Long story short, Michael3dX's PostED program is the greatest 3D tool that I've ever used, and it was easy to pick up and use even though my experience with 3D is limited.
I'll be animating it in the same way as I make my hand-drawn animations: one frame at a time, no tweening and inbetween automation.
Everything will be done manually, and this will also help produce that "animated" feel, that cell shaded animations have been failing to do for years.
A lot of progress is being made, and I'll be staying up till midnight trying to make some fresh combat animations with some warmups in between to make sure it comes out as great as possible.