CATDOLL: The president of the animation production company expressed his thoughts: The story of "Shirobako" is too small

Shirobako, which depicts the Japanese animation industry, has sparked widespread discussion since its broadcast and has won awards such as the Kobe Prize. In addition to Japan, Shirobako is also very popular in foreign forums, and both the painting and the story content are highly praised. But for now, Shirobako can be regarded as an iconic work in the animation industry, and even if there are works with similar themes in the future, it may be difficult to surpass Shirobako.

However, Kenji Horikawa, president of PAWorks, the company that produced "Shirobako", recently mentioned that "Shirobako" was actually cited as a work with a "small story structure". Why is that?

PAWorks President Kenji Horikawa's Twitter content

Kenji Horikawa, president of animation company PAWorks, tweeted that "At a seminar on overseas video releases, there was a discussion about what overseas animation fans are looking for, and Shirobako was cited as an example that overseas fans could not accept because the story was too small." This incident also reminded the president of his sad experience when he was called up to answer math questions in elementary school, and the answers he wrote were often regarded as wrong examples by the teacher.

At the same time, President Kenji Horikawa also used ramen as an analogy - "Foreign countries prefer rich tonkotsu ramen, while Japan prefers light salt ramen."

Although Shirobako is not about the apocalypse or a worldview dominated by battles, the story of a group of animation creators is actually not small at all. It is because of the hard work of these animators, scripts, key drawings, CG design, and production that the fruits of everyone's hard work can be presented to the audience. In the animation of Shirobako, the plot of the staff escorting important key drawings and the plot of delivering the tapes to the TV station before the deadline are as exciting as other works.

The scene of escorting the original painting reminds people of "Initial D"

Shirobako also lets the audience know that falling behind in production is more terrible than the destruction of the earth