Ero Manga! H mo Manga mo Step-up♪

Haruru is such a cute character and the way she gets flustered while posing for the drawings was the best part of the whole episode

The natural voice acting really caught me off guard and it did not feel forced like a lot of these game adaptations usually do

The plot about a manga artist and his muse is pretty standard and you have seen this exact setup a thousand times before in other shows

You can tell the animation budget went straight into the fluid movement during the desk scene and it looks way better than the generic stuff usually coming out

I really liked the character design for Haruru and the way they handled the manga drawing scenes felt surprisingly detailed for this kind of show

the way she tries to act all professional while she is being sketched is pretty funny and it makes the final scene feel a lot more impactful

seeing the character design for haruru stay so faithful to the source material is great and her eyes look incredible in those close up shots village

that transition from the drawing board to the actual bedroom was so smooth and the music actually stayed consistent which helped the mood

It actually surprised me that they kept the focus on the drawing aspect, since I usually expect these to just rush through the story beats.

the pacing felt way too fast and they skipped over the best dialogue from the beginning of the haruru route just to get to the action

haruru getting flustered while posing is the absolute best part of the episode and her design looks even better in motion than the stills village

you can really tell the studio cares about the lighting in that studio scene and it makes the atmosphere feel way more intimate than usual

I expected the drawings to look a bit better for a Clock Up adaptation but Haruru is still cute when she is being drawn

Watching Haruru try her best to help with the manga made those later scenes feel a lot more earned. I played the original game years ago and I was worried the animation would look cheap but they did a decent job with the colors and the voice acting for her is basically perfect throughout this first arc.

that scene where he starts sketching her made the whole episode and her reaction felt pretty grounded for this kind of show

the focus on the actual manga creation process really worked for me because it made the spicy scenes feel more earned

you really might wonder if they could pull off the transition from the visual novel to an actual animation, but seeing Haruru come to life like this was a total treat. The scenes where she is modeling for the manga feel way more intimate when you actually see her moving around and reacting to the sketches. It felt like a solid start for this arc.

the way they handled the drawing scenes really captured that clock up style and the character designs look great

haruru getting shy while being used as a reference was the cutest thing and her reactions felt so real

i was so hyped to see haruru animated and she looks even better than in the game art