The world of manga is a vast one. You can experience tales of pirate kings, mighty knights, sports champions in the making, and even average high schoolers. If there’s something you wish to experience, there’s a 99% chance that there’s a manga that will fit your tastes. But these worlds weren’t always filled with thousands of characters or hundreds of locales. Like every story, it all starts with a simple idea that grows into something far bigger than you can imagine.

Ai Yasumi (Akira Sekine), our main lead in Draw This, Then Die!, begins her storytelling journey with a curious mind. After having trouble making friends, Ai one day stumbles upon a manga library. There, she discovers thousands of stories that have entertained millions around the world. But there’s one manga in the store that Ai keeps coming back to whenever she gets the chance: the lone single volume of Robota and Pokato.

Thanks to that comic, Ai finds the courage that she needs to make friends and be more open with her surroundings. As years go on, her confidence soars, to the point where she is no longer the socially awkward child that couldn’t even muster a syllable. When word gets out that the Robota and Pokato author will be publishing a new work at a comic event, Ai quickly makes plans to head to the Tokyo mainland and meet the person who changed her life. But when she reaches their table, Ai comes face-to-face with her current teacher, Rei Teshima (Saori Hayami), selling copies of her newest work.

From there, Draw This, Then Die! transforms into a tale about the art of storytelling and perseverance. With the help of friends Sachi (Kanon Fujimura) and Kokoro (Saya Hitomi), Ai starts up a manga club, with Teshima acting as its advisor. Fellow manga author Hikaru (Inori Minase) rounds up the group, but the main trio acts as the writer, artist, and editor for whatever ideas Ai may come up with. But through the flashbacks of Teshima’s manga career, viewers will discover the highs and many, many lows of the writing and drawing process.

Despite its bouncy tone and visual style, Draw This, Then Die! does a great job with keeping the creative process as real as possible. From Teshima’s perspective, we learn about how one’s idea and story can change with some outside interference. In the manga world, that interference is the editor, who may take a story that you think is already perfect, tell you why you’re wrong, and make you do it again from scratch with their suggestions intact. Needless to say, these moments can take a writer’s dreams and crush them underneath its foot.

Over and over again, Teshima was forced to retool her stories, sometimes scrapping them all together! One can see the frustration she, her editor, and even her parents have as Teshima attempts to create a surefire hit. Considering she’s now a teacher, that hit never came, save for a one-volume manga with a small cult following. But that’s the funny thing about stories, even not-so-popular ones: you never know who might be inspired by it.

Ai entering Teshima’s life shows how far a story, even an unsuccessful one, can go to change a person’s life. Not only is Ai a better person thanks to Robota and Pokato, but it’s now giving her and her friends the chance to create something of their own. Granted, her becoming an advisor for a manga club was something she fought tooth and nail to avoid, but when destiny calls, you have no choice but to answer. And as she witnesses the club find a tiny bit of success, Teshima can’t help but feel a smattering of joy in her heart and soul.

Draw This, Then Die! isn’t a love letter to the manga creative process, but rather an honest yet optimistic look at how a manga may go from idea to serialization. Ai, Sachi, and Kokoro may be too young to know what real rejection looks like (Hikaru might, considering her constant dead-eyed stare), but they still understand that the perfect story and visual style just won’t appear out of thin air. Thus, they work hard to get it right, from the story beats and the visual style to crafting the proper conclusion for either a one-shot or a continuing series. It brings to mind 2020’s Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, which took a deep dive into how anime is made, and what it takes to craft a true work of art.

Whenever it can, this anime does its best to honor the stories that influenced many of our modern-day creators. From the Doraemon-styled look of the characters’ faces to the many homages paid to the likes of Osamu Tezuka and Fujio Akatsuka, Draw This, Then Die! takes great pains to show that today’s story ideas wouldn’t exist if not for the people who first made manga the thing it is today. Even if someone takes inspiration from a recent series, one knows that that certain creation may not have existed had the author not been influenced by an older work.  And as this anime shows, even the most obscure series can light a burning desire to create.

Those who aim to create manga or comics should do themselves a favor and watch Draw This, Then Die! It’s the kind of story that spells everything out for those wanting to be the next Gege Akutami or Frank Miller, whether it’s the highs of making your first manga or the lows of being told it’s shit! But that’s the good thing about stories that are shit: they can be polished and turned into gold with the right people in one’s corner. As Draw This, Then Die! constantly shows, any help or criticism is a step towards success, even said criticism might make you crawl into your nearest bathtub and have a good uncontrollable sob.

Draw This, Then Die! can be viewed on Crunchyroll, and has been licensed by Crunchyroll. Episodes 1-8 were observed for review. Promotional consideration provided by Crunchyroll.