Donuts~
After many days of not knowing what the hell Shirobako was about except a possibly white box, which could mean pretty much everything, it ended up being an anime about the world of animation and cute girls working in it.
I wasn’t exactly hyped up about this. I just figured it would be interesting, probably not a completely accurate representation of animation but interesting anyway.
In the end though I completely fell in love with this first episode.
It starts normally enough with girls in a club. They like animation so they try to make their own anime and succeed. Obviously, they all have a different prefered role in this work, which is totally not accurate but who cares anyway, anime wouldn’t work if everything had to be accurate. Also, they like donuts.
After graduation they swear to all get together again to make an anime professionally.
And then we go straight to the new work of our heroine as a professional animator and that’s where things really start to get interesting. There’s a car chase you know, and that’s always interesting.
More seriously though, I was really impressed and loved the fact that we were straight up sent into the world of anime makers as a whole. It was only very brief because after all a large part was used to make a primary introduction of the girls but it was still there nonetheless and I think this will only grow from now on. After all, a big event happened at the end of the episode and I’m now pretty sure the anime will also touch on the less glamorous aspects of anime making. And I like that. I like that a lot.
I also liked that the anime didn’t spent any time on characters introductions. I know it seems strange but most anime spend too much time during first episodes on making sure to introduce everyone and their mother to the viewer. Except the viewer cannot remember everyone. In Shirobako, we saw all of the girls briefly, we know they exist but we don’t know who they are yet. We only got to know the main character and only briefly.
I liked that, because it gives another thing to look forward to in this anime. (Like the major cliffhanger wasn’t enough …).
We did hear a lot of different people talking and so there wasn’t any seiyuu that stood out forme in this first episode, except maybe the heroine’s. They all sound normal though so it’s just perfect.
I really, really, REALLY liked Shirobako. Which isn’t something I expected. I suggest giving it a try. It’s a good occasion to learn a bit more about something you love.