Before you can see cute girls flying around in combat aircraft, you first need to decide who is going to provide their voices. It’s not as simple a process as you might think.
What They Say:
Episode 14: “The Ruthless Audition Meeting!”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
If there is one part of the production process that is something of a “black box” for many anime fans, it is the role that the production committee plays in the creation of anime. For the previous show which Musashino Animation worked on, we never saw the planning stages of the work and thus do not know what role the actual companies who funded the project played in shaping Exodus (one fact that often flies over the heads of new fans and less-informed longer-term fans is that animation production studios in general do not provide the working capital for a project. They are commissioned to produce the work for someone else, generally a group of companies that join together to make money off of creating an anime).
If you want to see what is behind the curtain, then you will want to watch this episode of SHIROBAKO, which opens up the shutters and shines some light upon the process. While there are likely a whole host of decisions concerning every production which must run the gauntlet of the production committee’s approval, we are given here an in-depth view of the process as it pertains to casting decisions.
The actual business of auditioning actors and actresses is quite straightforward. The call goes out to agencies (just about all seiyuu, veteran and fresh-out-of-voice-acting-school, belong to an agency which tries to get them work) and actors are contacted to go to the auditions. Dozens of voice talents can be called in to audition for a single role and for an ensemble cast (of five to seven or so), it might mean that the show’s director and the sound production team will have to sit through a couple hundred individual audition sessions.
Following the main framing element to the show, the experiences of the five young women who loved anime from their high school days, we see things from Shizuka’s perspective as her agency sent her to audition for Third Aerial Girls Squad. The audition goes relatively well for her since while she did not hit the mark for the role she was initially called in for, Kinoshita was impressed by something in her voice and asked her to audition on the spot for another role in the show. A promising sign, as it means that her voice resonated with the director, who can have a large say in the actual casting.
But the auditions are just part of the process. The real heart of the episode is what is referenced in the title, as representatives from the entire production committee gather to decide on who will actually be cast in each role. As you might expect, there is Kinoshita and Watanabe from Musani. The sound production team is there. Chazawa, the representative of the author and the author’s publisher, is late as usual. But there are also three men there who we’ve not seen before, but whose ability to cause headaches for the production staff is limitless: this, this is the true nature of the production committee. The three men represent three companies who have signed on to help produce the show: a music company, a live events company, and a game company. Since they have all provided money to fund the production of the anime, they all get a seat at the table. And each of them, of course, has his own agenda.
Just looking at the lead role of Aria in the show, Kinoshita and most of the production staff are in favor of a relative newcomer named Kyoko Suzuki. She has only had minor roles in anime so far, but she impressed them the most. It looks like she would be a good fit…but then the objections come in. The game company representative says that since Third Aerial Girls Squad is a very high profile title, they should go for a cast of popular talents. He seems more interested in Twitter followers and popularity rankings than whether the person is right for the role. The music company rep, naturally, wants an actress who can sing, so that his company can sell character song CDs to accompany the show (even if the show has nothing to do with music). Even better if you chose an actress who is connected to his company. The live events manager…is a moronic horn-dog whose sole interest is in the body parts of the potential casting choices. If she has large breasts or an awesome butt, they should cast her so that the live events (managed by his company, naturally) would be well attended.
What we are seeing here is the curtain turned back to reveal the titanic struggle between Art and Commerce.
Fascinating stuff, though it was easy to tell who was going to win judging by this show and P.A. Works’ own operating procedure with regard to the real show (none of the five girls who lead our cast here is voiced by a famous seiyuu, though there are several famous ones who have appeared in the show, including several of the major recurring roles). The kicker was that the deciding vote to overrule the Commerce side of the committee amusingly came from Chazawa, who stumbled into the meeting late, but then proceeded to back up the production side of the assembled group. So, they avoid the pitfall of “political” casting, where shows have in the real world chosen famous, but unsuitable, seiyuu for important roles on a show, resulting in a poor reception by the fans, who do not like being used merely to forward the careers of certain popular talents and the companies who back them.
Our major framing device of the five girls also comes into play this episode, as it appears everyone except Shizuka will be involved with Third Aerial. Midori is brought into Musani as a full-time researcher (under the title of Setting Design, but her job largely sounds like being a fact-checker for the scriptwriting of the show); Misa has switched from her cars-only company to one that works on planes, but, of course, that’s exactly what this new show is about. But Shizuka is not down about her losing out at the audition, since she does take some confidence from having been asked to do a second, on the spot, audition (and that really is a good sign).
Of course, while it might seem like all is going well, there are also warning signs. As Musani is short-handed, Watanabe has brought in an experience production assistant, Daisuke Hiraoka. He has had five years in the industry, though during that time, he has worked for four different production companies. Without apparently moving up. That is perhaps something of a red flag. Further, as Musani does not have the staff to handle the production entirely themselves, they need to do some outsourcing, which is extremely common. Their regular partner company is busy, however, so they are forced to go with a recommendation from Hiraoka, since they’re short on time and need the help. The company, though, is called “Studio Taitanic” and features a company sign that inspires less than full confidence. And, of course, Chazawa is doing his part to create bad karma as well, as he blithely assures the staff at Musani that the author approves their work so far, including the character designs. I see storm clouds on the horizon, if not a giant iceberg in their path.
While you might think that it would have made sense to show us the entire production process with Exodus, I actually think this has been a good way to proceed, giving us the second half of the process with Exodus, but showing the planning stages with the more high-profile adaptation Third Aerial Girls Squad, where we can see the not-so-savory parts of the business, the influence of commerce on what many take to be art (when, of course, we all know that in the end, it really is just commerce, but entertaining commerce). In terms of providing us with an in-depth and informative view of the actual process, this has been the most solid episode so far in the series.
In Summary:
Auditions are held for the main cast of Third Aerial Girls Squad. Shizuka gets called in to read for a role, but even a winning performance is no guarantee of success. That’s because there is a whole lot more involved to creating an anime. Here, we see the true nature of the production committee model, as all of the companies involved in funding the show get to have their say in matters even as seemingly simple as which persons should voice the lead roles in the anime. They say that making sausages is an ugly process. I guess whoever said that hasn’t seen how an anime adaptation gets made.
Episode Grade: A
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
