Draw This, Then Die! – Episodes 1-2

What’s it about? Ai Yasumi fell in love with manga at a young age, thanks to the single-volume cult classic Robota and Pocota. It was the artist’s only published work, until Ai enters high school and sees news about a new volume. She’s over the moon, especially when she realizes her favorite artist lives in her town! Now Ai is determined to learn everything about making manga from a master.

This is a deceptive little series, soft and adorable and largely a “sensible chuckle” kind of comedy; then it turns around and socks you in the gut by having one of its squishy-cheeked characters deliver a genuinely affecting monologue about burnout. Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised—director Hiroaki Akagi already achieved this balance in The Dangers in My Heart, and series composer Hiroko Fukuda has several series in her back catalogue that run on a vein of disarming sincerity. And while I’m deeply sorry this write-up was so late coming in, it does have the benefit of allowing me time to see the second episode, which is where Draw This really shows a hint of its cards.

A lot of the first episode is focused on manga’s role in Ai’s life in a way that’s both well-executed and familiar. The most notable thing, perhaps, is that Shogakukan has given the series its blessing to use the name of actual series like Doraemon rather than an obvious but legally protected parody. Having publisher blessing in shows about the creative process always makes me a little leery, since there’s a natural chilling effect in regards to jokes or criticisms you can make about the hand that feeds you.

Episode 2 calms my fears on that point to some degree, as it’s about artist Nana Teramura’s slide into the aforementioned burnout. We might not be in “incisive critique of the industry” territory, but it’s starting from a place of honesty at the daunting and draining part of making manga. I can respect that, and it feels like a fair approach for a series likely aimed at readers about Ai’s age.

Speaking of Ai, this is yet another series that likely won’t focus heavily on but is extremely open to reading both of our leads as neurodivergent. Robota and Pocota is a series about two robots learning to interact with other humans, and Ai relates so deeply to the fantasy about having a robot companion who will tell you how to respond in social situations that she has her own inner-Pocota by the time the story starts. Teramura herself is an over-literal rule follower who wrote the story about robots among humans as her most lasting professional work. There’s definitely a rich reading to be had about passing coping mechanisms through art and helping across generations, though I suspect it’ll stay in that understated realm rather than getting into a Serious Terminology Discussion.

This isn’t quite a series I’d peg as a “drop everything” watch for this season, especially with heavy-hitters like Jaadugar and The World is Dancing on offer. But if hobby shows or art-about-art are at all your thing, I really don’t think that this one will disappoint you. And depending on how it balances the character versus educational bits, this might end up being a straight-out excellent coming-of-age story.