Within the diverse, colourful spectrum of overzealous anime fans across the world there exists a small but growing number of us with a particular bent. If you’re like me, then, at some point, being able to just enjoy good anime wasn’t enough – to satisfy a growing curiosity I had to know why it was good. As it turns out, this was the first tumble down a very slippery, very long slope which would eventually lead me to such depraved depths as spending a good few hours researching the credits a short anime review on a series I’m not even particularly passionate about! If you’re a part of this faction of the anime fandom you may exhibit symptoms such as:
- You see an anime and feel violent urges to pick it apart, down to its skeletal core of production values and staff credits.
- You might actually be bothered wanting to know who in particular animated the smoke in the background of a fight scene.
- You could find yourself watching anime you really hate just because it has some interesting staff in the credits.
- You might find yourself becoming irrationally angry at ANN reviews.
- You become a highly efficient, streamlined twitter-stalking machine for anime staff.
To others, this may seem like nitpickery, or even an obsession taken to creepy levels. Most people are perfectly happy seeing something that looks good and talking about the story and the characters. Conversely, they’re unhappy seeing things that they feel don’t look good.
And that’s perfectly fine. Let’s face it, that makes sense. But if you happen to have stumbled into that slippery slope, it can be hard to look back. That’s because you gain an appreciation of just how much work goes into anime from everyone involved, and how much of that work is creative, personal and born from a deep-seated attachment to the industry and the anime. Blood sweat and tears and donuts are the secret ingredients behind nearly every good anime, and even many of the mediocre ones. And those ingredients can’t just be bought in bulk by the studio or director of the day – they’re shed by people. So many of the names on the credit list that most people skip at the end of each episode are absolutely vital to helping make the episode what it was.
And it doesn’t just lead to nitpicking, for me, this deeper appreciation of the people behind anime has unlocked a new, visceral love for the medium. In the climactic animation sequences of Space Dandy’s finale I got goosebumps seeing the work of animators Yoshimichi Kameda, BahiJD and Yutaka Nakamura, because I was in awe of their talent. 5 years ago I might have thought it looked ‘kinda cool’ and then quickly forgotten about it. But now I know: no other three people could have produced a sequence that looked quite like that. And I know that their efforts represent a new step in a career of hard-work and personal growth.
On Shirobako
Enter Shirobako: the anime about cute girls making anime about cute girls. In just 7 episodes, this anime has done more to convey exactly what I’m talking about than I could have in a thousand blog posts (even if people actually read my blog!). Not only does it do a great job of very realistically showing the production process of TV anime in great detail, but it also scratches beneath the technical workflows and gets into the motivations, aspirations, foibles and challenges of the many people behind it. Make no mistake, although these are fictional characters, their passion for the job, the struggles they deal with are all very real reflections of the very real people behind the industry.
I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long for something like Shirobako to come along (the closest thing I can think of would be the more comedic Animation Runner Kuromi). I’m not sure whether it’s because directors and producers have shied away from the topic for fear that there was no appetite among anime fans for this setting, or that they thought it would be too awkwardly introspective to create, but it’s been a long time coming. The men who finally made it happen are Kenji Horikawa (founder, director, and main driving force of P.A Works) and director Tsutomu Mizushima. Apparently, the idea for the anime started while they shared a train ride together around 3 years ago (possibly when they were working together on Another). They had the desire to bring the personal side of anime production to light and to explore every facet of production, connecting the many often isolated sections that operate in the industry into a story. Together, they originally nutted out ideas such as the beginning sequence of the group wanting to make a school-project anime and get into the industry, and the street-racing scene from the first episode.
But only now have they got it off the ground. There’s no denying this is their work, and their idea (mainly Horikawa’s by the sound of it). Both of them have a wealth of experience in the industry: Horikawa has worked at Production I.G, Tatsunoko Productions and Bee Train before finally starting up P.A Works. As the founder of the company, it’s clearly his experience managing all areas of production which has laid the groundwork for the show’s storytelling. Mizushima Tsutomu, with a prolific and rock-solid career behind him, including works such as Blood-C, xxxHolic, Squid Girl, etc, brings an effective directorial presence. The show’s production has been polished (albeit not very charismatic), and, being known for his comedy anime, he brings a much needed sense of humour to what might have otherwise been too dry of an anime to swallow. Interestingly, he’s also sound director on this anime which, as far as I’m aware, is quite unusual. His familiarity with music predates his career in anime though, as he originally wanted to be a music teacher after finished high school, before winding up in anime after not being able to get into that profession. Still, the director credit is usually enough work for one person, so he must really be stretched thin.
He would have bought on writer Michiko Yokote to this project, having worked extensively with her on the past on his projects, and she delivers a strong script packed with interesting interpersonal drama and multiple layers of story development with well-written female characters. As a side note, it’s rumoured that Michiko Yokote is actually a team of 3 female writers based on a blog post she wrote some time ago (a rumour that many English websites have echoed as fact). However, given the jovial tone of the post and the fact that it seems impractical, I’m inclined to believe it’s not true. Alongside her writes the accomplished Reiko Yoshida (Keion, Kaleido Star, REC, Scrapped Princess, and many more) who I actually think delivers more resonant and interesting episodes.
For an anime that brings to light the talents and hard-work of charismatic animators, the production is almost ironically mute in execution. There’s little room for expressionistic or idiosyncratic animation, except in the meta anime that the staff are producing. But the strength of Shirobako is in its fascinating look at the internal guts of the industry.
Exploration of the Industry
Shirobako is set in a fictional studio called Musashino Animation (look, the even made a fake website for the studio) who are currently working on a new anime series, Exodus. Musashino animation is a small Tokyo-based studio the likes of which comprise the majority of anime companies out there. Through this setting it tells the story of 5 girls who are living and working towards their high-school dream of creating anime together. There’s a rookie voice actress, a production assistant, a key animator, a 3DCG operator, and an aspiring script-writer The anime explores their lives in the industry as well as the many other production staff that surround them. Some interesting things they’ve covered include:
Schedule Hell
The apocalyptic struggle of one overworked production assistant against a tsunami of work and a tight schedule is vividly portrayed throughout Shirobako, and is the focus of episode 3. In the episode, Aoi faces an uphill battle to get an episode finished after it is derailed by a collapsed animator and a grossly indecisive director. TV anime typically run on tight schedules, going to air with only a handful of completed episodes to act as a buffer before inevitably being caught, pants-down in a frantic race to finish every episode. Stories of animators pulling all nighters or virtually living in the studio are commonplace, and it’s not all that rare for episodes to only just be completed in time for airing.
![[HorribleSubs] Shirobako - 01 [720p].mkv_snapshot_22.57_[2014.12.01_19.13.08]](https://washiblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/horriblesubs-shirobako-01-720p-mkv_snapshot_22-57_2014-12-01_19-13-08.jpg?w=775)
Time is money, but money can’t buy time when things go to hell. Hopefully Shirobako’s glimpse into a studio grappling with the schedule demons might dispel the myth that drops in anime quality are caused by a studio ‘running out of money’. While this can happen, it’s very rare and extraordinary, yet it seems to be the go-to explanation for a shoddy episode by most anime fans.
The References to Real people
Shirobako is packed full with references to real people, places and events within the industry. Some of them are subtle, others not so much, but it’s a lot of fun to try keep an eye out for them! Probably the most obvious ones are the oafish, man-child director, who is modelled after Seiji Mizushima and the aloof, inexplicably culinary company president, who is based on the CEO of studio Mappa (and co-founder of Madhouse), Masao Maruyama. Given his real-life parallel, Seiji Mizushima’s character is portrayed in a surprisingly unflattering light, but he’s presumably in on the joke after he uploaded this photo of himself in a matching blue-polo shirt!!
I’m not sure where the proclivity for cooking in Masao’s character comes from, but it seems to be a running joke. I actually saw a photo of Maruyama cooking with a pot on the internet, but now I can’t seem to track it down again!
Studios and other anime series are often mentioned with bastardised or cryptic names, and the seiyuus actually appear as themselves! It’s a lot of fun for someone with an existing interest in the faces behind anime. As a point of interest, director Mizushima Tsutomu calls Tarou, the most annoying character int he show, his former self (hopefully he’s joking!)
CG versus 2D
The was palpable sense of tension between CG animators and traditional animators in episode 5. Apparently they actually consulted with the legendary Ichiro Itano for this episode, who actually went into direction with CG from his origins as a 2D animator (traitor!!). He also I saw somewhere that Itano might be participating in a commentary for the episode’s Blu-ray release, which should prove interesting.
Although obviously exaggerated here, I’d guess that there is an air of conflict in the anime industry between these two sides of the fence. The encroachment of 3DCG into more and more areas of the medium is like a dark, ominous cloud hanging over the industry. When anime first started to use 3DCG it was experimental and used for specific things that would either be too hard to animate traditionally or which were clearly suitable for a CG treatment like spaceships and mecha. It was used to add value to anime in specific ways like having a lot of moving background characters that would have been impossibly expensive and time-consuming for a TV-anime. This all enabled animators to focus more on better foreground, character drawings (and certain studios kept the 2D mecha tradition alive). But now we’re getting whole anime done in CG – clearly it’s gone from being a complement to the 2D industry to a rival.
Personally I think it’s about time we started drawing clear battle-lines here when it comes to CG. The western 2D animation industry basically immediately evaporated after directors and producers jumped ship when they saw the new shiny, trendy 3D animation, but Japan has so far not succumbed so readily. It’s like a last bastion of hope for fans of 2D animation (and I’m talking about GOOD animation, not flash-in-betweened rubbish). CG, while still taking skill in and of itself, is a form of animation that is more science than it is art – it lacks the raw creative spark that comes from the hand and the many nuances of drawn animation.
So, to be honest, I was totally onside with the animator. CG can have its place, but now that we’ve got whole anime being done in the style, it represents a real threat to the industry and I say we should push back!
The Animator Crunch
The look into Ema’s struggle with starting out as a key animator. Just getting into the job, she is facing the crunch that most animators need to get through, the first big hurdle: the ability to draw both quickly and well, and being able to aptly juggle these two opposing forces in her daily work.
I think this is really interesting to see play out on a personal level, and I hope people watching take home the fact that there’s a lot more to being a good animator than simply being able to draw. Being flagged as someone with potential for character design, Ema is obviously a good drawer and a competent animator, but she is struggling with just 10 cuts under time pressure. Unless you have a reputation as a star animator, it’s not enough to be good, you have to be good and fast! It really serves to highlight the herculean efforts of some animators who are able to draw entire episodes by themselves and maintain a high level of quality, or who are able to actually create animation that is thrilling on an individualistic level after just starting out.
Many animators-to-be quit the job because they can’t push past this roadblock with either talent or sheer guts and determination, so let’s give due respect those who do overcome it!
Pay discrepancies
Although it’s not exactly anything we didn’t know before, the Shirobako website posted a neat little info-graphic showing the salaries of the various people involved. It’s not news that the salary of a fresh key animator is terribly low, but it’s still frightening seeing such a stark comparison. With the much more attractive salary of an animation director/character designer it’s easy to see why most good animators work their way up to that role, or turn towards storyboarding and direction (although being an animation director is very tough work that doesn’t pay especially well on a per-cut basis).
Those animators who stick with key animation in the long-run are few and far between and tend to be the rare, prodigious individual who is talented enough to make a name for themselves as a top, sought after resource. These people find themselves with proper salaries or a much higher per-drawing pay-rate. Some animators who seem like they were born to walk the path of a pure animator include the likes of Shinya Ohira, Yutaka Nakamura, Toshiyuki Inoue, etc. These days it’s usually better to be talented in a stand-out way than to work hard at progressing as an animator.
What I do like is how they subtly touch on the money issue without being preachy or self-pitying in the process. Although not well-paid, young animators take pride in their job and are driven by their love for it.
Interestingly, the role of Sound Director is not included here. A few years ago, a report from the Japanese Animation Creators Association which highlighted (and perhaps exaggerated) the plight of young animators caused a bit of stir. Yamasaki Osamu wrote for them discussing pay inequities within the industry and pointed out that sound directors are paid a little over half as much as episode director’s per episode, but are able to finish an episode in two days rather than a matter of weeks. As a result, they often juggle 2-3 series at a time and can commonly end up with salaries of $200,000 or more, more than the executive producer on the chart above. With that said, it sure is intriguing that Mizushima Tsutomu is also sound director on this anime! I certainly can’t tell any difference from other anime!
In the end..
If you think back to a scene in anime that struck you as being awesomely animated and it was almost certainly thanks to the tireless work of a particular animator. Look at Yoshimichi Kameda’s scene from Space Dandy #26, the electric, swirling fire dragon was all animated by him and is a sentimental bow to the animator who inspired and influenced him from the beginning, the recently deceased legend Yoshinori Kanada; the action climax of the ghost in the Shell movie was animated by Mitsuo Iso who apparently studied a spider he’d captured in a jar to help craft the movements of the spider-tank; Ichiro Itano’s famous, twirling, spiraling missiles were drawn from his memories of strapping fireworks to his bike and riding as they shot out around him; hell, Gainax was founded by a bunch of university drop-out nerds who bound together to animate an intro to a sci-fi convention. We’re used to watching interesting stories play out in our favourite anime, but what Shirobako reveals is that those anime are often built on fascinating, real-life stories of the people involved. The more I look into the many remarkable people working in this medium the more I discover that they are driven by a passion for animation and storytelling.
I’m confident that Shirobako has lifted the veil over the anime industry for a lot of people, both in Japan and abroad, and all we can do is hope that this fosters more interest in and better understanding of the people who pour their life into the anime we enjoy every week. I’d love to see more people join me in the tireless pursuit of uncovering these people and stories behind anime! At the very least, some mainstream reviews might be able to start giving credit where credit where it’s due a little better instead of lumping it all at the foot of the director or any name they happen recognise.
Further reading:
Staff roles/pay:
How anime is made:
http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php/the-anime-production-line
Washi's Blog 
Hi Washi,
Thank you for your post, I really enjoyed it and I am impressed by your passion for the people behind Anime. One thing i`d like to comment on:
“At the very least, some mainstream reviews might be able to start giving credit where credit where it’s due a little better instead of lumping it all at the foot of the director or any name they happen recognize.”
I am one of those mainstream reviewers, doing some in German since my English isn`t nearly good enough to express my thoughts. First, I think you are right about it. Even professional Sites like ANN often talk about the Director and/or Script Writer of a show. But your demand for credit, where credit is due is kind of difficult to supply. As someone who isn`t able to speak Japanese, it is very hard to become a “twitter stalking machine” for Anime staff ^^
The problem is that those people often aren`t accessible enough for us, who are interested in them but just have not the language capability to read about them. There aren`t that many English Blogs that make those people accessible to us (or those Blogs are far too unknown for us to stumble upon them).
Let’s take ANN for instance. They have a very good and big database of Anime Staff and it shows on which Animes they have worked on. Other than that, there isn`t much to go on. Those names stay names, sometimes with a picture attached to it. But I still don’t know what this person achieved (and where he/she failed at) by just looking up their names. They stay vastly anonym names hidden in the credits and I have no context about them.
The other problem is: If you want people to appreciate the people behind animation, they have to start appreciate animation in the first place. As you yourself admit, five years ago you might have told about the last Dandy Episode “it looks cool” and then moved on. But how to you learn to appreciate good animation? Or how do you learn what good animation is? There are far too few Blogs in the English Anime Community that focus on this topic in a deep, not superficial manner (or again, they are not known enough – to me at least). By just watching anime, analyzing what you have seen and trying to get to the core of it yourself, you can only come so far.
On ANN the reviewers often say something like “animation quality is not the strength of this anime” but I want to know what those flaws are. Where is the in-depth analysis (frame by frame) that depicts those flaws? You only hear from time to time things like “animation shortcuts”, “stillshots”, “low frame rate” or “I didn`t like the art”, but no actual analysis and explanation of why this is (supposedly) bad animation or art. In the german speaking Anime community things are even worse – we don`t have even one professional Anime Review Site ^^
On the other hand, it is far easier to talk about the storytelling part for us “mainstream Reviewer”. Why? Because there is a vast storytelling culture and tradition in Europe/America, too. I have read Aristotles and all the big drama theorists (because they are available in German or English ^^) and am much more comfortable with analyzing narrative than animation. Yes, there is also a European animation tradition but it differs too much from the Japanese, so there isn`t much to be learned from. And even if, there are too few Blogs/professional Sites on comic/cortoons.
My point being: we need more people like you, who make animation (and people behind animation) more accessible to us, because we are not able to discover this on our own due to the language barrier. And yes, this is meant as encouragement for you to make some more posts on your blog ;)
Btw. Your links at the end are very interesting, thank you for that.
Thanks for your comment, Boki!
It’s nice to see that people out there realise we have a problem in the English fan community. From reviews on sites like ANN right through to discussions on forums there is a focus on the director and story writer to the exclusion of all almost all else. People love writing about anime, and it makes sense that they’ll only talk about the elements of it they understand like the music, ‘art style’, voice acting and story. The biggest area that’s overlooked, or worse, totally misconstrued, is the animation. I don’t know how many times I have seen sites like ANN lambaste an anime for ‘poor, shoddy animation’ just because it has moments of different styles. This simplistically equates individualistic or experimental animation with bad animation, which is a narrow-minded and uninformed perspective.
I know full well how hard it is to find information on particular animators (although the advent of twitter has really opened up the industry a lot). Honestly, even if you speak Japanese ( I don’t, really) it can be very difficult unless you really know where to look. But, at the end of the day, I’m not asking for anime critics to have a deep, technical understanding of animation or an encyclopedic knowledge of anime staff, I just want there to be more of an appreciation of, and interest in animation. Animation is a huge part of the creative process, and I hope people start giving it the attention it deserves instead of treating it as just a machine to render a story in pretty pictures.
If people start being interested in it there will be more demand for English-translated interviews and information, so that’s the first step!
Yeah, that’s a problem I’ve got with ANN’s reviews too (though far from the only one). I actually brought this up on the site’s forums and the answers were similarly uncaring too.
Though I will admit, when the first Kill la Kill review came out, the forums have a field day with it, with people taking sides about whether or not the show’s animation was cheap (which it is), or decent (which it also is, though not as often).
That being said, many of the fans barely take notice about the animation in an anime (or indeed, animation in general). It’s sad really. Not that the industry as a whole is a lot better, mind you. But taking into consideration a lot of the problems out there in animation today, it’s not a good thing to just forget about the people who bring the characters to (physical) life. I have my doubts, but let’s just hope this sort of ignorance becomes less prevalent over time.
I wonder if American animation makes people indifferent to animation. Disney’s animation is (well, was) so consistently fluid, refined and stageplay-like realistic that it becomes unnoticeable. Television shows seem to emphasize consistency, constant movement and a higher average framerate than anime, but the results are so bland that there’s nothing to draw the viewer’s attention for better or worse. Anime can be a wild mixture of different animation styles and techniques and levels of detail, and generally uses this limited, cinematic and realistic style that people don’t understand and don’t try to (the quality and complexity of the drawings, shading, coloring and backgrounds etc. is also dramatically higher, but this goes unnoticed). Anime is, therefore, “badly” and “lazily” animated and nothing but still frames and mouth flaps. Animation is something to be not noticed, and consistent mediocrity is the best way to attain that. (I’ve also run into many people who believe soundtrack music shouldn’t be noticed, and they can’t believe anyone could listen to it on its own. A lot of Western soundtrack music is indeed composed in such a way that it supports the action but leaves no impression of itself, and thus people are conditioned to expect that.)
Most people who regularly watch anime may not rant about still frames and mouth flaps (like people who don’t watch anime like to do), but I don’t find it surprising if they don’t pay attention to animation except when (they think) something is wrong.
Howdy! I just want to give a huge thumbs up for the good data you could have right here on this post. I can be coming again to your blog for extra soon.
Great post! I am also writing a post now that I finished Shirobako as a whole, and it is good to see that more people realise that this show is made with lots of experience, love, and respect for anime, all done by one hell of a huge team.
Thanks!!! Agreed , the series almost brought a tear to my eye at the last episode’s after party. So touching to finally see all the personal effort and talent that goes into anime fully explored!
Reblogged this on 12 Frames Per Second.
I’m definetely going to watch this show at some point…coming from someone who has huge fascination with 2d animation watching a 2d animation about people making 2d animation who are based off of people making 2d animation is just my fan service