I ran through all 10 available episodes, and a thought occured to me: why bother with all the somewhat slightly animated manga thing? Just scan manga, and have the cast read it aloud, voila.

Alas, it's not so simple. Manga has speech balloons, which this quasi-animated manga thing does not. It does have balloon-less floating remarks, but that's a very different look. Therefore, an existing manga has to be re-drawn. It is still cheaper than animating, I am sure, but not as straightforward. In addition, resolution of manga page allows for different forms, and many mangas have oddly shaped frames. Still, this seems like a viable art form. Maybe when Hiyao's son succeeds in using computers to destroy anime, we could still have this.