Storyboard gives thorough directions for chest close-up that lasts less than two seconds.

While it’s got a few plot wrinkles to differentiate it, currently-airing TV series How Not to Summon a Demon Lord falls into anime’s firmly established genre of “regular dude gets transported to alternate fantasy world and makes friends with lots of cute girls.” In further keeping with the storytelling format’s time-honored traditions, some of these girls are incredibly busty, such as elf princess Shera.

As you’ve probably already deduced, How Not to Summon a Demon Lord’s opening animation sequence includes an intricately animated, close-proximity view of Shera’s chest, which is cued up in the video below for the purpose of artistic analysis.

The tightest close-up of Shela’s chest during the brief cut is less than two seconds long. However, the storyboard for the opening animation devotes no fewer than four panels, with notes for the animators, to that brief period of time when Shera’s breasts are filling the frame.

The storyboard notes were recently revealed as part of a celebration commemorating the release of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord’s opening theme, “DeCIDE.” The directions shed light on how even when the goal is essentially “slap the viewers in the face with anime boobs,” there’s still a lot of thought and effort put into the process by the artists, so let’s take a look at the notes, accompanied by the approximate frames that correspond with them.

“A closeup of Shera’s breasts, ever so slightly slick with sweat as they spread out.”

“Then -POW- they slap together.
Sweat flies off of them.”

“Her breasts recoil away from each other, and the camera pulls back a bit at the same time.”

“And then they float up from the wind pressure.”

It should be mentioned that the storyboards contain detailed notes for each segment, so it’s not like whoever was in charge of them just focused on the boobs and left the animators to their own devices for the rest of the opening sequence. And since physics in anime often differ from those in real life, particularly where breasts are concerned, it actually makes sense that Shera’s chesticular jiggling would require detailed direction in order to effectively realize the creator’s artistic vision, especially in a medium where the prevailing logic is that “the boobs are important.”

Source: Animate Times via Otakomu
Images: YouTube/avex pictures