アオイホノオMoyuru Honoo (Yuya Yagira) is a freshman at a prestigious arts university in Osaka during the 1980s animation boom. He aspires to become a manga writer and is pretty confident in his skills. He develops a crush on Tonko Morinaga (Mizuki Yamamoto) and decides to join the school badminton team to be close to her. When Moyuru gets his first assignment in class to draw a cut-off animation, he is very confident that he will be able to do well and gain recognition for his work. But his self-confidence is shattered when he sees the work being produced by his classmates, Hideaki Anno (Ken Yasuda), Hiroyuki Yamaga (Tsuyoshi Muro) and Takami Akai (Tomoya Nakamura).