You see, Shirobako does do a good job at putting on the line some of the goals and aspirations the characters want to do, even if it's half corny and generic safe responses and the other half is mostly what would feel natural for someone that has entered into the industry making a decision that fits their original goal presented in a situation that makes sense. Well maybe it's more like, 60-40%. Well... maybe... erm...
Anyway, what it absolutely fails to do is present the situation of the working space in a believable way. You see there is this director who is, putting it mildly, the absolute worst thing in the world. He constantly procrastinates, he is usually indecisive and he had no sense of direction to the point that when he was asked what he wanted to do with his series, his answer was simply "moe". That was his answer for why he created the series and where he wanted to take it. I'm sure anyone, despite however rancid might think has gotten and maybe wanted to capitalize on the moe factor, if that was at all the case in this director's case, would have at the very least an idea on how to capitalize on moe and give a different answer. But, no, he said that because he was asked what were his original intentions with the series in order to get help from another writter, and that was his answer. And he's already known in the industry for his poor direction and what not, because he had failed on directing another original work called "Jiggly Jiggly Heaven" which is exactly what you're probably thinking. I won't represent him as antagonistically as I can, but trust me, he seems very unqualified all throughout the first cour.
The reason I'm mentioning all this and I'm stopping here is because I want to ask you the following questions:
Would you work under him?
Now think a bit before you answer because these are the guarantees of your job: you will probably be forced to take a lot of retakes due to his indecisiveness and work under a very limited timespan due to how much he's delayed writing the storyboards due to him procrastinating, which would make the retakes that much more difficult. Also keep in mind that he has a terrible reputation and if you're there and he fails he probably is going to drag you down with him as well. Maybe you're asking yourself how would I have known which, okay, good point, then I'm gonna ask you the following question instead.
What would you do when you found out he's this way?
Would you continue working so the anime won't be a permanent stain on your resume and make it as great as possible, would you bail because as soon as you could before you would be able to have it as a permanent stain on you or would you have an outburst at the director and tell him to get his shit together? Or would you simply just quit as soon as the project is done? I mean, you would feel at every point like you're in a sinking ship, right? Or maybe if you wouldn't, someone else at least would?
Except that's not what happens. Most people continue working so the work won't leave a permanent impact on their reputation in the industry but there is absolutely nobody, except one guy who downright forces the director to work. There's nobody that expresses any sort of frustration at the chaos the director has caused at things that are completely his fault. They had opportunities to do so with a bunch of characters, but no, they instead chose this path with this character: "Everyone struggles until the asshole finally fucking gets some inspiration and then everything ends fine and dandy." I can't imagine in a realistic situation where there wouldn't be at least one person lashing out or at the very least talking the director behind his back for being this pathetic at what he's doing, hell, I barely can imagine someone being this tolerant in a fictional scenario built in my mind. Instead people just take it and do their work and eventually the director stops fucking around. You could've given the director some motivation to correct his ways through consequences of his work force simply not accepting what he's doing by lashing out at him or quitting or anything. But, no, that would make too much sense. Lets instead have his actions have very little voiced consequences and everything ending up pretty much okay.
And this is the main problem with Shirobako, whenever there is a problem, everything ends up okay in the end, to the point where you get to the content of the second cour, where everything works even better in the project and the director isn't even a problem anymore, whenever a "oh my god a setback" happens there's no sense of urgency behind it and the tension from this type of situation is pretty much gone. There's no consequence to things going wrong other than, okay, lets work a little bit harder mkay? Okay. You're writing a story about an industry, there's always a risk for someone doing a bad job, but quitting and being fired are totally natural responses a person or a company could take in these situations. Failing a deadline or the work suffering a drop in quality are also possible consequences of incompetence or simply harsh conditions. As a result of this, none of the events happening in Shirobako have any dramatic value, despite trying to build them up and failing spectacularly at them. You know they will strive to make things in the series as optimistic as possible while creating tension with only one result, you feeling relieved it worked out.
It looked like all the characters were pulling punches in the hopes that things will work out and they will somehow manage, which made me feel very cynical about the whole experiences they've went through.
That was what mostly almost kinda made me drop the series a bunch of times but instead I continued watching the series because quite frankly, I enjoyed the parts where Shirobako presented the motivations and ambitions the characters had in the industry, or their loss of motivation and how they got over it. It does do a genuinely good job with that whenever they don't go on the safe route and offer some sort of insightful advice through a conclusion you could draw out from what the characters experience which is a good thing to see. Like what happens when you lose inspiration (no, I'm not talking about the director) or when you are stuck in a loop where you don't get any experience that would help you improve in the future. If the story focused more on this aspect of what it was trying to do while creating tension and focusing more on how to get over yourself and how you've achieved that and what consequences this could have not only on you but also on the team, I'm sure this could've been quite good, but it wasn't. I thought this aspect was enough for me to second guess calling this show bad, but I can't say it's fine for the lack of repercussions for every problem in the series that has appeared in it and making it seem quite unrealistic.
The art style of the show is generally good, given its a show about creating anime and animation plays a big part in it, most things are animated well. Everything looks well put together and you could technically see the process behind it too, which will probably help you have a better appreciation of it. The art style is a bit too cutsey for me but, I can say that it looked good regardless. The sound was generally fine too, although if I caught a glimpse of either the intro or ending I would immediately get turned off because I hate j-pop, and there are some downright cringy moments in the series that are meant to be heartwarming when the main character along with her friends go on and say this: "DON DON DONUTS LETS GO NUTS!". Ugh.
As you might or might have not guessed from what I've already said, the purpose of the characters is mostly to display one aspect of the industry or that area of expertise through either shared wisdom or experience or the difficulty said person might have in their area. The situations presented by them tend to be hit and miss but they usually are enjoyable enough for what they're trying to do and they tend to have some insight into them.
If you think you'd be frustrated by the lack of consequences the problems in the series, like the poor direction or the problems created by the staff itself, having little to no consequences to the overall quality on the series could be a hurdle for you, or the fact that the interpersonal relationships of the series being treated so casually is a really bad thing just like me, I can't recommend this series to you at all. But if you think some of the insight Shirobako might provide into the industry might be worth it, although I would suggest looking for some documentaries that might offer the same insight into the industry from real people talking about real experiences, you could have a look into it. As I've said, it does present some insightful situations and how people get over their own hurdles, which might be something you want. But I don't know if that would justify it as a good series for you, given it's possible you could get the same feedback from different sources. I managed to enjoy Shirobako enough to finish it and thought it was an okay enough experience, despite the hurdles, but I can see them being too much for other people as well.
