Steel Meridian
Pilots holding an orbital ring together with machines that are older than they are.
A contracted production — we were brought on as animation production partner rather than originating studio, working from another company’s script and character designs. The mecha combat cuts are where the budget went: every fight climax in the back half of the season runs on ones, twelve to eighteen seconds at a time, which is an enormous genga commitment for a 24-episode season and meant the quiet episodes in between had to be timed conservatively to keep the schedule honest.
Episode 14’s docking-bay sequence is the one the key animators still bring up — six seconds of a single unbroken camera move through the hangar, on ones, cut together from four separate genga passes because no one artist’s continuous take held up under review.