1. I'd say you're fundamentally wrong criticise the show by asking for it to be something other than what it sets out to be. Shirobako is supposed to be an entertaining, as well as informative, look at the world of anime. It's not positioned as a documentary or even a realistic depiction of how a studio actually operates.
2. You're right to criticise the characterisation but I'd say that develops slowly as the show goes along. They're still, however, fairly flat and one-note in many instances. I, personally don't have a problem with this as it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the show. Ultimately, the show really wants to spend the majority of it's time showing you how anime is made rather than on building character.
3. Due to (1) and the focus on the show being on entertainment rather than, say, critique or serious introspection it's hardly surprising that it doesn't really have much to say about anime beyond how hard it is to make.
4. I think the show does a great service by explaining to the audience a great about the actual process of creating anime, even though it's clearly fictionalised to the extreme. It's sneaking in a lot of "shop talk" under the guise of entertainment and that really helps a wider audience to understand how anime is made as opposed to a standard documentary.
I've said it before somewhere, but Shirobako is about as dull as a Behind the Scenes puff piece for a big budget Hollywood film. That's my problem with the show. Danny Choo has visited anime studios twice on his Japanese Culture show and went through the entire anime production line in like 15 minutes. And again, when something like MAG exists (or used to exist anyway), where you can get real documentary footage of actual animators at actual anime studios making actual anime, I just feel like there has to be something more.
I mean, if we don't want to compare anime to anything else because anime is in its on walled garden, then I'd have to at least ask why I think
Working!! or
Servant x Service is more engaging than Shirobako on a narrative level. I think you already know the answer though.
I guess I would also have to ask where all the praise was for
Bakuman when it went into tedious detail about the production process at Shounen Jump? I mean, is this because people here are more inclined to be anime fans? Is it because the main character is a girl instead of the most bland male protagonist to step out of Shounen Jump?
I don't necessarily dislike the show, but after people telling me to watch it (and it's still the only Fall show that I've seen basically), I'm just not really seeing the appeal for me personally. I'm a very casual anime watcher in the grand scheme of things, inasmuch as I barely remember the names of directors let alone the names of individual animators, but even I know most of the stuff that they've show in terms of the production process.
I'm sure you know that I've been decrying reference culture in the media, because it is a form of mental masturbation that satisfies people in a community but has very little appeal elsewhere. Whether it's
The Big Bang Theory saying "Us nerds, am I right?" or
Genshiken Nidaime saying "Gay/Girl nerds, am I right?", at some point it becomes a black hole that sucks the oxygen out of the air. An anime about making an anime seems precipitously close to the event horizon of that black hole. And not in the push a pencil through a piece of paper Interstellar kind of way.
There's a part of me that wished that my theory that Shirobako was actually a metatexual anime about making Shirobako and PA Works' production process panned out. Why does it have to be 5 moe girls? Why did they have to shoehorn in mascot characters in the first few episodes? But that self-awareness seems to disappear into the background by the time episode 4 starts.
