the scripts. The studio that produced the show is Science Saru.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! aired during the winter 2020 season of anime, and is available to watch on Crunchyroll.
At its core, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a girls’ club anime. It follows many of the same beats: girls starting up a club in their school, seeking an advisor, the student council opposing the club, there is even one extra member who technically joins a little later on.
However, there is much more to Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! than just being a girls’ club anime. It is clear that the creators of the show have incredible passion for animation, and that shines through in each and every episode.
It helps enormously that the three main characters all have a lot of passion for what it is they do. Midori Asakusa believes that the setting is the main draw of any anime, and as such has a sketchbook full of drawings of the different surroundings she explores.
Sayaka Kanamori’s passion is undoubtedly making money, and it just so happens that she can see a way to turn a profit from creating anime. She is the most serious member of the main cast, though she certainly is not above doing what it takes to get her way.
Then we have Tsubame Misuzaki, who fits very neatly into the rich girl archetype that tend to be prevalent in girls’ club anime. She is passionate about animation, but her parents expect her to become an actress. Character movement is the particular type of animation that she enjoys most.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! stands alongside Shirobako as an anime that allows its audience to really appreciate what goes into creating animation. Shirobako is set in a professional environment, whereas here in Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, it is more like the girls pursuing passion projects.
A key aspect of the whole show is imagination, and it is in that regard that Midori Asakusa tends to lead the charge. What might seem to be a mundane task in real life becomes something much more spectacular in Asakusa’s imagination, and that is easily one of the things that makes Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! stand out.
We are shown everything that Asakusa imagines, even down to the smallest of detail. Accompanying these imagination sections is a particular song that means things are about to look spectacular. It is also worth noting that the sound effects for said sections are made by the characters themselves, which adds a bit more fun into the mix.
The members of Eizouken creating anime allows Asakusa’s imagination to actually take shape, and it is always a treat. They tackle a few different projects over the course of the anime, and it is rewarding to see how their struggles ultimately come out. Even the process that goes into creating the projects is just a treat to watch.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is certainly something special, and definitely one to watch for those seeking to develop a better understanding of animation – that’s animation in general, not just anime. It is handled in such a fun and compelling manner.
There are times when Asakusa’s imagination includes things like storyboards or concept drawings. Whilst they are neat touches, sometimes that does include a lot of visual information to process. Something you’ll likely have to pause to do, because there is just so much. It could be a little overwhelming, particularly when you’re trying to read subtitles and suddenly have a screen full of translated text as well.
In the grand scheme of things, though, that is only a minor problem. Some might find the plot being nothing more than girls creating anime to be a little underwhelming, but that tends to be the case for girls’ club anime. That’s the thing about Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, though; it doesn’t need a massively detailed story to shine. They do experience the token opposition from the student council, but again, par for the course. Creating anime has its own challenges, and they are represented here in the different projects Eizouken tackle.
Score: 10/10
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! clearly has a lot of passion put into it, and that shines through so much. That passion makes watching the show an extraordinary delight, and will almost certainly help viewers gain a greater appreciation of animation. It tends to be a rare thing for a show like this to come along, but Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is easily something that should be recommended to both newcomers and long time fans of anime.
Rory Muses 