#Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Makes New York Times’ Best TV Shows of 2020

Science Saru’s Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! has been listed as one of The New York Times’ Best TV Shows of 2020. It is notably the only anime on the list.

Included in the list by NYT writer James Poniewozik, the show, which follows a trio of anime-creating teenagers, sits alongside titles like Better Call Saul and What We Do In The Shadows. In its entry, Poniewozik called Eizouken, “a giddy flying robot of a story, and it’s worth letting it scoop you up and rocket you away.”

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! was directed by Masaaki Yuasa and is based on the manga by Sumito Ōwara. It  first aired during the Winter 2020 anime season andis currently streaming on Crunchyroll and HBO Max. 

Crunchyroll describes the show as:

First year high schooler Midori Asakusa loves anime so much, she insists that “concept is everything” in animation. Though she draws a variety of ideas in her sketchbook, she hasn’t taken the first step to creating anime, insisting that she can’t do it alone. The producer-type Sayaka Kanamori is the first to notice Asakusa’s genius. Then, when it becomes clear that their classmate, charismatic fashion model Tsubame Mizusaki, really wants to be an animator, they create an animation club to realize the “ultimate world” that exists in their minds

Our writer, Gracie, gave Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! a score of 80 out of 100 in her review, praising its characters, animation, and illustration of the passion behind making anime. She wrote, “Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! does not shy away from the nitty, gritty technical matters that go into animating, and it also writes in valid criticisms to some flaws in the industry that tend to set anime studios back… Yet, despite all the setbacks, the reward for these characters is simply seeing their project come to life, and I hope this story also reaches people everywhere — to see that taking advantage of passionate, artistic endeavors is simply unfair.”

The New York Times’ Best TV Shows of 2020 list can be found here.