A new season of stress and duress behind the scenes of an animation company. This time around, the folks at Musani, those who are left, have a pretty large task ahead of them, as they are commissioned to create an adaptation for a best-selling manga property.
What They Say:
Episode 13: “What Kind of Cloud Do You Like?”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Exodus completed, it is time to say goodbye to the old project and hello to the new: Watanabe’s negotiations appear to have succeeded and Musani will be doing the anime adaptation of Third Aerial Girls Squad. There is not a whole lot of information yet on exactly what it is, but it involves cute girls flying combat aircraft. It is now January, but the company president informs the Production Staff…those who are left…that the show will air in October. Not a huge amount of lead time, but it’s all
they have. With Yano still out (on an extended leave to deal with her father’s medical issues) and Honda having moved on to follow his pastry-coated bliss, this leaves the production room rather bare, with only Aoi and Takanashi there. Given the choice between then, Watanabe, the line producer, makes the obvious decision to promote Aoi to Production Desk over the more senior (by a month) Takanashi (though the lazy idiot didn’t want the job anyway).
It is a whole episode of beginnings and endings, as most of the Musani team continues, but Ogasawara declines to work on character design, to shock and surprise of Aoi and Seiichi Kinoshita, who returns as director. Our gothloli character designer wants to go back to key animation, inspired by Sugie’s mastery of the craft; she wants to relearn animation from the roots. She recommends Iguchi take her place. While Iguchi is an experienced animator, she has never done character design before, so it takes a little work to convince her to accept the job.
We also get a look in on the high school friends, as Midori is still in college, but offers to help do some research for Aoi (who needs to learn a whole lot about military aircraft suddenly). Shizuka gets an audition and it just happens to be for Third Aerial Girls Squad. A coincidence, surely.
Naturally, there are dangers lurking ahead. At an important meeting between the senior Musani staff (Kinoshita and Watanabe) and the original work’s management, the author (Nogame) fails to show (“Sensei is too busy”). When they try to ask the publisher’s representative for any input, he just says everything is fine and that the author isn’t concerned about anything they’re doing. This, from so many other stories one has heard over the years, is a potential massive red flag. This means that Musani is somewhat on their own in terms of planning the anime. Later, while doing some aircraft research, Kinoshita has already decided to drop one of the major arcs from the manga (which only has 4 volumes out so far). The senior writer Maitake then wonders if Kinoshita is planning on a “BOFC” ending. Aoi asks what that means, but most experienced fans can guess: “But our fight continues.” Ah, yes, the non-ending ending, since the source material is on-going. Kinoshita wants to be as authentic as possible, however, so he decides to leave the last two episodes empty for the moment, with Maitake penning the scripts once the newest volume of the manga comes out.
So, a lot of new exposition, required by the new setup. This is not an original animated work and we can already sense a different feel. Kinoshita, whether we can believe him or not, wants to create an adaptation that will make the fans of the original work happy (and that he will be praised for, if possible). The character designs by Iguchi already have a model to rely upon and in fact have to get close to the originals in feeling.
The newest thing, however, is the level of stress and hectic work demands that will hit Aoi over the next fews months, with little sign of help to come (Watanabe promises to bring in an experienced production assistant the next month and the studio will hire two new trainee production assistants in the spring). Production Desk is a huge job, as she basically needs to oversee all aspects of production and interface with the director on a regular basis, all of this with just about one year of experience on the job.
A good start to the second season, clearly marking out the path ahead while also reminding us of the human element at work in anime production.
We also have new theme songs and animation for the second cour: OP “Treasure Box” by Masami Okui and ED “Platinum Jet” sung by the seiyuu for the five girls (Aoi, Ema, Shizuka, Misa, and Midori).
In Summary:
Things both pick up where they left off and start entirely anew as Musani begins gearing up for their next project: adapting the popular manga Third Aerial Girls Squad. The greatest challenges are all for Aoi, as she has been promoted to Honda’s job of Production Desk, which is very demanding and stressful. She seems, however, more capable than one might initially think. I see some storm clouds on the horizon for her however, though not for the show itself which has come back pretty much in the groove it settled into at the end of the first half.
Episode Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
