Itano Circus

Gu Xue took the photocopy of the script for episode eleven of Invasion, along with several design drafts, and left Misawa Hiroshi's office, returning to her desk.

Mihara went to arrange the schedule and notify the other staff.

In the end, they decided that Misawa Hiroshi would draw the storyboards for the first half of episode eleven of Invasion, while the second half would be left open for Gu Xue to interpret freely based on the script. Gu Xue would also handle all the key animation herself.

Gu Xue had a lot on her plate.

So as soon as she returned to her desk, she took out her phone and watched all the episodes of Invasion that had aired so far, both to familiarize herself with the story and to get a feel for the work's overall style.

After about an hour, Gu Xue put down her phone.

Actually, the story of Invasion wasn't complicated. It was just a matter of extraterrestrial beings invading, humanity inventing mechs that only specially selected pilots could operate, and then the high school protagonist being chosen...

It was a plot that had been done to death.

The episodes that had aired so far mainly covered a small-scale invasion by the extraterrestrials, the protagonist's squad training and fighting them off, and, along the way, some romance.

The quality was decent, but the story felt disjointed. There was even a swimsuit episode...

Come on, the planet's about to be destroyed! You're going sightseeing and playing around? Are you people really that carefree, or is it the human leadership in the story that's carefree?

As she watched, Gu Xue really did criticize the work from beginning to end.

But there was nothing she could do to change any of that. She was only responsible for episode eleven, and even then, she was just a key animator. The animation staff didn't need to worry about the story as a whole. Gu Xue only cared a little more about the story because she'd seen so much.

And perhaps because episode eleven of Invasion was approaching its climax, it abandoned the earlier, laughable style and took the story much more seriously.

The protagonist received a mission to rescue civilians in a dangerous area. There, he discovered that the extraterrestrials hiding in the area had concluded that "humanity poses no significant threat." They sent a signal to the Mother Queen, far away in space. After receiving it, the Mother Queen led tens of thousands of extraterrestrials in a massive descent upon the planet.

No nonsense, just a serious buildup to a major battle. The protagonist would probably fight the Mother Queen in the final episode. A few people might die, but in the end, the high school protagonist would surely unleash his hidden power, kill the Mother Queen, save the planet, and usher in a happy ending.

It was a bit clichéd.

But Gu Xue had no qualms about drawing it.

If the extraterrestrials were launching a full-scale invasion and the protagonist was still flirting with the heroine, that would've bothered Gu Xue.

After all... the planet was about to be destroyed!

After carefully reading through the script, Gu Xue already had a few ideas and images in mind. But since this was a mecha series, she needed to look over the design drafts before she could get started.

In a mecha series, character designs were important, but mechanical designs mattered most of all.

After looking them over, Gu Xue couldn't help but marvel... The robots were so cool.

The plot might have been hard to stomach.

Gu Xue had already thought the robots looked great when she watched the anime, but those had been drawn by other animators. And with the tight schedule of a TV anime, the budget probably wasn't extravagant, so corners had been cut in far too many places.

The mechs' full forms were only perfectly displayed in the mechanical design drafts.

The protagonist piloted a gigantic, streamlined robot. Rough specifications beside the design were there for the key animators to reference: the robot stood nearly eighty meters tall and weighed two thousand tons. The notes said it was fast and strong in close combat. Its overall appearance was a little like Gipsy Danger from Pacific Rim, and it looked incredibly cool.

The other characters' robots were just as awesome.

Whoever designed these machines had to be incredible.

The moment Gu Xue saw them, she was completely won over.

When she said she liked mecha anime and giant robots, she wasn't joking...

Sure, given her current identity and gender, liking this kind of thing might seem absurd and out of place.

But she didn't care what other people thought.

Giant robots!

Gu Xue flipped through the mechanical design drafts, unable to put them down. She looked them over again and again, while the other design drafts were set aside after a single glance.

Those things didn't matter anyway.

The longer Gu Xue studied the mechanical designs, the more ideas she had. In the end, she could barely resist starting to draw right away, but fortunately, her reason held her back.

Drawing robots was hard.

Aside from the difficulty of conveying their size and metallic feel, the complexity of the robots' construction alone was enough to give anyone a headache.

For example, if you drew an egg rolling across a sheet of paper and traced its path to show where it ended up, that would be easy, right?

A few circles would do the trick. With a little practice, anyone could manage it.

But what if it was a person with arms and legs? The difficulty would increase exponentially. And what if it was a robot? Huge! More complex in construction than a human! And you still had to convey its size and metallic feel! An ordinary person simply couldn't draw that. Even someone with experience in the field couldn't say they'd be able to draw one well or quickly.

That was also why there were fewer and fewer hand-drawn mecha anime.

Before leaving Misawa Hiroshi's office, Gu Xue had spitefully resolved to draw episode eleven of Invasion to the standards of EVA, Tengen Toppa, and Gundam, to teach the production company a lesson and make them remember that outsourcing could be a double-edged sword, whether the work turned out well or not.

But after thinking about it calmly, Gu Xue realized she'd only be making things harder for herself...

And blaming the subcontracted studio would be unreasonable. The person she should really blame was herself, as one of the higher-ups at the company.

Leaning back in her chair, Gu Xue tried to convince herself to draw ordinary storyboards and put together ordinary scenes, but she couldn't.

Even though she kept telling herself she shouldn't blame the subcontracted studio, Gu Xue still wanted to do a good job...

Because she loved mecha anime.

After thinking it over for a while, Gu Xue decided to stop worrying about it.

If they were capable, the studio making Invasion could give it a try. If they weren't, then they could prepare to meet the end of the series to an audience that had completely lost interest.

If you dared to outsource an entire episode of a mecha series, you'd better be prepared for the other studio to turn it into crap—and be prepared for them to do a better job than you, too.

Ever heard that water can carry a boat, but can also capsize it?

Through a chain of bizarre logic, Gu Xue convinced herself the other way around. She set down the design drafts and thought it over. Instead of taking out storyboard paper and planning the scenes right away, she decided to use the script as a reference and draw some of the images in her head on key animation paper first, then gradually piece together the story for the second half of episode eleven of Invasion.

After all, the boxes on storyboard paper were too small. Giant robots wouldn't have room to shine in them, and Gu Xue was a key animator; some habits were hard to change.

She pulled out a small stack of key animation paper and placed it on her worktable. Then she began flipping through the script while organizing the story and images in her mind.

After a while.

Gu Xue put down the script.

She glanced at the key animation paper on her worktable. Her mind was completely blank, and she even felt like drawing an Itano Circus.