Drawing Explosion

Gu Xue hadn't been fired, and she went back to work the next day. After finishing the key animation for Episode 6, she should have attended the animation meeting for the Final Episode. However, she heard the storyboards were being revised, so she hadn't started work. She only occasionally helped with cleanup and second key animation for other episodes at the production manager's request. She didn't redraw anything, just diligently did cleanup and second key animation. It was very easy.

The days passed one by one.

Although the process had been full of twists and turns and countless problems, Episode 6 of Ore-sama was still completed. It had to be completed. The quality wasn't good enough? They wanted to delay the broadcast? Pad the schedule with a recap episode?

Sure. Pay up.

And then they would have to bear the consequences. The viewers would be unhappy, the TV station would be unhappy, the committee would be unhappy, the company would be unhappy, and the producer would be unhappy. Not many people had the courage to shoulder all that dissatisfaction.

So, Episode 6 aired on schedule.

Half an hour after its television broadcast ended, it went online on video sites.

It was already past one in the morning.

Yet plenty of people were still awake.

For example, Li Duoyu.

In a university dormitory, Li Duoyu was lying on his bed when his phone app sent him a notification that a new anime episode had updated. He immediately sat up, grabbed the cola on his desk, and took several huge gulps before putting on his headphones. With an excited expression, he opened the app and tapped the newest episode.

When it came to seasonal anime, some people liked waiting until a show was finished before binging it all at once, while others preferred following it episode by episode. Li Duoyu belonged to the latter group. He wasn't even willing to wait a single night. He generally finished all the anime he cared about that updated that day before going to sleep.

First, he watched the one he had been looking forward to most.

Li Duoyu opened You Are My Hero, the most popular manga adaptation of the season.

It was an excellent manga adaptation.

He watched it all in one go.

Li Duoyu still wanted more. The most exciting part of shonen manga adaptations was the blood-pumping fights, and You Are My Hero had always upheld its core philosophy of fighting, fighting, and more fighting. But an anime couldn't possibly be nothing but fights. This episode was a transitional one, with more dialogue scenes.

It was still exciting, but Li Duoyu felt like something was missing.

After thinking for a moment, he opened the newest episode of another isekai-related anime he was following and watched that in one go too.

The plot was decent enough, but the animation was an absolute mess...

Li Duoyu shook his head, sighed that trashy light novel adaptations meant the industry was doomed, and prepared to go to sleep.

Just then, another seasonal anime update notification popped up. He took a look.

Episode 6 of <My Right Leg Is Missing a Big Toe, but That Toe Isn't a Toe, It's the Holy Sword>.

"Trash anime. What kind of stupid-ass title is that? It's just like my damn name." Li Duoyu muttered, but his body was more honest than his words as he tapped the play button.

That was what he said, but the reason he had started this anime in the first place was entirely because of its title. After watching an episode or two, he found it decent enough and kept following it. Though the character designs fell apart from time to time, faces changed whenever they felt like it, and every fight looked like a PowerPoint presentation.

Still, that was its own kind of fun, wasn't it?

It was his weekly source of joy.

Episode 6 of Ore-sama began.

The plot picked up right where the last episode ended. The heroine had been abducted by the Demon King, and the protagonist was heading to the villainous Demon King's lair to rescue her. However, he encountered obstacles along the way. The first enemy he met was A-Da, one of the Demon King's Four Heavenly Kings, who specialized in Forbidden Curse Chanting.

Then the PowerPoint-like battle began.

The protagonist charged in, and his face fell apart...

A-Da, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, charged in too. A-Da's face fell apart, and his right leg kept appearing and disappearing...

Then the two of them spun around wildly like they were dancing...

"Here it comes, here it comes, the protagonist charged in."

"The protagonist's face fell apart! The protagonist's face fell apart!"

"A-Da started chanting. A-Da charged in too."

"A-Da's leg is gone, and it reappeared the very next second!"

"They've started dancing! They're dancing!"

The bullet comments suddenly increased. Li Duoyu watched along with them and laughed himself silly. At the end of every episode, he would even leave a comment saying, "This is my favorite anime.jpg."

Li Duoyu believed that most people watching this anime were there for the same reason: to have a laugh.

Episode 6 continued. The protagonist went on to encounter the other three of the Four Heavenly Kings: Fafnir, Shuangren, and Isuka.

Every fight was complete garbage. Even when the animation didn't fall apart, it still burned the eyes. The bullet comments were filled with an air of gleeful amusement.

Finally, the protagonist met the Demon King.

They stood on a plain, one at this end and the other at that end.

Li Duoyu checked how much time was left in the episode, ready to enjoy the final moments of fun.

"You're strong."

"No shit. Ore-sama's toe is the Holy Sword!"

The protagonist's utterly chuunibyou line made Li Duoyu snort with laughter. He picked up the cola on his desk, intending to take a few huge gulps in tribute.

But then, the image suddenly changed.

The camera abruptly zoomed in. Fierce winds swept up the protagonist's hair, revealing a handsome face in a completely different art style from before. His features were sharply defined, his eyes firm. Several question marks suddenly appeared amid the gleeful bullet comments.

"?"

"? Handsome guy, who are you?"

Li Duoyu, who had been gulping down cola, choked when he saw that. Still, he remained calm. After all, the close-up on the protagonist's face only lasted two seconds.

At the same time, the plot continued.

The camera shifted to the protagonist's rear side. He stepped back with his right leg, bending and crushing the weeds beneath his foot. The force of it was portrayed incredibly well.

More and more question marks appeared in the bullet comments.

Indeed, anyone who had watched anime for a while could tell that the animation in those few seconds was on a completely different level from what came before.

But the truly shocking images were still to come.

After stepping back with his right leg, the protagonist bent forward, raised his right hand, and made a sharp grasping motion in front of himself. His toe, wrapped in a faint glow, flew out from his right leg. The protagonist chased after that glow, shooting forward in an instant.

Gu Xue used a teleportation-like effect here, but not to cut corners. Before he vanished, she used several still frames of the protagonist bending forward, all to bring out the sense of stored power. At the same time, when he shot forward, she used a wide-angle shot. The weeds were blasted apart by the wind pressure, and a path like one scorched by fire appeared, widening from narrow to broad as it instantly incinerated the grass blown aside.

The camera began pushing forward, streaking past the weeds turning to ash and catching up to the protagonist, who had just transformed into light and charged toward the Demon King.

The wide-angle shot shifted into a telephoto shot. The protagonist and the Demon King went from being as tiny as mustard seeds to figures with clearly visible outlines, and the animation did not feel the slightest bit unnatural or abrupt.

Once the protagonist's outline was clearly visible, turning him back into light would have made no sense. Gu Xue didn't slack off at all here either. She directly animated the protagonist's sprinting movements. The balance of his whole body, the swing of his legs, his fluttering clothes—the sense of speed came through perfectly, and it all looked incredibly natural.

One step, two steps...

As the toe wrapped in faint light rose into the air ahead of him, the sprinting protagonist slowed from high speed. At one moment, his arms swung, his feet left the ground, and he leaped forward. The instant his legs touched the ground, he bent over and exerted force. The earth shattered outward in a circle, a ring-shaped shockwave exploded, and the protagonist shot into the air after his toe.

Next cut.

First came a close-up.

The protagonist in midair stretched out his right hand, his five fingers curling as he tried to grab his own toe. Just as he was about to catch it.

The camera rose, becoming an overhead shot.

The protagonist finally grabbed his toe. Then came a full second of stillness. After every viewer's anticipation had been stretched to the limit, it finally erupted.

Light leaked from between the protagonist's right fingers. At first there was only a thread, then more and more, until it finally exploded. Ribbon-like streams of energy surged into the sky. At the same time, the camera slid down alongside those energy streams to the protagonist's side, and the Holy Sword slowly revealed its true form.

The protagonist's hair was blown straight up, once again revealing that handsome face that had never appeared in the first five episodes.

He gripped the fully formed Holy Sword and looked down at the Demon King below. The staff credits appeared, the ED intro began playing, and it was a godly insert.

At this point, the bullet comments were nothing but question marks.

The ED reached its climax.

The protagonist looking down at the Demon King drew back his gaze, twisted his waist, and smoothly turned in a slow circle. The camera rotated along with the Holy Sword's ribbon-like energy streams, then suddenly pulled far back into a long shot.

The protagonist stomped against an invisible wall of air behind him, curled his body as he hung in midair and charged up for half a second, then smashed down toward the ground, kicking up a vast cloud of dust.

It was spectacular.

"Ore-sama's toe is the Holy Sword!"

Accompanied by the protagonist's roar, an off-screen voice rang out.

The anime ended abruptly.

The screen went black.

Still holding his phone and maintaining the pose of tipping his head back to gulp cola, though not a single drop had entered his mouth, Li Duoyu suddenly snapped back to his senses. He coughed violently, then sprayed the cola from his mouth.

"Pfft!"

"Cough, cough... What kind of stupid-ass anime was that? What kind of stupid-ass line was that?" Li Duoyu put down his cola, wiped the drink off his phone with one hand, and cursed between coughs.

But for all that, the second he cleaned the screen, he eagerly tapped the button for the next episode...

Of course, there was no next episode.

Still, that stupid-ass anime he kept talking about seemed to have become far more appealing to him...