Anime was always an important part of my life. When I was a kid me and my sister used to watch the latest DBZ episode as soon as we arrived home. I remember wanting to be like Goku, and eventually other popular shows like Naruto caught my eye. I don’t think I knew it was anime… I probably thought it was just a cartoon or something, but I’m ok with that. Around the end of 2017 I started watching anime in a “serious way” – more like I was fascinated by it – and after 600 completed shows, and over 9000 episodes I think is pretty safe to say I love this medium. I can attribute this love to a lot of factors, but at the end I think it just resonates with me, and that’s more than enough.
When I watched Shirobako for the first time I was really happy because I got to experience how anime is made. We get to know more about 2D animation, 3D animation, voice acting, production, directing, coloring, sound, photography, etc. You also get a sense of scale with this show, how hundreds of people are related to the creation of one anime; it almost makes you feel less lonely, how there’s so many people that love this medium as much as you do or even more, working every day to make it happen.
We start the show with our five main characters: Miyamori Aoi, Sakaki Shizuka, Yasuhara Ema, Imai Midori and Toudou Misa. They love anime since they were young too, and now that they are part of the animation club in highschool they promise to make an animation together; they call it Shinbutsu Koukou: The Seven Lucky Battle Gods. They work really hard, while wondering what will happen in the future. Each of them has qualities of their own, and things they want to be in the future. With a lot of effort they finish it, and then they showcase it in the school festival. Not long after that graduation comes, and once again they make a promise: Become professionals and one day make a feature animation together.
Time passes, and we see them trying their best in their respective fields. Aoi and Ema work in a studio called Musashino Animation; Aoi as a production assistant, and Ema as a key animator. Shizuka is working at a bar/restaurant while she tries her best to get voice acting jobs and auditions. Rii-chan is still in university but she reads a lot and cultivates her love for writing and research, and Misa works at a CG production studio called Supermedia Creation. They all have doubts and insecurities about the future, but slowly they also learn how to be a creator and how to be part of this medium.
The first show we see being made by Musashino is called Exodus!, an interesting combination between an idol/thriller/action show. We mostly get to see problems that are relatively common in productions like this; from problems with the storyboard, struggles related to production, creative burnout and mental blocks, etc. It’s so chaotic, yet it represents really well what I think people go through to create an amazing product for us to enjoy.
Episode 2 presents an amazing problem, when the director Kinoshita notices that something is off with an important scene, so he ends up wanting to re-do it. Everything is especially difficult because of this… a tight schedule means that re-doing stuff is hard and very stressfull, but even then the director’s opinion is important so they have a meeting to discuss it. In this meeting Kinoshita talks about how he thinks Arupin – the main character and focus of the scene – is, they even talk about what food she likes, or how another character would be a great drinker in the future. This scene captures perfectly how this people feel about anime, it is a product and a business… but it’s also an art form, and they’re passionate about it.
Passion aside, problems are still a common thing in anime productions, and our protagonist are not the exception to this rule. Aoi is struggling with the busy lifestyle of a production assistant, Ema experiences creative block; ultimately coming to terms with the fact that copying to learn, and relaxing to see the bigger picture is ok. We see Shizuka being nervous at auditions, getting discouraged by it, and wondering if she’ll ever make it, when the industry is already full of old and new voice actors. We see Rii-chan thinking she’s playing catch up with the others, wishing she could work on writing already, and last but not least we see Misa struggling with her company, a company where she only makes automobile parts, and where she feels like she’s moving further away from her dream… that’s why ultimately she decides to quit.
Life is difficult, but time never stops, and after one year passes, Musashino Animation is hired to work on an anime adaptation for a manga titled “Dai-3 Hikou Shoujotai.” This brings a lot of new insight on the anime medium, like the amount of preplanning and meetings required for every department so the production goes smoothly, the problems behind adaptation in character designing, etc. We see people trying new things, including our protagonists. Aoi gets promoted to Head Production Assistant or “desk”, Ema is more secure now, and eventually she tries to draw harder frames. Rii-chan joins them to work as a researcher, not only that but also she asks Maitake-san – the main writer in the studio – to teach her more about writing. Misa starts to work at a new company related to airplanes, and Shizuka keeps doing her best. She even auditions for the show everyone will be working on, but she doesn’t make it. Even then she still receives very minor roles and other stuff like voicing mascots.
Production goes smoothly this time, in fact there’s not a lot of internal difficulties – except from Hiraoka… – yet as we said anime is made by a lot of people and new troubles arise. There’s problems because of bad communication with the mangaka and his editor. We see problems with other studios and with animators that work outside of the company. As any production it’s hectic but we learn a lot.
We even get to see a glimpse into the past when Aoi and the president visit an old studio that now they use as storage, called Musashino Pictures. I already knew that the people that worked in studios that went bankrupt usually made studios themselves, but something more interesting for me was to see how Musashino Pictures worked. Working with cels, coloring with paint and even the use of old projectors was something amazing to see, and puts on perspective how far we’ve come from those days. Aoi even stumbles upon one of the frames from Andes Chucky – the show that made her love anime – and it’s such an emotional and touching moment. I hope one day I can go back and see shows that made me into what I am with so much emotion.
We’re get close to the end of Dai-3 Hikou Shoujotai, and the director has to come up with an ending to the show considering they’re ahead of the manga. They start working on it, they finish it and everything is going smoothly… only to find out that because of the editor’s negligence the mangaka didn’t approve the idea from the start, and now he wants it changed. I really like this part, because it focuses a lot on the director. For the entire show Kinoshita has been… well a pain in the ass but also a great character. He’s passionate and a nice person, but also lazy and he gets demotivated really quick because of that incident with a prior anime. It’s until this happens when the president makes him see what he really has been throughout the show, the leader. A director is the person that has a vision of the final product and guides everyone to that goal, of course with the help of others but he has the greatest role. It made me really happy to see him go to the editorial and talk things out with Nodame-sensei. At the end the last episode changes, but now it’s a “win-win”.
The new last episode introduces a new character to the show, a secondary one but they need to make everything about it, from character design to finding a voice actor. They do a meeting for the latter, and a lot of names are tossed out but Kinoshita remembers the audition that Shizuka made. Originally she auditioned for this new character’s sister, but she sounded too young for it… but now that the youngest sister needs a voice it’s a perfect match, so they make her come. Aoi is oblivious to this, and when Shizuka arrives and presents herself Aoi starts crying because she knows her friend finally made it, all that hard work we’ve seen throughout the show pays off in this moment, with an incredibly secure Shizuka that doesn’t stutter and does her best. We get to see her first step in the industry… writing about it makes me shiver and tear up a bit.
We end the show with a great celebration party for the airing of the last episode, a bit rushed but they make it work. Aoi tells a beautiful speech where she talks about how unbelievably huge is the amount of people that work in one single series, even if she knows a lot if not all of them cause of her job in production. From animators, the production team, sound designers, the director, episode directors …. everyone contributes to make this incredible product. We get to celebrate and see all of the characters we love, and at the end we just leave hoping that one day our protagonist make an anime together.
For the longest time that was the ending… a perfect ending in my opinion, but a movie got announced in 2018. It was my first time seeing new content from my all time favorites – K-On!, Shirobako, New Game! and Sora yori mo Tooi Basho – and I was the happiest person in the world. It took a while for me to see the movie that finally got released in 2020 in Japan, but I finally watched it last weekend, and needless to say it was great.
In this movie we get to explore a really interesting part of the medium. Through out the years I’ve seen that a constructive criticism of the original show is that it doesn’t depict how harsh and unfair the anime industry can be, and although I’m neutral about that I think this movie is exactly about this theme. Before the movie start the president announced that they will stop producing Time Hippopotamus – a series they were making – because the original company TRAP withdraw their character designs. Four years later the company is close to bankruptcy… a mere shell of what it was in the golden era. A lot of people left because of that, and the ones that stay like Aoi are really pressured and wonder about the future. It’s harsh to see, at least for me it was, considering the love I have for this characters and for this show.
Our protagonists have now built character and experience with the years. Aoi is a great producer but she has problems with all the studio situation, while Ema left Musashino and now she seems more confident and in a good place. Shizuka is now famous but not for being a voice actress, but for a TV show she appears on. Rii-chan keeps practicing writing, and Misa became an important part in her company, although she’s always stressed now. As always life is though, but they all do their best. We also see other characters being successful, others changed profession like the president, and we even see the director being… depressed.
Even with all this negativity Watanabe – now president of the company – talks to Aoi and puts her in charge of a new project… they’re making an original sci-fi movie called SIVA. As always Shirobako manages to show even more stuff about anime production, now in the form of the making of a movie, which is completely different to a show… yet similar in some aspects. We slowly get to see familiar faces return, including Kinoshita as the director, Ema returning to do animation with Musashino, Rii-chan helping Maitake with the script, Shizuka getting a leading role as a voice actress, Misa helping though her company, and a lot more. It feels uplifting and everything is going well.
Unfortunately not everything is fair, and GPU – another company that had rights of the movie – stops them from continuing, and even from releasing the movie; while trying to get their copyright back. There’s a bad feeling in the air, like the tragedy that happen years ago will repeat itself… like Musashino was about to die.
If you remember I talked a bit ago about how the director went to talk to the mangaka, and how he learned he needed to be a leader as a director. In the movie a similar thing happens, but this time the one that has this realization is Aoi. She understands that her job as part of the production is that no matter what the product needs to come out in good shape. That’s basically her job and the job of everyone involved in production, from managing and scheduling to relations with animators and other sectors… they keep things together and make it so the show/film is done on time. That’s when Aoi goes and confronts with evidence the company, and she gets the permission to release the film.
There’s another problem near the end, also similar to one that happened back in episode two of the show. The director is unhappy with the ending… well a better way to put it is that he’s ok with it, but it’s lacking that emotion, almost as if it was rushed. It’s a reasonable concern, considering the short time they had to make the movie in the first place, but it still felt wrong. He has no self-confidence, yet now Aoi is the one that helps him so he can say to everyone what he thinks. We get to see the team agree, but now instead of showing the process of their hard work we get to see the actual ending of SIVA. The animation is on point, and the ending feels great instead of rushed.
It’s such a nice conclusion for this movie, and a good ending for the show as a whole. Shirobako is one of those shows that has so many characters, so many themes, so many of everything that it feels like it was meant to be in my favorites. Although I’d say all the complicated stuff comes short to what the show is really about, because the fact of the matter is that if you love anime, you’ll love Shirobako. It’s an anime about people loving anime, about people creating anime and about people showing how you can work and live in a fulfilling way, with the things you love. It showed me so much, it encouraged me to pursue my own passions, and it made me a better person. Thank you Shirobako, for making the love letter to anime that we all wanted, and to the people making it that they deserved.
Draz' Thoughts 