Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Volume 3: 07/18/22

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Volume 3 by Sumito Oowara explores how sound helps build the animated world. The trio adds to their forces by joining up with the last remaining member of the Sound Club. Kanamori, meanwhile, finds a way for the Eizouken to make well needed funds at a convention without technically violating school rules.

The chapters on sound are used to expand the world the girls live in. Their high school has been shown to sit near water. Water runs through, around, and under numerous buildings that feature in the series. Water remains a strong visual theme in the girls' work too.

Before the girls meet up with Doumeki, the sound engineer, they decide to follow one of the canals that run by their school. Their adventure, while inspiring the next sequence they'll animate, and providing a means for Doumeki to observe them, it also informs the reader of their larger world.

As the girls descend we find more and more of the cityscape submerged in water. Where they stop, there's an overpass and a group of abandoned cars. This scenery is the most familiar — looking modern day. Though nothing is said directly, the landscape implies a near future, post sea level rise world. I'm curious to see what future clues we might get about the landscape and timeline.

Volume 4 will be released in English translation on September 20, 2022.

Five stars

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