Clumsy

The circus, or Itano Circus, refers in a narrow sense to the spectacular animation of simultaneous missile launches invented by the Japanese key animator Itano Ichiro. However, as time has passed, the definition of the circus has broadened; anything involving trails of exhaust following a subject in a curved trajectory, or even just a single object moving along a curved path, can be called a circus.

Many people are familiar with this type of animation—it's that scene where a swarm of missiles is launched, trailing exhaust as they chase a target, while the target maneuvers and dodges through the dense barrage. It has excellent visual impact and is very pleasing to the eye.

It was relatively common in older mecha anime (robot animation, battle-mech shows).

But many people don't realize how difficult this type of animation is. The inventor of this technique, Itano Ichiro, once drew so much of it that he ended up in the hospital...

I've mentioned before that aerial battles using superpowers are just random flailing that no one has actually seen, making them simpler to animate than ground combat, as errors in movement aren't easily spotted. Most circus scenes also take place in the air, but they don't fall into that category. Although not many people have seen tracking missiles, and even fewer have been chased by them...

The circus requires a very high level of precision regarding trajectories. Very, very high. After all, if you draw even a slight mistake, the previous frame won't match the next, and the entire sequence will fall apart.

The reason Gu Xue wants to draw a circus is that the script calls for a scene where the Mother Empress leads extraterrestrial creatures from space toward Weilan, passing through the atmosphere and crashing into the ground while wreathed in flames.

Since the background is space, the background department doesn't need to worry too much about perspective shifts related to the characters.

No matter how you look at it, the circus offers the best visual impact.

Then, Gu Xue thought about the battle scenes between the protagonist and the grunts, and felt that a circus could be used there too...

Once she started drawing the storyboards, Gu Xue seemed to make the same mistake as Misawa Hiroshi: she prioritized visual impact above all else, never once considering the difficulty of the animation or the fact that this was an outsourced episode.

However, she is different from Misawa Hiroshi because she is the one drawing it. She can solve the difficulty issues, and since it's a mecha show with giant robots, she is willing to do so.

As for the fact that this is an outsourced episode, after Gu Xue successfully convinced herself otherwise, she truly stopped worrying about it...

She selectively forgot about questions like how the quality of the 12th episode produced by the main studio of Invasion would turn out, or whether the 11th episode her company was responsible for would steal the spotlight and completely crush the 12th.

From the very beginning, Gu Xue set the bar for the quality and difficulty of the fight cuts in Invasion episode 11 extremely high. If hell has eighteen levels, the current difficulty is already at the seventeenth.

All I can say is... may the production company of Invasion, CDD Animation Workshop, pray for their own luck.

Furthermore, there is another very important reason why Gu Xue wants to draw a circus.

Gu Xue remembers that this world doesn't seem to have the circus animation technique. Yet, the visual impact of a circus is explosive. If she uses this technique to draw a sequence and lets everyone see it, will directors or producers start chasing this effect in the future? Will key animators be driven to madness?

Gu Xue is very interested in that.

She even thought with a bit of dark humor that maybe, in the future, there will be people here who draw circus scenes until they end up in the hospital...

Wait...

Gu Xue quickly snapped out of it, feeling that her line of thought was problematic. This isn't her setting a trap for others at all; she is bringing a cool animation technique to save the declining mecha genre. She is protecting the giant robots she loves in her own way. It is definitely not out of spite, and definitely not because the Anime Mirai project was forced to be pushed back, making her feel bad for Mihara Chisa and thus taking it out on the subcontracting company. Definitely not...

Thinking of this, Gu Xue gave a soft "hmm," agreeing with her own logic. Then, biting her lip with a slightly mischievous smile, she began to compose and draw the storyboards on paper.

Because she has always worked as a key animator, Gu Xue follows her past habits, such as not working in order and drawing whatever scene comes to mind.

But that's not a big problem. She is confident that once she draws the storyboard scenes in her head, she can piece them together in order and lay them out on the storyboard paper; the dialogue timing shouldn't be an issue either.

Gu Xue lowered her head, picked up her pencil, and began drawing on the animation paper.

She drew in great detail. Normally, storyboards don't need to be that detailed—after all, it's not a bad thing to leave some room for the key animators below to improvise—but because Gu Xue is drawing it herself, she doesn't need to consider those issues at all.

Drawing and sketching along the way, by around eight in the evening, Gu Xue had finished the series of storyboards for the Mother Empress leading the extraterrestrial creatures' invasion in Invasion episode 11.

She lifted her head, stretched, and suddenly realized that Mihara Chisa was standing right beside her.

"...Mihara-san, do you know how scary that is?" Gu Xue hunched her shoulders, used her toes to pivot her chair around, and looked at Mihara Chisa, feeling a mix of amusement and exasperation.

Mihara Chisa, who had been standing there for who knows how long, held out a carton of milk she was clutching in her right hand and whispered, "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize." Gu Xue grabbed her hands and shook them gently.

She knew the other girl felt guilty and didn't want to add to her workload, but sometimes she couldn't help it, because this was a company.

When Gu Xue first heard about the outsourcing from Misawa Hiroshi, it would be impossible to say she had no dissatisfaction with the company. In fact, she was quite unhappy, and for a moment, she even considered quitting. As for whether she would become a freelance animator or take other jobs after leaving, it didn't matter.

It was only at the critical moment, thinking of Mihara-san and her personality, that Gu Xue suppressed the thought. However, the seeds of dissatisfaction had already been sown; she just didn't want to think about it or talk about it.

So, she really didn't blame Mihara-san, nor did she think poorly of Misawa Hiroshi; she was only dissatisfied with the company's decisions.

Seeing Mihara-san holding the milk and remaining silent, Gu Xue decided to let the matter drop. She took the milk from her, pulled out the straw to pierce the foil, took a sip, and after a moment of hesitation, asked, "Mihara-san, are you happy working here?"

"...It's alright," Mihara-san replied softly, staring at Gu Xue's cherry lips, which were moistened by the milk.

"Alright then." Gu Xue suppressed all her dissatisfaction and thoughts of resigning, picked up the milk, and was about to take another sip when she noticed Mihara-san staring at her. Although she was expressionless, Gu Xue felt like she was... eager to try?

"Do you want some?"

Gu Xue looked at the milk in her hand, assuming she was thirsty too, and held the carton out in mid-air.

As for Mihara-san, Gu Xue didn't mind, and she felt quite embarrassed that she kept coming over to bring her milk.

Mihara Chisa quietly hid her left hand behind her back, clenching and unclenching it. After a pause, she slowly leaned over, gently tucked her hair behind her ear, took the straw into her mouth, and took a sip of milk.

Then she immediately straightened up, turned around quickly, and stood with her back to Gu Xue, saying, "You keep working, I'll come back later."

"Eh..." Gu Xue looked at Mihara-san's back, amused. "It's just a sip of milk, is there any need to be that shy? Your ears are even red..."

Unfortunately, Mihara-san had already walked away and couldn't hear her.

Gu Xue didn't mind, bit the straw, and prepared to finish the rest of the milk.

Only to find... it was gone very quickly.

Hmm... Mihara-san seems to have drunk quite a lot...

I read all the comments. For the ones I didn't reply to, it's just because I didn't know how to respond...

Tomorrow, after I recover my energy, I'll think about it.

Thank you, everyone.

Also, please vote for me.