Characters / Shirobako Cooperating Industries

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Yotaka Bookshop

The company under whose imprint Third Aerial Girls' Squad, MusAni's current adaptation work, belongs.

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Masato Onoue

Position: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Voiced by: Itaru Yamamoto (Japanese), Josh Morrison (English)

Head of Yotaka Bookshop, one of Watanabe's mahjong friends, and the person who jokingly refers Mitsuaki Kanno to Aoi for which she took seriously.

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• Comically Missing the Point: When Onoue hands Aoi the contact information for Mitsuaki Kanno, he meant it as a joke, because it would be ludicrous to ask someone of his caliber for something as simple as key animation work. Thing is, Aoi didn't get the joke, and his mahjong partners tell him that she's is going to show up at the guy's doorstep. The very least thing that he can do at that point is to call him and let him know she's coming.
• Final Boss: Metaphorically speaking for Kinoshita in his meeting with Nogame. But in his case, he was only standing by and was pondering what this whole Dynamic Entry is all about.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When confronted with the undeniable truth that Chazawa has been lying to them, he doesn't hesitate him to give him what he deserves and fires him on the spot.

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Tatsuya Handou

Position: Editor-in-Chief
Voiced by: Jiro Saito (Japanese), Rob Mungle (English)

Editor-In-Chief of Yotaka and the person whom Watanabe needs to make the pitch to in an attempt to gain the adaption rights for Third Aerial Girls' Squad.

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• Amusing Injuries: He still has the bump on the forehead (from his golf ball reflected by Kinoshita's belly mid-episode) by the end of episode 23.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: A top publishing executive, he has some serious Mundane Made Awesome golf-fighting skills. Can be true in real life, but this was artistically Played for Laughs purely for Kinoshita's level grind.
• Improbable Weapon User: Uses his golf set to whack balls at Kinoshita in the climax.
• Office Golf: When Kinoshita forces his way into the offices of Yotaka Publishing in order to meet with Nogami-sensei, Handou stands in his way wielding a golf set. He explains that he uses golf to relax at the office, and whacks golf balls at Kinoshita in an attempt to hold him off, but Kinoshita uses his belly to bounce the golf ball back and blow him out of the way.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A sensible and competent executive who is generally supportive of the studio. While he has some reservations about Kinoshita (considering his reputation), he nevertheless greenlights MusAni's Third Aerial Girls' Squad adaptation, having seen it redeem itself with Exodus!.
• Smug Snake: He's just a little bit of this, in his handling Chazawa's behavior and Kinoshita and Nogame's creative differences, though to his credit he had no idea how much Chazawa really screwed up, and thus was naturally leaning on the side of his own.

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Shinsuke Chazawa

Position: Editor
Voiced by: Jun Fukushima (Japanese), Cameron Bautsch (English)

Yotaka's editor assigned to oversee MusAni's adaptation of Third Aerial Girls' Squad and serve as liaison to its author, Takezou Nogame. Unfortunately, he turned to be an incompetent self-important slob who repeatedly created more problems than he ever helped to solve.

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• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first he pretends to be affably easy-going (if a bit ditzy) so that his behavior can be written off as just lazy and inconsiderate, but in time it becomes clear that he's actually a power-tripping backstabber who's not only negligent but actually malicious. He repeatedly lies and breaks his promises to the animators while letting them take the blame for his screw-ups, and eventually gets outright nasty on them when they rightly say they've been treated unfairly.
• Catchphrase: "Funny Story..." Appropriate for how much of a slimeball he is.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Stonewalls every attempt by the MusAni studio to speak with Nogame directly regarding his editorial demands. This is despite the fact that it's his job to serve as the liaison between the two. In Chazawa's mind, the anime's only purpose is to boost the brand and increase sales of the manga, so he doesn't care how his actions mess of the production.
• The Dandy: Vain about his appearance, and always dressed fashionably.
• Establishing Character Moment: When he shows up to the meeting with the MusAni representatives, he stonewalls their attempts to speak with the mangaka himself, repeatedly uses the phrase "funny story," and is out the door in minutes, much to the bewilderment of the MusAni group. All this establishes that he's a rather untrustworthy person.
• Humiliation Conga: All that unpaid karma finally came to roost at the end of Episode 23, when not only he had to face the ire of Onoue, Handou and Nogame, but also the various bodily damage dealt to him by Kinoshita.
• Hurricane of Excuses: From taking advantage of the manga author's absence, to claims of being occupied, what makes Chazawa a dangerous person to work with is his constant usage of "professional terms" to cover up his me time.
• Hypocrite: In episode 23 when Nabe-P and Katsuragi try to reason with Handou about the last episode, Chazawa gets angry at them and makes a pompous speech about how they're presumptuous to protest the author's decision, knowing full well that the person who is interfering most with the author's control over the anime is himself.
• It's All About Me: Chazawa is a big time narcissist and visibly regards having some quality time as much more important than to sit on various boring meetings with those animation industry plebes.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Subverted in that while Hiraoka in-directly makes a valid point that a poor adaptation can lead to the original mangaka also taking a hit in their reputation, it doesn't actually excuse Chazawa's Jerkass behavior.
• Laser-Guided Karma: For deliberately obfuscating the details of Third Aerial Girls' Squad's adaptation to Nogame in order to lighten his load while at the same not get to move his ass out too much, Chazawa finally gets his just desserts and gets axed by his three higher-ups at the end of Episode 23.
• Lazy Bum: He'd much rather have fun than do any work. When he says he's super busy and can't see anyone, he's actually slacking off at the golf course.
• The Millstone: He's even worse than Tarou — while Tarou least he could be trusted with the basics, Chazawa fails even at that, such as not even trying to discuss character designs with Nogame despite that being the core of his job, simply reassuring his superiors that everything is OK before running away. And not only does he contribute nothing, he actively obstructs the animation studio's progress!
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Invoked, even though it's not the role that he's supposed to be fulfilling as Nogame's editor. He personally shields Nogame from the requests of the animation team, causing an apparent rift in their tasks. When the team finally get a hold of Nogame by bypassing him, it's revealed that Chazawa proceeded in the way he did to be able to do as little work as possible. There's also overtones of his type of meddling during the production of Sailor Suits and F3s, which ended in a disastrous adaptation of Nogame's manga work.
• Oh, Crap!: His face when Watanabe and Katsuragi drag him bodily from a golfing alley to force him to contact the manga author in episode 16.
  • Second half of the episode 23, after Kinoshita's meeting with Nogame, who, together with Onoue and Handou, learn of his unscrupulous methods.
• Smug Snake: Entirely willing to flaunt his access to the author before those lowly animators. He gets outsmarted and has to pay for his overconfidence.
• Take That!: Apparently, self-serving slackers do exist in the Japanese publishing industry, seeing that two independent productions took the time to lash at them at almost the same time — the other being Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun's Maeno.
• Verbal Tic: "Henna hanashi,..." ("A funny story,..."), which he always says before trying to weasel himself out of a difficult situation, or at least one requiring him to move his lazy ass around and do some work. Nogame flips it back at him upon discovering his ruse.

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Takezou Nogame

Position: Manga Author
Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai (Japanese), Joe Daniels (English)

Author of The Third Aerial Girls' Squad, whose original manga adaptation was under Yotaka's imprint, and MusAni's project for the anime's second half, which is currently on its fourth volume.

Nogame is the bland-named version of manga author, Takeshi Nogami, who also designed The Third Aerial Girls' Squad based on his own manga, Shidenkai no Maki.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: He's a fairly reasonable, nice guy, but even he cannot help but rightfully lash out at Chazawa upon discovering that he has been keeping him in the dark regarding the production of Third Aerial Girls' Squad.
• Creative Differences: In-Universe example with Kinoshita with regards as to how to end Third Aerial Girls' Squad, which is a source of the crisis of Episodes 22-23. While Kinoshita and Maitake wrote an ending where Aria finds the strength to return to the skies through The Power of Friendship, which partly stems from their own experiences as a team, Nogame as a solitary author had a different outlook, comparing the girls to conflicting sides of his personality. In the end, he was even leaning towards a Downer Ending where Catherine dies and Aria ultimately fails to find her purpose, even though he didn't like the idea himself. Luckily, Kinoshita was able to weasel out a meeting with him, where they've brainstormed a compromise finale — Catherine will still die, but Aria nevertheless meets her younger sister Lucy, whose dream of a world where she can peacefully raise calves inspires Aria to continue the fight with a newfound purpose: to protect that dream.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: His name can be found in the Email he sent to Chazawa, in which Aoi recited a copy of.
• The Ghost: He's unable to squeeze out time to meet with the animation staffs in person until episode 23, due to constant deadlines... or so Chazawa says...
• Kimono Is Traditional: He wears a traditional men's kimono for his meeting with Kinoshita — wearing a kimono and being traditional is a general stereotype of writers in Japan.^note With some basis in reality: quite a few real-life manga authors do like this style; the most notable ones would be Masami Kurumada and CLAMP's Mokona, who wears her kimonos literally every single day. As for traditional novelists, it is apparently even more widespread.
• Mirror Character: From Kinoshita, as they are shown to be in a mutual artistic nadir; the very fact that they meet makes them realize that they needed each others' inspiration to advance the Third Aerial Girls' Squad plot.
• Mis-blamed: In-Universe, he bore some heat for the way one of his previous works, Sailor Suits and F3s, turned out. The studio which adapted it (among whose employees was Hiraoka) took far too many liberties, from changing character designs and cramming them with fanservice to running the characterization into the ground, and making it a Gag Series instead of more-or-less serious racing drama. Needless to say, the show bombed just as badly as Boing Boing Paradise and partially ruined Nogame's reputation, thus factoring on his insistence on MusAni following his lead so closely for Third Aerial Girls' Squad.
• Nice Guy: He's an approachable, personable guy once you are actually able to build a rapport with him, which didn't happen for most of the arc, and presumably also on the previous attempt that was made to animate one of his works. He even personally attends the party that Musashino Animation throws when the Third Aerial Girls' Squad anime ends production.
• Prima Donna Director: His presumed impression for much of the series' second half. Turns out, it's all a ruse created by Chazawa to reduce his workload, and in reality Nogame is a very pleasant and reasonable man who quickly took off with Kinoshita when they finally met in person.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Once the artificial barriers built by Chazawa to secure his importance were overcome, he turned out perfectly reasonable and very pleasant to work with. He even finds a great chemistry with Kinoshita, admitting had they meet sooner, he wouldn't be in such a Writer's Block.
• Writer's Block: The whole reason the studio had to improvise. The manga wasn't anywhere near the finale, and, moreover, he also has the difficulty envisioning its future story progress himself.

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Music and Soundtrack

Gorou Hamasaki

Position: Soundtrack Composer (Third Aerial Girls' Squad)
Voiced by: Daiki Hamano (Japanese)

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• Identical Stranger: He looks like a younger, taller, less bald version of MusaAni's CEO, Marukawa for some reason.
• The Nondescript: His impression was so plain, not even P. A. Works bothered to expand the scenario of their production.
• Stereotype Flip: He looks like an average blue-collar worker rather than being a musician. Even his manager looks more like a music player than him.

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Manager of Composer Hamazaki

Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu

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• The Fashionista: He perfectly dressed his part as a person working for the music industry, yet not overboard like The Dandy.
• Mistaken Identity: Due to his assigned composer severely under-dressed, his appearance stood out as more "musician-like" and caused Kinoshita in mistaking him as the composer.
• No Name Given: The ending credits only gives him the name: "Manager of Composer."

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R&B Studio

MusAni's recording studio of choice.

Yoshikazu Inanami

Position: Director of Audiography
Voiced by: Mitsuo Iwata (Japanese), Mike Yager (English)

A.K.A. The Voice Director in some Japanese terminology. Inanami is responsible for directing the overall sound production of an anime series, include voice casting, directing voice actors on their performance, various quality control on sound effect production, soundtrack production support, and sound editing according to The Director's wishes. In quite a few cases, voice actors can be "promoted" to this role if their experience and contribution is well long enough. ^note Such as Shigeru Chiba, who has 28 titles to his credit. Including Hoshin Engi.

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• The Mentor: To any voice actor who needs guidance.
• Messy Hair
• Out-of-Character Moment: The moment he gets drunk.
• Smoking Is Cool

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Eri Nakata

Position: Sound Production Supervisor
Voiced by: Shizuka Itō (Japanese), Kelly Greenshield (English)

Right-hand woman of Inanami, whose main job is mostly administrative, responsible in scheduling, and arranging recording sessions for each of their assigned projects depending on how many recording rooms they have available in their studio. Along with her hands full in keeping track of their studio's various recording cases, such as arranging the audition, and audit the casting decision for Musashino Animation's Third Aerial Girls' Squad.

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• Guile Hero: Shows surprising skill in delivering Kinoshita back to work from their "supposed" finale after-recording party.
• Bland-Name Product: Named after sound producer Rie Tanaka (not to be confused with the identically named voice actress Rie Tanaka).
• Sassy Secretary: She's hell of a lot wittier compared to MusaAni's Okitsu (who is efficient, but very blunt and straightforward).

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Atsushi Yamabuchi

Position: Mixer
Voiced by: Ikuji Nose (Japanese), Shannon Reed (English)

Lead mixer for Exodus! and Third Aerial Girls' Squad. A mixer is responsible in recording voice acting data in the voice acting recording room depending on which recording studio is holding the project. Then he proceeds in editing, and combining all of the sound based aspects of a project together, which in this case is animation. His job includes voice editing, merging voice acting recordings, sound effects, and merging soundtracks according to the Animation Director and Director of Audiography 's wishes

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• Big Damn Heroes: He managed to make a crucial saving tweak to fix a vocal Blooper found at the very last moment of editing The Third Aerial Girls' Squad's final episode.
• Perma-Stubble

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Asuka Fuji

Position: Assistant Mixer
Voiced by: Rie Takahashi (Japanese), Carolyn Medrano (English)

Assistant mixer for R&B Studio. Placing various sound data into one scene is not an easy task, therefore she is the person responsible in aiding the Lead Mixer in editing and combining sound data to a project's need.

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• Lower-Deck Episode: She finally got a few extra closeups and speaking lines in episode 23.

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Sawara Studio

MusAni's sound effects specialists of choice.

Mr. Kawano

Position: Sound Effects Engineer
Voiced by: Yutaka Aoyama (Japanese), David Harbold (English)

A 30-year veteran in sound effects for the film business. A sound effects engineer is the person responsible for producing those mighty roars of dinosaurs, wacky sound effects for comic reliefs, and your typical, unnoticeable Stock Sound Effects for which anyone who has functional ears take for granted.

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• Cool Old Guy

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Takumi Ooyama

Position: Sound Effects Engineer
Voiced by: Shinya Takahashi (Japanese), Jack Ivy (English)

The engineer assigned with Musashino Animation to help produce the sound effects of their projects.

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• Lower-Deck Episode: He's got a few extra lines when his part of the production was introduced through his sempai, Mr. Kawano.
• Perma-Stubble

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Various Partnerships and Other Companies

A distinguishing characteristic of the Japanese media industry is its extremely high level of fragmentation and specialisation (probably even verging on a crippling one), with literally hundreds and even thousands of different small companies concentrating on a particular aspect of the creative process, most of them being independent from each other — and, naturally, having their own higher-ups, executives and producers to manage the connections between them. As a result, since virtually the very beginning of the anime as a medium, new titles are often produced by a "production committee" consisting of stakeholders of the franchise and uniting all the specialized subcontractors. This would include the rights holder of the original work, companies that produce tie-ins such as soundtracks and video games, and event organizers that organize (if necessary) concerts, book signings and meet-and-greets. Anime producers, as a result, may have to compromise to cater to the interests of these stakeholders. As a comparison, if this was in the US, all characters listed under this folder would just be employees of one The Walt Disney Company subsidiary or other or its subcontractors.

Gotaro Katsuragi

Position: Executive Producer, Western Entertainment

Voiced by: Nobuyuki Kobushi (Japanese), Jay Hickman (English)

Called "Maker Producer" in Japan. Though not specifically stated, Katsuragi is most likely a representative of either a television station, or any financial investor of the project (probably of the studio's majority owner), given his status to enable him to assign time slots for television broadcasting. (See Otaku O'Clock for a discussion on why financial investor for anime have a say on time slots.)

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• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's prone to panics, but this doesn't make him any less efficient.
• Identical Stranger: To Kinoshita. Humorously, they are both about as stressed as each other, explaining why he's just as fat. His distinguishing features include his white-rimmed glasses (while Kinoshita's are black-rimmed) and the fact that he looks somewhat older than Kinoshita.
• Large and in Charge: Though because of him being a Nervous Wreck and his tendency to panic at the slightest problem it's easy to overlook the fact that he's a high-level executive.
• Nervous Wreck: His defining trait. This poor guy panics throughout all points of production, and we should be glad he never caught a heart-attack.
• Only Sane Man: Among the higher management, he is the saner and acts the most like a common person.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: A competent and efficient executive, refreshingly free of stereotypical foibles of such personages in media.

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Sugesuke Enjo

Position: Gaming Producer, Bukkomi Games
Voiced by: Nobuo Tobita (Japanese), David Matranga (English)

A staff member who partakes in the Third Aerial Girls' Squad casting committee. As the representative of MusaAni's assigned company in producing video games, his concern for the actor's casting is the actor's overall experience and popularity.

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• Perpetual Frowner: He really does not like the idea of casting a super New Meat to play The Protagonist. Therefore he's using all his might in attempt to reverse this idea from the majority of the committee.

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Takumi Yarase

Position: Record Producer, Gorioshi Music
Voiced by: Mitsuaki Madono (Japanese), Jack Ivy (English)

A staff member who partakes in the Third Aerial Girls' Squad casting committee. As the representative of MusaAni's assigned record company who produces anime character image songs and possible Drama CDs, his concern for the actor's casting is the actor's ability to sing.

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• Smug Snake: His main reason to push for the actress of his choice is that the actress' agency has more ties with him to buy favors and opportunities.

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Makurada Tsuyochi

Position: Event Creative Producer, DK Race
Voiced by: Takehito Koyasu (Japanese), Jovan Jackson (English)

A staff member who partakes in the Third Aerial Girls' Squad casting committee. As the representative of MusaAni's assigned event organizer for live talk shows and performances, his concern for the actor's casting is the actor's outward appearance.

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• Buxom Beauty Standard: While he views it from a more commercial angle, his preference towards Toyomori sums down to her well-endowed figure.
• Otaku: Though it does put the bread on his table, people can tell for sure that he's way too much into idols.
• Sex Sells: This is his general position for casting.

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