#SHIROBAKO: The Movie Review

After seven years, the sequel to the TV anime series SHIROBAKO: The Movie is finally here. In a nutshell, it’s an anime about making anime.

The two-hour-long anime movie serves as a love letter to fans, as it follows Aoi Miyamori and Musashino Studio four years after the events of the original TV anime series. Picking up after the studio crumbles after the events of an anime project named “Time Hippopotamus”, Miyamori sets out to reform the studio when Musashino lands its hand on an animated film by the name of “Air amphibious assault ship SIVA”.

SHIROBAKO: The Movie opens with a quick and fun recap covering the events of the original series. While viewers unfamiliar with the series can enjoy the film, your mileage will vary depending on how much you’ve enjoyed the original TV anime series and its 24 episodes. The recap at the beginning is for fans who need a refresher, so the characters can feel shallow if you are unfamiliar with the series. Their different quirks, charms, strengths, and flaws don’t get time to shine in the movie. 

The film’s first stretch of new content follows producer Aoi Miyamori four years after the events of the “Time Hippopotamus” incident. Viewers piece together the events of a staff exodus through a reunion of producers Jun Watanabe and Koutarou Katsuragi and Musashino ex-president Masato Marukawa. The film delves into different perspectives and how each member coped with the fallout of Musashino Studio. Miyamori continues her strong-willed dedication and performs many difficult tasks as a producer: tapping her various contacts, asking for favors, and bringing the group together once more to work on a new project — an anime movie. 

Once the plot delves into producing the in-universe movie SHIROBAKO shifts its priority to fitting in as many cameos as it can, much to the detriment of the overall narrative. The film doesn’t have much time to explore any particular cast member past their brief reintroduction, which leaves much to be desired. It was nice to see the gang again after the timeskip, ut the strength of the original series was watching everyone grow with time, which the movie has difficulty recapturing through its rushed reunion. For instance, Endou’s arc of resentment and hesitation towards the end had potential, but it was abruptly cut short. That being said, everyone still plays an important part in the movie, and the crew pulls everything together at the end to make the animated project happen. 

Like the series, the movie is not afraid to play around with different animation styles, namely in scenes that involve the anime within SHIROBAKO’s world. However, the regular scenes suffer slightly from feeling like the TV series instead of a movie half of the time in the way that they are framed. 

There are a lot of nice subtle easter eggs and purposeful scenes to a keen watcher of the animated series. However, the movie fails to deliver full character development for many of the cast members and does not provide anything meaningful in terms of plot, outside of the “anime makes money” motive from the original animated series. In the end, the movie is an exaggerated yet entertaining way to present how anime is made and the grueling work behind making anime. 

SHIROBAKO: The Movie will be in US theaters on August 10 and August 16 in Canada from ELEVEN ARTS.