Chapter Seven

"Low Hanging Fruit"

Shizuka's voice acting prowess begins to take shape. Meanwhile, Aoi Miyamori and Musani's Key Animators try to get their heads above waters.

Friday, August 5th

~9:22am

Aoi Miyamori drove through the streets of Tokyo, a smile on her face as the theme song of Andes Chucky played through the radio of the studio car. For the most part, the production of Two Piece was beginning without a hiccup. All other miscellaneous issues were proven to be minor and therefore handled quickly, and were mostly due to confusion of the staff reassignments.

Making a left turn at her intersection and then turning right to enter a driveway, she exited the car in one fluid motion, and rushed up the stairs to her right. She knocked on the first door she saw.

"This is Aoi Miyamori from Musashino Productions!" she knocked three times.

And Aoi counted out seven seconds, and the door opened slowly.

Clockwork.

"Morning?"

Misato Segawa – Key Animator, Animation Supervisor

"Miayamori?" she answered, giving the Production Desk a puzzled look. "This is uncharacterisitally early."

Aoi Miyamori handed over a large hand bag containing three brown cut bags, and did so with a large smile. "I know, the studio is running very efficiently now!"

Misato took the bags and returned Miyamori's smile with a yawn. "I just have to check these and approve them for the Inbetweening right? Nothing else?"

Aoi removed her daily planner from her purse and studied it intensely. "Yes. Your Key Frames for episode twelve aren't due for… another three weeks."

Misato nodded, but absentmindedly so, thinking about making coffee before sifting through all of these cuts she was expecting to be obnoxiously heavy. Thank you Director Seiichi!

"Alright, expect a call Monday morning. End of the day Monday at the latest." She replied.

"Thank you for all your hard work!"


~10:29am

With Yumi Iguchi to his right, and another host of Key Animators to his left, Minato Shimura's eyes were trained on the martial arts experts in front of him. They demonstrated a few of the more commonly used stances, and showed how the flow of their combat works.

They were here of course, due to a complaint of their animation of their current show, Two Piece. According to Aoi Miyamori, the creator of the Two Piece manga with the lack of appeal and flow in the fight scenes. This came as a shock to the studio, with the exception of Rinko Ogasawara and Matsui Oda.

Musashino Productions specialized in creating attractive characters, (which were mostly female) have a well thought out plot that develops steadily, bringing out the entire range of human emotions, and possess multi-tiered character development. Exodus! and Aerial Girls both check off each of these categories. To varying degrees of course, but for the most part played right into the studio's hands.

Two Piece's main character was a male, who had an unwavering desire to accomplish his main goal of finding the largest stash of pirate treasure to ever exist. The only emotion this show wanted you to feel, at least in the first two seasons, was to feel inspired when the main character showed off his powers or beat a huge villain he wasn't supposed to. The initial pull of this anime was cool-looking characters doing cool-looking things, in cool-looking fights.

As for everything else… it got there when it got there.

The online message boards felt that Musani was in over their heads with this anime, as was mostly outside of Musani's strength. So Jun Watanabe urged the animators to be sent to a Dojo in attempts to make their drawings come more to life.

Iguchi leaned into Minato's ear. "Do you think you've got it?" she asked.

Iguchi leaned into Minato's ear. "Do you think you've got it?" she asked.

Minato's eyes didn't break from the demonstration. "I think I got… something." He replied. "I think that it's not enough to draw someone hitting someone, you have to draw the person getting hit. The trick is in the receiver of the blow, I guess."

The Veteran Key Animator smiled. "I think I got the same thing." She returned to her sketch pad.

Minato returned the smile. "I feel like I'm missing something though."

Yumi mumbled. "Oh?"

"I'm finding it hard to conceptualize how the attacker just before they deliver a blow."

"Ah, I see." Iguchi replied. "That means you can draw and make the viewer feel the maximum impact. Think about this though…"

She leaned in closer to sketch something to show Minato. "You want the action to all flow in one direction, but you also want to focus on the point of impact and how everything moves from there."

She flipped to a new page and quickly made a sketch of two people fighting. "See this one is going to deliver a kick? Think about how the rest of his body is going to move in delivering it, and how the receiver would move. We can exaggerate a little, because after all, this is an anime."

Minato smiled as his eyes followed Iguchi's pencil. "Damn, now I kind of wish I had my Key Frames back from the last episode. I feel they could be so much better."

Iguchi chuckled. "You've never heard of being careful of what you wish for?"

"I mean, I have now."


~ 3:02 pm

"I mean, she isn't usually like this…"

"My sister is weird! We know!"

"No no! That's not what I meant!"

"You're the one who married her, you signed up for this!"

"But I mean THAT is a new one!"

"Oh here she comes!"

...

...

...

And that's a wrap, great work guys.

The red light at the head of the booth turned off, and with a deep breath Shizuka backed away from her microphone. A shorter man next to her did the same, but with a stretch and a yawn.

"Great work, Sakaki." He told, looking pleased. "I wish we could have worked together on the promotional videos. You're a pleasure to work with."

Yoroi Nakada – Voice Actor

Shizuka smiled. "Oh it's nothing, but thank you. Thank you so much."

Shizuka smiled. "I try my hardest, it's nothing really."

The red haired voice actress was outwardly humble, but on the inside was completely different. She was quite tired of being told "you're almost there" and she was certainly irked with getting out of bed to get ready for a shift at the pub, and could only motivate herself by staring at the mirror and telling herself "I deserve it. I'll get there one day." Her time was coming, and she knew it. So her confidence and her desire to achieve spilled into her voice acting, masquerading as confidence that usually keeps itself for seasoned voice actors.

The staff on the other end of the studio chimmed in via the intercom. "Really, good work Sakaki. You too Nakada. Again, thank you very much for working under the short notice after we had to moving session to today. Really, thank you much."

Nakada flicked his wrist at the staff on the other end of the glass. "Nonsense, nonsense. Relax director. We managed to get the first scene taken care of. All is well."

"Still, thank you thank you very much." He replied.

To which Shizuka bowed. "It's never a problem, Director Amistu. Is that all we're going to try to do today?"

"Yes. Next session we'll be able to get the entire episode finished."

That confirmation was all that the personnel needed. On the other side of the glass Shizuka could see people leaving, who she could only assume were producers. She saw the people doing the sound mixing stand up and stretch, and probably leave for cigarette breaks.

Yoroi Nakada grabbed his backpack off the floor and shoved his copy of the script into it. "It was great working with you Sakaki. I have to go take my mother to an appointment, so it's best I get going."

Shizuka bowed. "It was great working with you as well Mister Nakada!"

With a smile as wide as she could remember, Shizuka watched as he exited the booth before grabbing her purse. She was upset she had to work shift tonight before delivering more lines. She began to develop an almost irrational fear that her voice would develop an imperfection from talking to customers all evening instead of practicing her characters.

Removing her phone from her purse, she noticed she had only one notification. Ordinarily, this would not worry her, but it did when she noticed the name attached to the email.


Two hours prior

~12:22pm

"Miyamori! I do not like these cuts. These aren't from the Yasuhara I know. Who did these?"

"Minato Shimura did these cuts."Aoi Miyamori confusedly answered, walking from the 3D animation desk. "Why do you ask, Segawa? Is something wrong?"

"For the standard I hold Yasuhara to, they're awful. But for someone else… they could be much better. Stop by as soon as you can, I have retakes for him. Why was he on Yasuhara's cut?"

Aoi struggled to find the words. "We're starting production on the next season of Exodus…"

"I must not have been notified." Segawa said, irritation clearly present in her voice.

"Ah!" Aoi bowed, despite having the phone in her right hand. A habit she had grown accustomed to, but she never caught herself doing it enough to warrant conscious effort to break it. "I am sorry! I am so very sorry! I must have forgotten to email all of the episode supervisors! I apologize Segawa!"

Segawa had to calm Aoi down. Not the first time she has had to do so. "It's fine. It's fine. I have my notes written on the frames that need to be redone. Come pick them up so he can get started right away. If he works hard this weekend, he can have them into my hands by Wednesday morning."

"Not Monday?"

"Not likely. They're too heavy." She replied.

"Yes, Segawa. I'll notify Shimura right away."

"… Notify me of what, Miyamori?"

As soon as Miyamori ended the call, she noticed that she walked right into the break room, where she met the faces of Kinoshita Seiichi, Rinko Ogasawara and Minato Shimura.

Aoi jumped back in fear. How and why did she wander in here!?

"Uh…"

Minato's facial expression was one of general concern, and not worry. Which Aoi could deal with. All creatives get criticized, it was moreso in how you told them. It was unfortunate that his first work was in the shadow of the increasingly acclaimed Ema Yasuhara, but it couldn't be helped in this case.

"Masato Segawa said that…" Aoi's eyes drifted to the floor. "A lot of your frames… need to be redone."

Minato stood there, frozen. In front of three well respected employees of the studio, the youngest to be hired at the studio, and was directly told his first episodes frames weren't good enough. This was the first impression he was making. In honesty, it truly hurt.

But, not so much that it broke him.

"Well, I learned so much from the Dojo today that I can't wait to try out."

Miyamori and Seiichi were wide eyed.

"If it's not too much to ask, Miyamori." The young key animator began. "Do you mind if I go with you to speak with her later? I want to see exactly where I went wrong, and having her tell me instead of reading notes, I get to hear exactly what she needs."

Aoi had never seen someone take criticism so well. Maybe he internalized it well, but he just shrugged his shoulders and wanted to know where to go next.

"We can go now if you want." Aoi replied.

To which Minato smiled. "Sounds alright with me!"

As the two filed out, Rinko Ogasawara couldn't help but to suppress a smile.

That's the attitude you need to have to make it in this business.


Later that afternoon,

~1:46pm

Aoi sat by sipping tea in disbelief. Segawa had torn Minato's drawings apart, on the verge of being outright mean, and surprisingly more so, the newbie had not taken it personally… at least on the surface.

"The way you have them drawn, they as characters look good." Segawa said.

"Yeah, that's what I was going for." He replied.

"I see. You're all in character design. I could tell in only a few seconds. You have their characters drawn well, but they all look stiff."

"Dammit." He said, biting his thumb. "I thought I was playing to the strength of the manga in focusing that direction."

"Sorry, but that's low hanging fruit. They look like they are posing instead of moving. Like this frame here."

Minato Shimura looked at the Key Frame of Ape J. Ruffy stretching to the top of the tree to pull down a banana. "It's missing some movements, and it doesn't look like he's reaching."

"I went to the dojo and I observed some things. I think this fight I could improve. Most likely it'll translate."

Misato Segawa shifted through some more papers. "But don't forget, an underrated quality of this manga is getting the characters to move. That has to translate. He has three swords, he has a stretchy body, and he has very long legs. Utilize them a little better."

Minato smiled. "Alright, I think I get exactly what to do."

Misato Segawa raised her hands high and stretched, arching her back backwards. "You know, usually Key Animators don't smile when they get retakes." She groaned.

"Oh no, I'm actually pretty upset. Very upset." He began. "But I'll get there. I will."

Aoi retrieved her daily planner. "When do you want these retakes done, Segawa?"

"Some of these cuts are heavy. Most of them aren't too difficult, just tedious." Segawa began. "If you can get these back to me on first thing Wednesday, I can have them looked over and stamped for inbetweeming by the end of that day. It'll have to come in first thing."

"That'll make the schedule extremely tight." Aoi sighed.

"What choice do we have now?" Segawa sighed, placing the cuts back into the bag.

"Monday morning." Minato interjected. "I can get this done over the weekend."

Both women were colored shocked, although Misato looked sarcastically with a grin. "It's Friday." They said in unison.

"All weekend." Minato said. "If I work all weekend, I can have them on your desk Monday morning, Miyamori."

Aoi was shocked but confused that Minato would even suggest retaking an entire scene his first weekend on the job. "But… you heard Segawa, these cuts are heavy."

Minato took the cut back from Segawa and tucked it under his arm. "I wouldn't get new work until Monday afternoon. I can have it on your desk sometime that morning. If you run errands Monday morning, Segawa could finish them by the end of the day."

Segawa cocked her head in confusion. "That's an extremely tall order."

Minato stood up. "Indeed, Segawa-Senpai. That isn't an excuse for me not to try though."

Segawa smiled and stood up. Placing her hands on her hips, she challenged the young Key Animator. "I'll look forward to seeing your improvements then."

And Minato rose to the occasion. "As do I."


~Later That Day,

~11:17pm

/Ring Ring

/Ring Ring

"Ah, Shizuka Sakaki! You must be outside."

"Hello, Minato? I am. I think I'm at the front door."

"Is there a sign that says Musashino Productions ahead of you? Then you're at the right place, haha. I'll be out shortly. Hang on."

"Ok! See you in a few minutes."

With great nervousness, Shizuka Sakaki could not help but clench her phone tightly, and she continued to mentally rehearse her own lines. This was about to be her delivering Miharu's voice for the first time. Unfortunately, this would be without the director. And since Shizuka was more comfortable with Director Kozuki, she could afford to try different voices, and begin some chemistry with the other voice actors.

The front door opened, and Minato Shimura hung out the side. "Ah, you found the directions ok in my email! Good, I was worried!"

Shizuka nervously grinned. "I mean, you sent five." As she pointed to her phone.

Minato nervously rubbed the back of his head. "Well, I was making sure you'd find the place ok. Let's get started, I got us all set up."

The two walked through the maze of cubicles, in the dimly lit and mostly vacant studio. As Shizuka followed the dark haired Key Animator, her heart began to race.

Minato turned into his cubicle and took a seat close to the window, at Matsui's desk, which was flooded with papers. On his desk, closer to the hallway, a microphone hinged on the edge of the desk, connected to a small grey tablet computer.

"Take a seat." Minato sighed as he plopped down on his chair and removed his glasses.

"Farshighted I take it?" Shiizuka asked, as she placed her purse nearest Minato's normal chair.

"Nearsighted. But no, my eyes just hurt." Minato said, fumbling in his bag. "Been at this for a minute."

"I'm sorry. We can do this some other time."

"Oh nonsense, Miss Sakaki." He said, pulling a convenience store bento from his bag and placing it on the mountain of papers he possessed on a desk that wasn't his. "I'll just be here all weekend. To be honest you're providing me with a break."

Shizuka sat down nervously. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, of course." Minato said. He wanted to complement her on how appealing to the eye she was, if even to make her more comfortable, but thought against it. "Are you… excited?" he nervously asked.

"I mean… Im a little unsure." She said. "I don't know exactly how to make her sound. I don't have it down."

Minato nervously laughed to ease her nerves. And his own. "Oh don't worry about it. We've got as long as you need to try things out."

He rose to his feet and approached his makeshift studio. He adjusted the microphone circular microphone to Shizuka's natural sitting height, and made a few taps on his tablet. There was a red dot that lit up on the microphone.

"Alright, Shizuka. Whenever you're ready…" Minato said, taking his seat and subsequently shoveling the rice ball into his mouth.

The red haired female leaned in. "My name is… Miharu Yamashida!"

Minato choked and spit out his rice, laughing.

To which Shizuka immediately took to the defense. "I find nothing to be funny!"

Minato rolled his chair over to his tablet, to which he made a few more taps on the screen. "I'm sorry Miss Sakaki, but I don't think that that's it."

She glared at him. "Well give me another take." She subtly snapped. "And you can call me Shizuka."

"Apologies, Miss Shizuka."

Internally, both of them screamed "Dammit!"

"…Alright. Whenever you're ready."

With more nerves than before, Shizuka approached the microphone. She took a deep breath.

"My name is Miharu Yamashida." She looked to Minato to flash her the thumbs up, and he did so with a mouthful of fish.

"Because… you know you'll regret it if you don't."

Minato sighed, "Sorry. I don't think that's it. Sounds a little too snobbish."

Shizuka frowned. Mostly because she was upset with herself. She just didn't know what the hell to bring out in Miharu. Why? She didn't know. This was just a damn promotional video after all!

Minato tapped on the computer once more. "You sound a little stiff."

Shizuka looked at her script once more.

"I'm just not... there." Shizuka sighed. "Can you… read with me?"

Minato looked in his bag for his own copy of the script. "Let's just have the conversation organically, don't worry about how fast or slow we go. Let's just get it down."

Shizuka nodded. "Yeah. My name is Miharu. Miharu Yamashida."

"A freshman? Why should we let you into the prestigious Tanaka Culinary Academy?"

"Because you'll definitely regret it."

"And why would I?"

Shizuka took a deep breath.

...

"Dammit." Shizuka mumbled.

"You're just not feeling it today, hunh?"

"No. I don't think I have a good gasp on her for whatever reason. I had a bunch of ideas I wanted to try, but I don't know exactly what the director wants from me."

Minato folded his arms to think. "You do have a good point."

Shizuka stared at her lines. She couldn't bring herself to panic, because she was too busy trying to focus on getting out of this funk she was in. She simply… was at a loss.

And then, the lightbulb clicked.

"You designed her!" she said.

"Right." He replied. "I did…"

"Is there anything you can tell me about her and what the director wants?"

Minato smiled. "Well… we wanted a strong female lead when we thought of her. Talented. Arrogant and Sexy were the three traits we discussed first."

Shizuka removed a pen from her purse and scrawled as fast as she could on her paper. "So here… she's getting challenged. So try to sound more arrogant?"

"Yes." Minato said. "But not too arrogant. She's talented, very much so. But her arrogance comes from… knowing how talented she is. That makes sense right?"

Shizuka smiled, if only her own arrogance could outweigh her humbleness, she might have more jobs.

"So what else, how did you feel when you were drawing her?"

Minato smiled and seemed to be a little red in the face. "Well, this stems a little bit from the ideal girl I wanted when I was that age."

Didn't see that coming. "Oh?"

"Yeah… something about the confidence and the… red hair." Awkward silence fell on the pair. "Personality wise! In the later episodes, she shows a more compassionate side and takes after Inora Kozuki a little. But for the most part, she is intended just to be the girl that guys want and the girl that a lot of more… quiet and introverted girls want to be." He hastily continued.

"I'VE GOT IT!"

"Oh?" Didn't see that coming.

"How about... you sound more... intimidating." She asked. "And can you let me see the character design?"

Minato grabbed his bag. "Think it'll help?"

"If I'm looking at her, I can bring that out of her."

Minato smiled. "That sounds genius."

Shimura made more taps on the screen, and the red light appeared again.

"Whenever you're ready, Shizuka."


The dark red haired teen approached the registration table, and slammed her paperwork on the desk.

"My name is Miharu Yamashida." She said, grinning.

The intimidating looking man in a dapper grey suit towered over her as he stood. Such pride!

"Eh, a first year from a small harbor town? Why should I let you in this prestigious academy? There are people that have traveled all over the world for experience to even apply here."

She leaned in closer. "Oh, because you'll regret it if you don't."

"You jest."

"Oh no, sir. Once I hit my prime, everyone will know you passed up on me. Then no one will want to come her because you can't evaluate good talent." she challenged.

"Ha! You're going to do that!? How?"

"Because, sir. You're looking at someone who's going to be the best damn chef there's ever been."


Monday, August 8th

~9:02am

Aoi Miyamori approached the production office, cursing herself for running late to the general meeting. The Production Desk, not at her desk!? Damn her alarm, being at only a "7" volume when it knows it should be at a "10." What does it think it's doing?

She jogged into the office, and immediately apologized to everyone present. "Everyone I'm very sorry!"

The entire production staff looked at her with quizzical looks.

"Right on time Miyamori! I was just telling everyone how much the opening episode of Exodus will be packed with the Taoru Takanashi guarantee of pure quality!"

Tarou Takanashi – Head Production Assistant

Aoi bowed. "I am sorry everyone."

"It's alright, Miyamori. Just don't make a habit of it."

Yuka Okitsu – General Manager

"I will not." Miyamori said as she took her seat.

She proceeded to have her jaw drop to the surface of her cubicle space.

The frames from Minato Shimura, were on her desk, signed for completion, and ready for the next stage of animation.

The other was a note from Jun Watanabe, the Line Producer. It simply said, "Call me. Urgent."

Anytime Aoi has talked to the Line Producer, she's never fond of what he had to ask of her. This time did not look to be any different.

Next Time on "Love Is Like A Good Anime, Right?"

Episode Eight, "Would You Like To…?"


Authors Note: This chapter is the real kickoff of the second arc, I hope you noticed all the time and energy I put into it. Here I focused on the Anime Minato and Shizuka are working on, because it is important in the later chapters, but the time I'll spend actually writing them working on it will take a backseat to other events, so I figured now is a good time to make it plot relevant.

Also, this chapter was primarily used for both me and you, the reader, to get a good foothold of time. The only complaint I have about Shirobako the anime (literally the only negative, and I still rank it a 10/10 masterpeice) is that we don't have a good sense of how their time goes on. One episode, they'll have everything take place over two days, then the next episode has a time skip of over a few weeks, and takes place over a whole month. The anime didn't make it difficult to follow, but if I leapt from scene to scene in that same fashion, it'd be the opposite.

Basic point is that there are several plot events stemming from the Interview in episode one. The story is going to focus on these events, and I'd hate to have your opinion of the story become negative because the timeline's relationship of events is blurred. It'll make sense later.

Anyways, I enjoy talking about WHY I write things the way I do in this story just as much as I enjoy writing the fic itself. I've planned ahead three chapters after this one, and this very next chapter is my FAVORITE. So, thank you all for reading and I'd love to see you reading the next chapter.

Until next time!