Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken vol. 5

Mangaka Sumito Oowara has made a habit of keeping each volume of “Eizouken” relatively self-contained.  In that each volume is about the Moving Pictures Club’s latest animation project.  That’s not a bad thing, though, the lack of strong continuity between volumes leaves each one to stand on its own, as this one does a little less well than the ones which have come before it.  

This is due to the fact that vol. 5’s storyline, about the girls of Eizouken putting together an anime to help restore a clock tower that recently collapsed lacks focus in its storytelling.  It starts off with a mystery involving why the school’s cafeteria closed before Doumeki makes an effort to capture the tower’s last rings.  While this does lead to the start of the new project, and some talk about how sound foley works, we never get a sense about what this new anime is about even as some new players enter the scene:  The Anime Culture Studies Club.

It’s probably worth mentioning that Eizouken is the club in the school that makes anime.  The Anime Culture Studies Club is the one that watches and discusses it.  Defining the relationship between the two was a key issue early on in the series with the ACSC not having warranted a background mention since.  Until now, when they actually decide to make Eizouken’s works a topic in their latest newsletter.

Seeing how the two clubs interact could’ve made for some interesting drama, and it still might down the road.  Kanamori and ACSC head Suzuki have some interesting discussions as the headstrong anime producer largely bounces off the laid-back academic’s calm demeanor.  Here, the sparks fail to ignite outside of a two-page spread showcasing the members of the ACSC who are all much younger-looking versions of famous anime creators.

All this means is that when Eizouken finally does get around to screening their latest work outside of the clock tower that they hope to repair, it doesn’t land the same way as their other projects did.  Which is a shame since “Tanuki El Dorado” in the previous volume was a highlight of the series.  It’s no wonder that Suzuki spotlighted it in the latest ACSC newsletter.

Yet, even if the main story fails to get going, there are still a lot of fun details that keep this volume from being a total loss.  The business involving the closure of the school cafeteria makes for a fun diversion as we find out that this school continues to be full of hidden secrets, and there’s an excellent “Blade Runner” riff put in there for no reason other than the mangaka thought it would be fun.  The talk about foley and sound effects work is also interesting as it gives an underserved member of the cast a chance to shine.

I’m talking about Doumeki.  She’s always felt like the Izutsumi of the cast even though her specialization in sound design is just as integral to anime production as Asakusa, Mizusaki, and Kanamori’s specialties.  Her effort to try and preserve the clock tower’s sound, and then eventually restore it, marks the first time it feels like that she’s been given equal footing with the rest of the cast in a storyline.  It shows that her oddball rhythms sync well with the rest of the girls and I hope that Oowara continues to try and give her more interesting stuff like this to do going forward.

That said, it kind of sucks that the storyline meant to more fully integrate Doumeki into the cast is not as good as we’ve seen from the series in the past.  The hope here is that the next volume gives the girls a new project to work on that’s as interesting as what they’ve done in the past.  There’s also the potential of collaboration with the ACSC going forward which could also bring some new wrinkles to the storyline.  I’m still onboard with this series, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing vol. 6 get things back on track – along with that trend continuing into vol. 7, which editor Carl Horn mentions that Dark Horse will be publishing in the volume’s endnotes.