What Bakuman is to manga and New Game! is to video games, Shirobako is to anime. It's the quintessential industry piece, and eerie look behind the curtain to see how what you are watching is actually made. The anime mainly follows Aoi Miyamori, a fresh face at Musashino Animation's production staff and her dream to fulfill the promise she made with her four high-school friends to produce their very own anime one day.
As we know, anime - while being reasonably popular in it's own right - is generally not the main medium for stories, rather than a vehicle to popularize and further market the original work they're based on. Being remarkably harder and vastly more expensive to produce compared to printed works, an anime adaptation is often a reward for a manga or novel series doing well in sales and popularity. While there are notable exceptions to this, anime kinda always played second fiddle to other forms of entertainment, being the follow-up or companion piece rather than the main act. While generally used as a marketing tool for domestic sales in Japan, they couldn't keep this beast caged forever. The exponential rise in popularity of Japanese animation overseas has led to, among many things, the creation of this very website. However, while being a widely recognized and respected medium, anime by it's nature is very hard and expensive to make, and most anime to this day are produced at a loss, the cost of which the production companies usually hope to recoup with sales of the original work, merch, sponsorship deals, live events, product tie-ins and the likes...with varying degrees of success.
Shirobako completely sidesteps explaining anime's place in entertainment history, business or popculture, and instead laser-focuses on the production aspect and inner workings of an anime studio and it's denizens. We follow the day-to-day work at Musashino Animation and see what it takes to bring a story from an idea all the way to the TV screen. It's very interesting to see how storyboards and rough sketches become animated, voiced, living characters on screen, telling stories in beautiful detail. Dozens of artists, engineers and production staff working tirelessly day and night to make this magic possible. Like clockwork, all the different departments working together to each bring their part of the whole: characters, backgrounds, animations, special effects, ADR, sound and foley work, post-production and editing, all coming together to form something more than the sum of it's parts.
Of course work like this comes with it's fair share of hardships and pitfalls, which are in full display in the anime. Impossible deadlines, scheduling conflicts, personal issues, technical problems, mistakes made during one point or other, and of course the production staff desperately scrambling to keep this speeding train on track, mercilessly hurtling towards the air date of each episode. Being on schedule usually means you forgot something, as we watch Miyamori and co putting out fires left and right, pulling one all-nighter after another, barely seeing the inside of their own homes, just to bring the latest episode of your favorite show to your TV screen each week. One has to wonder if it's at all worth it, to give years of your life to such hectic, mentally exhausting, stressful and ultimately pretty thankless work, and the anime asks this very question on more than one occasion through some excellent character work and their relationships during the show. They say only weirdos and crazy people work in anime, because they are the only ones mad enough to go through this production hell to bring these stories to the screens of millions worldwide. The ultimate reward for all that is....to each their own. The dream of honing your skills, to become a professional, to watching your work on the big screen, to see the smiles of fans everywhere, to making a living doing what you love. It's different for everybody involved. But the one thing tying all these mad magicians together, is their love for anime.
As for the quality of this very anime: it's great! Shirobako, while not doing anything remarkably exceptional, is a really good anime. The art style and animation is nice, the sound and music - while nothing special - fits the theme well. The characters and stories are no doubt greatly based on real life people and events, and while dramatized for effect, you can feel their heart and soul in it. In fact, for the keen-eyed, there are several easter eggs from the anime industry at large, like popular anime, animation studios and even artist cameos like Hideaki Anno (Evangelion), Ichiro Itano (Mr Itano Circus), Hiromasa Ogura (background artist), Masao Maruyama (president of MAPPA), Masahiko Minami (president of BONES), Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (president of Production I.G), Seiji Mizushima (Fullmetal Alchemist director), Naoyuki Onda (Berserk character-designer), Takeshi Nogami (mangaka of Girls und Panzer), Takashi Ikehata (director of Genshiken) and some others.
In closing, all I can say, if you like anime as much as I, do yourself a favor and watch Shirobako. You might enjoy the overall story or characters much, but the insight you'll gain into the inner working of this medium will make you appreciate the efforts all the men and women working tirelessly to bring you your favorite stories on your screen in it's full animated glory.
