Shirobako

Shirobako is a 2014 anime about...making japanese cartoons, actually.

Two and half years ago, Aoi Miyamori and her friends of her school animation's club made a pledge (over donuts) to one day create together an animated feature. In the present, Aoi is working at an animation studio in the middle of a hell of Troubled Production, and is a bit frustrated about her dream job. Dreams are harder to be made in reality.

Actually, despite the focused prologue, this series hardly has a focused narrative point-of-view, and is more about people in an animation studio struggling to do their job. And isn't very serious, so don't expect big dramatic turns.

Tropes used in Shirobako include:

• A-Cup Angst: Miyamori shows signal of envying Misato's huge breasts in the first episode.
• Boss Subtitles: Characters are introduced like that to make the audience keep track of who they are.
• Drives Like Crazy: Aoi and Tomigaya's race towards Misato's place in the first episode is practically criminal in nature, with the two doing ridiculous manoeuvres and getting too close to walls as they try to surpass each other.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: So much that the series uses subtitles to identify the characters because the audience would get confused otherwise.
• Male Gaze: The ending animation focuses a little too much on Misato's....tracts of land.
• Show Within a Show: Actually lots of them thanks to the focus on people that create those shows.