This is the artifact you pull up to end an argument about whether Anno was born with it. Twenty years old, still at Osaka University of Arts, no studio, no budget, no Gainax yet, and what he chooses to animate is a proverb: even a lousy shot hits the mark if he fires enough rounds. That is the whole piece, an idiom literalized into motion, and the joke is that the kid making it clearly did not need many attempts. It is small and quiet and plot-first in the purest sense, the drawing is the argument and there is no character to hide behind. Anyone who has watched fans fight over Eva frame timings owes themselves the version of that eye before anyone was paying for it. Nobody talks about this one. That is on them, not on the short.

A one-episode special made as an amateur project by Hideaki Anno, created when he was 20 and a student at Osaka University of Arts. The short brings a Japanese idiom to animated life: even an unskilled shooter will eventually strike the target if they fire often enough. An action short, it is an early student work from Anno's university days.