First and foremost, Kanamori stands out quite a bit on character design alone. Even within an anime done in an unusual style, Kanamori has an instantly recognizable silhouette with her exaggerated lankiness and unique facial features like her distinct toothy grimace, sanpaku eyes, and freckles. This is further enhanced with her fashion, particularly, her awesome sneaker backpack and the upper rimmed black glasses that are almost always seen resting on her forehead outside of class use and even sometimes used to put her hair up! Her bold design combined with little details like that really come through in the animation to make Kanamori a visually interesting character.

Moving onto her personality, Kanamori is perhaps best defined as an ambitious pragmatist who has thought a lot about the value of things and is always looking for ways to get more. Although “greedy” might be too blunt, it’s not entirely unfair either as she is always chasing profit whether it’s selling the video footage of Asakusa falling off the top of their clubhouse, roping her into helping to pick leaves to sell to a restaurant, etc. Even the crux of the story with her bringing Asakusa and Tsubame together to create their club and animations isn’t motivated by interest nor knowledge of anime, it’s the possibility of money, and she’s upfront about that from the beginning.

All that being said, Kanamori isn’t just about pure avarice and is in many ways a very decent and hardworking person who is true to her word and principles. Without her, it’s unlikely that the Eizouken would have been able to make what they did as her negotiation skills when it comes to dealing with the teachers, student council, and others proved invaluable time and again. Her separation from Asakusa and Tsubame as someone not actually interested in anime also works to the team’s advantage as her realist perspective helps them decide where to make compromises to keep them on schedule and actually produce results. More generally, she is also an excellent foil to Asakusa’s childish whimsy particularly as the comedic straight man in the series’ trademark imagination sequences with the “space station” probably being our favorite.

We wanted to make special mention of the flashback part of episode nine as it offers a brilliant little window into Kanamori’s thought process and values that she expressed even as a child. We see her learn the value of consistent hard work after getting a tip from her grandparents when regularly helping out at their general store, her business sense and attention to detail come through in convincing them to open the store during a snowstorm after seeing other footprints outside the store and then clearing away the snow from the vending machine first for people who want hot drinks, on the spot negotiation tactics used to sell a customer some gloves, and finally, some big-picture thinking about the importance of marketing, promotion, and other factors to consider after the owner reveals that the store is being shut down soon.