For maybe the first time ever, looking yourself up online has brought some good to the world! Masaaki Yuasa first learned of Sumito Ōwara’s manga Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! when, after Googling himself out of curiosity, he found that fans thought he’d be a good fit to adapt the series into an anime. His Eizouken! adaptation will debut in January 2020, but Anime NYC attendees got a sneak peek of the first half of the premiere episode. From just those 10 minutes, it was clear this story of three girls trying to create their own anime is instantly lovable, and a funny and artistic tribute to why we love anime in the first place.

At Anime NYC, CBR had the chance to interview Eunyoung Choi, the producer of the TV anime adaptation of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Choi is also the co-founder of Science SARU. We spoke to her about Science SARU’s latest projects, as well as her past work on hits like Devilman crybaby and Space Dandy.

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An image depicts Devilman Crybaby's silhouette against a red colored chapel

CBR: Given the worldwide success of Devilman crybaby, would Science SARU be interested in rebooting any of Nagai's other Devilman series, perhaps Devilman Lady?


Science SARU is a very young company, and as we come into our own as a studio, we’re trying to do our best to do difficult and challenging things. While it’s good to work on titles that fans already love, we also want the challenge of entirely new projects. We have a lot of stories we want to tell, and though we haven’t thought about making other Devilman series so far, as time goes on we might want to revisit that world. Making a sequel might be less challenging if the characters and settings are already established, but if we find an exciting challenge in telling a new story, or if there is an idea that we are into, we may return to the Devilman universe.

How much does the story of Eizouken! resemble your own experience of getting into animation?

Quite a lot, I think. Masaaki Yuasa and everyone on our team have incorporated a lot of the ideas in Eizouken! from their actual experiences. The three roles the main characters play mirror that of the people in our studio: the director, animator and the person managing the process (the producer). Sometimes the producer character is like “You used too much paper! You’ve gotta stop!” It’s very fun for us to watch these three characters working hard, but in an enjoyable way, without too much struggle.

space dandy plants episode

Could you tell us a bit about how you came up with your episode of Space Dandy?

I talked to the creative director, Shinichiro Watanabe, after he called me to request I direct an episode. He said I could do whatever I wanted and I was like, “Are you sure?” I met him afterwards and discussed some interesting ideas. We talked about my concept for the planet my episode takes place on. I thought about some ideas, and the idea of plants came up. I developed that idea more and talked about it with Watanabe, once I thought about the story and broke down all the details. Plants seemed really easy to draw. If there were too many realistic characters, I didn’t think I could match them in the same way as in the other episodes. So I just went with the idea of plants.

Between Lu Over the Wall and the upcoming Inu-Oh, Science SARU is making a name for itself with anime movie musicals. What are your biggest inspirations as far as musicals go?

I don’t know if we’re making musicals, but Yuasa loves music, even beatboxing. There’s always music heavily involved with the projects. Kai, the main character in Lu Over the Wall, plays the guitar, and in Devilman crybaby we have the beatboxing and hip-hop; During a screenwriting meeting Yuasa said “I want to do the beatbox.” Sometimes he has crazy ideas, and those ideas are what make the projects unique. Yuasa really enjoys the musical parts.

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Ride Your Wave

Between your project Ride Your Wave, as well as the recent films Weathering With You and Children of the Sea from other studios, there's been a lot of water and weather-based anime movies this past year. Why do you think that is?

Well, for our project, I think it’s because Yuasa really likes water. He wants to express these kind of effects on screen. When we thought about making Ride Your Wave, he said that “WATER!” was what he wanted to show. To be honest, I was against featuring water again, since we had already done it. But he said “it’s good to show similar elements again so that audiences will recognize Science SARU.” I understood his thought and believed Ride Your Wave was going to be something new with more realistic and less fantasy elements than Lu. This is how we did Ride Your Wave with the water. I’m not sure about the other projects besides ours, but I think Yuasa just likes to express visuals that you cannot do in live-action.

What other anime have excited you recently?


To be honest, I don’t have time to watch a lot of anime. Also, if I get some inspiration, I want to get those from completely different media, not only from anime. I try to take inspiration from live-action feature films, the music we listen to, new experiences and when we go to new places. Another reason I tend not to watch much anime is that if I do watch them, it can make me really anxious. I start to think “Oh, they didn’t have time to do that shot!” or “Oh, that shot is amazing, but did we do okay on our own project?” So, I try not to watch too much.

Keep Your Hands off Eizouken

How did you get permission from Miyazaki to use the Future Boy Conan clips in Eizouken!?

We didn’t get permission! They’re owned by Nippon Animation and the situation was very complicated. They supported us a lot but we couldn’t get permission to use the original footage, so we had to retrace every single drawing. Since we wanted to make it precisely, we copied exactly how it was. I’m a big fan of Future Boy Conan and just seeing exactly the same shots in our project was very exciting. It’s the same for the voices, sound effects and music; We had to remake everything all over again. But we wanted to do it as it was very important for our series.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is set to premiere Jan. 5, 2020.

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