Trivia / Shirobako

• Acting for Two: Aoi's toys Mimuji and Roro are both voiced by Juri Kimura and Alyssa Marek, who voices Aoi anyway since they're figments of her imagination/delirium.
• Actor Allusion:
  • G.I.Staff guy, Tomigaya is practically a direct copy of Itsuki Takeuchi, who are both voiced by Mitsuo Iwata. Only with a more good looking face.
  • In episode 2, Yamada mentioned he sees Aya being a Hard-Drinking Party Girl. This is an obviously reference to the fact that Aya is played by an ersatz Shizuka Itō; Ito is known in the voice acting circles for that trait.
• As Himself: Hiromasa Ogura painted the backdrop that Mashiro Ookura, the character based on him, was painting in episode 19 of the show.
• Battle Cry: Nobuyuki Hiyama enacted the main five's Donut Call with his heroic, hotblooded voice in his anime news radio show—Nobuyuki Hiyama's Animage Hot Spring's Shirobako promotion episode.
• Career Resurrection: Shirobako, being such a Sleeper Hit, had restored the reputation of P. A. Works, which took a hit with the lackluster Glasslip; and helped its director Tsutomu Mizushima to finally shed the weight of his previous Troubled Production, Girls und Panzer.
• Defictionalization: The anime's title literally means "white box", as in the boxes where the Betacam tapes of finalized episodes are deposited before being submitted to TV stations. P.A. Works seems to have quite the fun when they decided to actually design their complete BD collection casing as one.
• Directed by Cast Member: The English dub is produced by Sentai under Shannon Reed, who's Atsushi Yamabuchi.
• Fandom Nod: Bluntly, Aoi's car race.
  • Shirobako outright cast the gurus who have performed said car race.
• He Also Did:
  • Executive Producer Katsuragi's voice actor, Nobuyuki Kobushi, was a Production Assistant at Sunrise before switching his field to voice acting.
  • Series producer and head of P.A. Works, Kenji Horikawa, started out as a production assistant on Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• No Export for You: The two OVA episodes of the in-universe anime series MusAni supposedly made have not been released in North America.
• Reality Subtext: Exodus restoring MusAni's reputation in-universe is a not-so-subtle commentary on how P. A. Works redeemed themselves with Shirobako in real-life.
• Real-Place Background:
  • The park and the shrine the cast visited in episode 4 is not only real, but also geographically appropriate—it is a 5-minute walk from the Kichijouji train station.
    • Ironically, because Kichijouji station sits on the very edge of the town, the park in question is actually in Mitaka, a neighboring suburb.
    • The cluster of three western residential suburbs of Tokyo, Musashino, Mitaka and Kichijouji,^note Which is technically just a neighborhood in Musashino, but is usually though of as a separate town. is very popular among the Real Life anime studios for their HQ location, due to their calm atmosphere, convenient transportation and cheap rent.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The endings revolving around Mari Tateo's play were removed from episode streams because it's an all-female version of Waiting for Godot. Samuel Beckett, the original writer of the play, always objected to female theater troupes staging this play throughout his life because he was sexist.
• Sleeper Hit: After the disappointing sales of P.A. Works's previous works Glasslip and Nagi no Asukara, Shirobako is the studio's first bonafide hit in a long time, with Blu-Ray preorders for volumes 1 to 3 (as of this edit) still sold-out.
• Studio Hop: The movie's North American license was given to Eleven Arts instead of Sentai, with North American distribution by Shout! Factory.
• Uncredited Role: Played with on the Exodus and Third Girls Aerial Squad OVAs; which have two sets of credits. While the real-world set lists the 2nd Key Animators for these episodes; the In-Universe ones omit the credit entirely.
• What Could Have Been: The anime was originally planned to be 50 episodes long, but the total episode count was reduced to 24 for unclear reasons.