This is absolutely gorgeous and clearly an excuse for MAPPA to show off with different artstyles and sakuga moments. The gripe I have, though, is that it feels a little too self-indulgent to have an anime about a director/storyboarder saving the day with animation skills when the director is also the storyboarder and original creator (Yamazaki Mitsue). I’m not used to seeing self-inserts that are so blatantly not applicable to the audience. Also, I’m hoping that the “you’re not making this all by yourself” comes back and becomes a theme, because (for me at least) it’s hard to watch MAPPA’s anime about animation and forget that they are one of the worst in the industry when it comes to working animators to the bone. As it stands currently it feels a little bit like the director/storyboarder/creator is writing about how cool and important being director/storyboarder is while the animators work to exhaustion to bring that vision to life. But it definitely has room to evolve, so we’ll see.

It does look really nice, though. Even with the baggage, I think I have to give this premiere a 4/5.