Characters / Shirobako Musashino Animation Various Departments

Shirobako Main Characters Index
Main Characters | Production Department | Animation Department | Central Staff | Various Departments | Outsource | Cooperating Industries | Voice Actors | Others

Computer Art Departments

Yuuichiro Shimoyanagi

Position: 3D Director
Department: 3D Graphics
Voiced by: Junji Majima (Japanese), Michael Wronski (English)

Head of MusaAni's ever-growing 3D computer graphics department, whose job is to pull off a more time-efficient, consistent and realistic approach for the animation department. Japan's current 3D technology is advanced enough to merge the look of 2D drawings with a 3D bone structure underneath to animate their projects without the audience ever noticing the difference, which leaves the traditional 2D animators at a high risk of losing their jobs.

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• Nice Guy: Gentle and kind, this guy has really good EQ. During the period when the easily frustrated Endou was being hostile towards him, Shimoyanagi kept his cool, and sincerely felt bad about the whole situation.
• Unknown Rival: Of Endou, who wasn't aware that Endou feels threatened by 3D animated techniques, and only learns about the whole situation from Aoi, when she tried to defuse Endou's hostility towards him.

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Nao Shinkawa

Position: Color Designer / General Graphics Inspector
Department: Coloring
Voiced by: Mari Hino (Japanese), Shelby Blocker (English)

Base color, hightlights, and shades. This person is the one in charge of assigning, and applying the color palettes for each character and make sure to adjust palettes according to their various scenes. She also has the important task of nitpicking lineart ^note Cleaned, uncolored line drawings that are either inked or penciled. flaws to make sure each frame's lineart scan is cleaned up, and closed. Meaning, every single hand-drawn line connections are all attached to each other with no break-offs so that that drawn subject will not bleed ^note Meaning, color spreading out to unwanted places of the image when filled. when coloring. This is especially important nowadays since the coloring aspect of most artworks today are done on computer, rather than hand-painting on cel.

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Yoshiki Sakura

Position: Director of Photography
Department: Cinematography
Voiced by: Kengo Takanashi (Japanese), Houston Hayes (English)

The last guy on the animation production line, Yoshiki's department is responsible for the merge of all materials done from their production departments, which includes the animation line arts from animators, colored animation cuts from the colorists, 3D animations from the 3D Graphics department, and background art from the fine artists. The cinematography department would then add the needed special effects into their respective frames, and proceed to make the final clean ups, lighting tweaks, special effect checks, and interpret the compositions fitting for that scene by the notes from the Episode Directors, and insert the texts necessary for the cut. Once he finalize the visual compression, he will have to send those cuts back to the Episode Director ^note See "Editor" of the central staff subpage. for its final approval before he can send those cuts to the recording studios to insert the voice and soundtracks, and to the Video Editor to compress them into its film form.

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• The Charmer: The way he talks is pretty soothing.
• 1000 Origami Cranes: Things get boring when you're the last person in the production line, and still have to come in to work. So this is what he does to kill time.

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Wataru Nakabayashi

Position: Video Editor
Voiced by: Kazuyuki Okitsu (Japanese), Kyle Jones (English)

The very very last guy on the overall production line.

During the company’s production phase, the Video Editor would make necessary preview discs of animated cuts for the staff to review and change whatever is necessary to perfect the cuts. But the Video Editor’s most important task is to complete the compression of all production materials into video, roll the final checkups of their product with the director and editors, make necessary edits, and apply censorships according to each television stations' codes if needed. Once everything's good to go, they will make the finalized compression of the animation into video form, a.k.a. the titular "Shirobako", and make Betacam replicas for the production department to send off for television broadcast.

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Administration

Masato Marukawa

Position: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Voiced by: Wataru Takagi (Japanese), James Belcher, Daniel Regojo (young) (English)

The head of Musashino Animation, a veteran in the animation industry, and a really nice person to boot.
In the movie, he resigns to take responsibility for the cancellation of Time Hippo

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• Benevolent Boss: He makes food for his employees.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: His fashion statement for when he was young.
• Nice Guy: Hands down one of the nicest people in the series, and is remarkably patient with Tarou and Hiraoka.
• The Reveal: He was a staff member of MusaAni's predecessor, Musashino Pictures, and served as production manager for Aoi's favorite anime, Andes Chucky.
• Shout-Out: To Madhouse CEO Masao Maruyama.
• Team Chef: He's an excellent cook and takes it to himself to provide meals for his employees, so they won't need to eat out or bring in bentos.
• Token Adult: Together with Sugie, they are the oldest MusAni employees.

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Yuka Okitsu

Position: Head Manager
Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Japanese), Genevieve Simmons (English)

Marukawa's right-hand woman and former production assistant, being responsible for the company's anime promotion ^note Found in the credits of Exodus' OVA, finance, and various resource management, such as reminding employees to finish whatever leftovers that are in the fridge.

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• Foreshadowing: A minor one. She used to be a production assistant, the very same job that Aoi has; Aoi Drives Like Crazy; put two and two together and what do you get?
• I Got You Covered: Being a former production department staff, she offered to help Aoi out to proceed some crucial cuts from Exodus ep. 9 so that Aoi would be able to focus on the remake cut of Exodus ep. 4.

• Red Baron: "Speed Limit Goddess"

• Sharp Dressed Woman: While MusAni seems to have a business casual dress code, Okitsu regularly wears a suit.
• The Stoic: She's not very emotive.
• Tranquil Fury: When she breaks up the fight between Madoka and Hiraoka, she sternly calls inter-office violence "unforgivable" without raising her voice.

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