What interests me more than the dub lineup, though, is Free<\/em>\u2019s unusual licensing situation here in the US. The first season was only picked up by Crunchyroll, while Funimation and CR both ran their own simulcasts for the second. Funimation only has the home video rights for the second season, which is why they aren\u2019t starting the dub process with the earlier episodes. Crunchyroll is the only US company with the rights to the first season, but they don\u2019t normally dub anime, let alone release it on physical media.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that the two companies will work out an agreement that lets the same actors, director, and so on work on dubbing both seasons. It\u2019s also possible that Crunchyroll will make a go of it with a different lineup. Heck, we might not see the first season on disc at all. It\u2019s a weird, fascinating situation that appeals to the industry analyst within me. I got as much fun as I\u2019m likely to get out of this series the first time around, so I can just sit back and enjoy the drama. If you\u2019re a fan who wants to own the show on disc, I suspect your interest is a tad less academic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After talking about the murder-tastic Parasyte<\/em> last week, I figured I\u2019d make a sharp left turn and cover a much more upbeat show this time around. Enter Shirobako<\/em>, an anime series about people making an anime series. If you still have a \u201cmake the Inception<\/em> noise\u201d app on your phone, now would be the time to use it.<\/p>\n The heroine in Shirobako<\/em> is Aoi Miyamori, who\u2019s recently found a job at an anime production company. Aoi is a production assistant, which is industry code for \u201cperson who does everything the senior staff can\u2019t be bothered with.\u201d It\u2019s a stressful job, especially when your fellow PA is an incompetent doofus, the director is a chronic procrastinator, and the key animators are a bunch of over-sensitive drama queens. If you\u2019ve ever worked in any kind of video production environment, you\u2019ll be able to relate to most of the frustrations that Aoi runs across.<\/p>\n This brings me to my one caveat regarding Shirobako<\/em>: it\u2019s good in a very subjective way. If you\u2019re an anime fan with production experience (me), you\u2019ll love it. It captures the constant mayhem that goes into meeting a strict series of deadlines, but still maintains a reverence for the magic of the finished product. If you\u2019re not in this very particular niche, your mileage will vary. Industry jargon gets thrown around all the time, and it can be tough to keep up even when you understand everything that\u2019s being said.<\/p>\n Shirobako<\/em> isn\u2019t going to work for everyone, but it\u2019s worth watching a few episodes to see if you fit into its fairly narrow target audience. Veteran fans and folks who are close to the subject matter will find a lot to enjoy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This Week in Anime\u00a0is hastily cobbled together by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime and manga on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. Check back every Monday for new articles.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey, it\u2019s a week! Anime happened! That can only mean one thing: it\u2019s time for This Week in Anime. Free to a Good Home Funimation recently announced the English dub cast for Free! Eternal Summer. As one might expect from a series with a very vocal fanbase, they\u2019ve played it fairly safe and brought [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Weekly Spotlight: Shirobako<\/em><\/h3>\n
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