Shirobako – 02

Shirobako is a strange beast. It’s well-animated, well voiced and the plot and characters are moving on nicely. However, that plot is about a plucky young studio making a fictional anime, is deeply involved in the particulars of making anime in general, and features a cast so broad there is no way we will ever remember their names or come to know more than a sliver of them.

Oh yeah! Not only did it introduce new characters this week, but it sent a toss back to the opening of the first episode to remind us that the true story here is about the five girls who wanted to go into animation when they were in high school.

Ahhhh!

Harry Potter is in the cast now…  for some reason.

This week, Exodus hits a few stumbling points. First, episode 3 and 4’s keyframe animator is sick and second, the wishy-washy director wants to redo a lot of work very very late in production.

Both of these challenges fall on the shoulders of our heroine, who’s name I can’t remember because she’s one of 40 characters zipping around all the time. Rather, she’s usually sitting down, but we are zipping from scene to scene.

Zooooom!

Obviously, our heroine saves the day by finding a replacement keyframe lead and deftly directs the development conversation into better understanding the characters, and making those characters compelling enough for the crew to get on board with reanimating them.

Then Exodus’ characters come alive right on top of the conference table. I have no idea if this was a literal scene or just an over the top manifestation of the crew’s communal vision.

Because a show with a cast this large needed to introduce each voice actor for it’s own fictional anime. Rock’n!

Given how mundane yet technical Shirobako’s plot is turning out to be, not much is popping out for me to comment on. The show isn’t dull, per se, it’s just…unimportant? I mean, it’s hard to care about the world-building of an office that is debating world-building.

Yes! I went to art school for eight years, and Yes! I’ve done technical management and development in the creative industry for ten years, so Yes! I see this stuff all the time. But even I don’t find it very compelling storytelling.

…Yay?

Cute jab at the industry and, basically, this week’s only “joke”…

I honestly don’t know what to make of this show. I’m not even sure I’m going to stop watching it — it’s very easy to watch and, while the characters may be played out if you have to work with people like them professionally, nothing is unbearable. But…

I mean what am I really watching? Why does this exist? It’s not especially compelling and the core characters are buried in extraneous other content. Crushed under it. Hrm…