The schedule is already tight on the anime that Musashino Animation is working on, but things look to get worse when the director decides to remake the characters on the fly.
What They Say:
Episode 2: “Arupin is Here!”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, we see that Segawa the animator is not entirely well, but not in deep danger while Aoi gets a call from one of her high school friends, Shizuka the aspiring seiyuu. After helping Segawa into bed, Aoi reassures her that she need not worry about episode 4 of Exodus, since the studio will figure something out. Segawa doesn’t quite have much faith in Aoi’s reassurances. And it is a big problem, since Segawa is the animation supervisor for episode 4. The only option left is for Aoi to beg Endou, the animation supervisor for episode 3 to take up the role for episode 4, since Segawa was key in getting episode 3 over its hurdle, which helped Endou greatly.
Crisis solved, we move on to have a look at the lives of the other girls a bit, as Ema and Shizuka talk. Then we see a recording session for Exodus, which should be of interest to those who know something about the recording process for the Japanese dub. We see it at various stages, from the laying of vocal tracks to the mix involving sound effects and background music. The sound director and the director of the entire show work together to get the sound of the words, effects, and music just right. Unfortunately, the Director, Kinoshita, starts going a bit off the deep end with a complete re-imagining of one of the main characters of Exodus, Arupin, while they still making the show. This leads to a showdown with the other production staff as well as the raising of a potentially contentious issue: Kinoshita apparently was involved in wrecking a previous production by engaging in just this sort of behavior. (The fake title for this previous failure is legendary).
Aoi tries to help things by calling a general staff meeting where Kinoshita can lay out his vision of Arupin and Yamada, Iguchi and the other senior staffers can try to bring things back to earth. In the end though, Kinoshita and Aoi just manage to delude everyone else to ride along on his fantasy. This…is not looking good for the production schedule, despite the angelic chorus. It appears the animation design staff, Iguchi and Ogasawara, are going to have to work overtime, with Iguchi doing key animation and Ogasawara supervising the new direction Kinoshita wants to take them in. These are the little disasters were are often blissfully unaware of—for the better.
While the other high school girls we met at the very beginning of the series look to make regular appearance, it seems clear now that Aoi will indeed be our main focal point into the world of anime production. A production assistant is probably a good window to use, since those higher up the chain or in more specialized roles will likely not see all aspects of the work other than the director, who is much too senior and much too busy to be a good focus for our attention. Here we got to have a look at the audio side of the anime, nothing in depth, but a decent little whirlwind tour of the basics involved. In many respects, it’s becoming clear that Shirobako is really a show aimed more at knowledgeable or semi-knowledgeable fans, those who have some idea of the basics involved so that many production scenes need only provide a minimum of information, with the missing gaps filled with knowledge acquired elsewhere.
One aspect that might not be to everyone tastes, one which does grate on my nerves slightly, is the constant creation of artificial crises to drive along the show. As there really isn’t much of a plot beyond “here are a group of professional animation production people making an anime,” it is clear that the writing staff is dependent on these very artificial-feeling crises to provide the drive to move events forward. It’s not that incidents such as the ones we’ve seen are impossible or have never happened in the past (they have and those who are even more knowledgeable might be able to figure out which specific events and incidents are being used in this show). It’s just that it seems slightly beyond belief to imagine that Murphy’s Law would come into full and unrelenting force for the entire run of Exodus following episode 2. At some point, the crises, including the latest completely man-made one of the director going off script, have to stop. If they do, that might be good. If this just becomes a crisis of the week show, that may spell trouble later in the run, as the natural tendency is to escalate the level of crises, which eventually may bring us to one that breaks all notions of suspending disbelief.
In Summary:
We continue with the havoc-filled and crisis-prone production of Exodus by Musashino Animation. As if unavoidable problems are not enough, the director, Kinoshita, suddenly decides to completely rewrite the personality and nature of one of the main characters…when they’re already delivering episodes to the broadcasters barely before they are supposed to air. It’s becoming clear that this inside look at the industry really is meant more for knowledgeable fans than those who are learning for the first time. It’s not closed off to this latter group, but many of the in-jokes and humor derived from the situations being encountered by the characters probably resonate more with those who’ve been around the anime block once or twice.
Episode Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
