Shirobako is an anime from the fall 2014/winter 2015 seasons by P.A. Works that (as of this OP) is currently about half through its run slated for 24 episodes. The show revolves around a young woman named Aoi Miyamori who was recently hired as a production assistant by the Musashino Animation studio. She and her four friends from high school were in an animation club, and upon graduation they decided to try and land stable jobs involved with the industry in order to get the chance to create an original work with a higher budget.
This show is a
very realistic slice-of-life.
Their goal doesn’t seem in reach now and it probably won’t be achieved by series end, though that's just my prediction.
I say this for a couple reasons; Aoi is by far the most successful of the five right now. The only other round-the-clock hired one already works with Aoi at Musashino. Between the other three, one is resigning from her current job, one is frantically looking for voice acting work, and the last one is still in college. Also, while advertising material for Shirobako made it seem like the show would center on their group and be a "cute girls doing cute things" show, Shirobako's focus is actually primarily on the crew of Musashino, which has its own humongous cast of characters (see the above picture – that many people pretty much appear in every episode), all of whom have their own realistic personalities, peeves, and ambitions. Character design-wise, some of them are based off of actual anime industry professionals. The voice acting in Shirobako is also superb; perky without being too cutesy and filled with an array of voice actors and actresses old and new. The characters often end up talking over one another, their conversations in natural flow. Shirobako thrives on this kind of busy dialogue and tension resulting from its characters’ stress.
And they do have very time-consuming stressful jobs.
I repeat, this show is a
very realistic slice-of-life.
Most importantly, this show offers a digestible take on the very real inside of the anime industry; the effort that goes into every single series a studio churns out, the fragile nature of being a young adult looking for work in a field with tons of competition, and the intense motivation to continue trying to succeed anyway. Time after time, Shirobako makes it clear that the only reason anyone willingly does a stressful job like this is because it can be extremely gratifying when everything goes right. The passion good animation crews put into their craft is evident when you watch a masterpiece of a show, so watching a show about passion being put into shows may seem a bit too meta at first, but watching it, it
feels more endearing and naturally gripping than you’d expect, putting every otaku-fandom pandering industry anime to shame.
It’s a
very realistic slice-of-li- oh, you get the point.
So has anyone seen Shirobako? Let’s discuss below. If this sounds interesting to you and you’d like to get started, the series is
legally available on Crunchyroll with new episodes simulcast each Thursday.
