Shirobako – 07

There are some problems that even donuts can’t solve

Hi everyone and welcome back for the anime about anime.

How Do You Find Your Flow

Some people never grow up

The transition from school to working is something that is really tough for a lot of people. You’re learning things like “I didn’t learn anything in school” and “Damn, I suck.” Well, you’re also learning about actually doing your job, the skills you need, the processes you need to follow or even improve on. And while the show has been focusing so far on Aoi and her growth as a production assistant, we get a little bit of a shift this week (since Aoi’s seemingly on top of her work) to Ema, who it seems has been struggling as a new Key Animator.

It’s not bad advice, but she might take it the wrong way

And Ema’s struggle is something known to almost everyone. You need to produce, but what you produce has to be good enough. She wants to have higher quality, but is afraid that her slow speed is dooming her. This is certainly a dilemma and her struggle attracts the attention of Sugie, the old experienced key animator on staff. Unfortunately, his suggestions are somewhat circular: You need to draw more to get better, you need to get better to have higher quality, you need higher quality to get faster, and you need to be faster to draw more. And he finishes his advice with the somewhat disheartening advice of “If you can’t do that, you quit.” And also the self-admonition that “I’m just an old guy who missed his chance to quit.”

Missing the Mark

This is why you have the supervisor

Unfortunately, Ema takes the wrong side of that information to heart. Focusing on the “work on speed while you’re young and technique while you’re old” part of Sugie’s advice, along with Aoi’s pressing her to get her cuts done as quickly as possible, she actually does get faster, making Aoi happy. Until that call from Segawa, the animation supervisor for Aoi’s episode 9. I found it cool that the show went to the lengths to tell us what the specific problem with Ema’s cuts were: The lines were too vague and sloppy, which would lead to the in-between animators not being able to pick up the transitions, leading to the scene ‘melting’. I’ll admit that I couldn’t really see what the issue was as Segawa paged through the sheets, and I think it would be even more interesting to see more of a point-by-point explanation of “Here to here, this would be the problem.” But maybe that’s just me (and I doubt that many people would be interested in my explanation of why a storm drain system was sloppily designed and should have been done a different way, even though I’ve seen the same kind of thing) and I understand how they are pressed for time in the show.

Ema takes it really hard

The problem remains, tho, how to tell Ema. Aoi’s sister’s advice about ‘diligent’ people, a reputation that Ema has gotten, rings true: they’re very hard on themselves, and they can get away from what they want to do based on the advice of others. And when Ema and Aoi are talking, it’s obvious that Ema does feel lost. She feels pressure to get things done, she feels pressure to be better, she feels pressure to not have a bad reputation, which she’s sure she’s gotten (I thought Aoi should have chimed in with the other things that Segawa said about “her usual output”). She focuses too much on it being a ‘total failure’, and even on ‘someone else is better than me’ when reminded of how fast she’s been moving up. In short, she takes it entirely the wrong way, the way you don’t want someone to react after being told they need to redo something. An attitude like that doesn’t get the retakes done better or faster, and it has the result of just dragging the person down even more. We’ll have to see how Ema can pull out of it next week, or will that bring down all of Exodus?

Reshuffle

Once again, Tarou is an idiot

Speaking of bringing down all of Exodus, while last week Ochiai was saying that he couldn’t leave his production assistant job at MusAni during the Exodus production and go to Canaan early, this week he’s apparently changed around and is going to be bailing now. That means that everyone’s tasks get shuffled around. I don’t know who is doing episode 10 (Tarou 8, Aoi 9, ? 10, Ochiai 11, Erika 12, Ochiai 13), presumably the 5^th person who wasn’t pointed out, or maybe it’s Honda who has taken a couple of episodes, but as Erika says “things get pushed down the line”. On top of that, Aoi is assigned to episode 13, the final episode. And as Ochiai says, it’s a good news / bad news situation. The good news is that you get a little more recognition for being the PA for the final episode. The bad news is that it’s kinda hellish, and I can imagine why: It’s the end of the season, all the slack that you have used up throughout the series is now gone, and on top of that people are looking forward to the next production and checking out on the current production.

And so he gets smacked

The “I recommend it for promotion” line is something that rings a couple warning bells for me. One, Erika’s wondering about it being tough love: does she think she should get it, or does she think that it’s a little rough for Aoi? I can understand that Erika would probably be better at getting up to speed on the short timeframe for episode 11, and also that because 12 has been going well it would be better to hand it off. But does she feel like she’s being passed over, or possibly that she’s getting stuck in a PA position? It doesn’t seem that she’s that upset about it, so maybe it’s more of a “feeling sorry for Aoi” kind of thing.

Another excellent episode. While I continue to think that Glasslip is probably PA Works’ best artistic effort, I think that the amount of personal love of what they do that’s being poured into this prodution is matchless. Nothing’s glossed over, it’s not like they’re making a particularly sanitized version of what goes on, but it feels all so real even though they’re focusing this show on these new people in the industry. And to a degree, that’s a lot of what all jobs revolve around: bringing in new people. It’s really surprising how much time is taken getting new people up to speed, to be useful at the office. And when you’re done with them, there are other new people to get up to speed. It never ends. We’ll see how this drama with Ema ends, tho, as the preview sure didn’t give anything away. Hopefully she’ll get some confidence in herself.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!