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Shirobako, the anime about an anime studio, is named after the "white box": the copy of a finished episode that goes to the staff before it airs. It used to be a VHS tape in a plain white case. The tapes are long gone, and people in the Japanese anime industry still call it that.
Every artist on this list is working toward some version of that box, a finished piece that someone else will judge, and each one has something in the way. That obstacle is how I ordered them. Blue Period's is an entrance exam. Bakuman's is a weekly magazine's reader rankings. Arte's is being a woman who wants to paint in 16th-century Florence.
I have seen the first two seasons of Bakuman and none of the other nine, so for those I describe the premise, the people who made it and where it streams, and leave the verdict to you. Barakamon, about a calligrapher sent off to a small island, and the film Pompo: The Cinéphile would belong here, but on October 16 neither was included with any US subscription, so they are out.
The 10 Picks at a Glance
| Title | Format | Length | MBTI | What stands in the way |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Period | Anime series | 12 episodes | ENTJ | An art school entrance exam |
| Look Back | Anime film | About 1 hour | ESTP | A classmate who draws better |
| Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! | Anime series | 12 episodes | INTP | Three girls, one club, no money |
| Bakuman | Anime series | 75 episodes over 3 seasons | ENTJ | A weekly magazine's reader rankings |
| Shirobako | Anime series | 24 episodes, plus a 2020 film | ESFJ | The broadcast date |
| Honey & Clover | Anime series | 36 episodes over 2 seasons | INFP | Not knowing what to make yet |
| Arte | Anime series | 12 episodes | ENFP | Being a woman in 1500s Florence |
| Kakushigoto | Anime series | 12 episodes | ISFJ | Hiding it from his daughter |
| Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun | Anime series | 12 episodes | ISTJ | He writes love stories, and misses hers |
| Comic Girls | Anime series | 12 episodes | INFP | Last place in the reader survey |
Crunchyroll carries four of these. Blue Period is on Netflix, Look Back and Honey & Clover come with Prime Video, and Bakuman is free on Tubi. Click a title to jump to its entry.
1. Blue Period
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Drama | 12 episodes | Moving, Hype |
Yatora Yaguchi gets good grades, stays out all night with his friends, and feels nothing much about any of it. After one of those nights he sees Shibuya in the early morning as a field of blue, paints it for the art class he used to coast through, and finds something he actually wants. He decides to aim for Tokyo University of the Arts, the most prestigious public art university in Japan.
From Tsubasa Yamaguchi's manga, which won the 2020 Manga Taishō, a prize voted on by bookstore staff. Seven Arcs made the 12-episode series, which aired in Japan from October to December 2021.
The Exam Is the Plot
For a Japanese teenager who wants to study art, the first real opponent is often an exam, and Blue Period builds its story around one. The university Yatora chooses accepts very few applicants, and he starts with almost no experience. That gives the show a clock and a clear thing to lose.
Yatora attacks painting the way a good student attacks a test: he studies, copies and asks why things work. The people around him matter too, especially Yuka, a friend from the art club whose own road is harder than his.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Streaming |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Streaming on Netflix in the US, with an English dub.
2. Look Back
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime film | Drama | About 1 hour | Moving, Heartbreaking |
Fujino draws the four-panel comic in her elementary school newspaper, and everyone tells her how good it is. Then her teacher asks her to share the space with Kyomoto, a classmate who never comes to school, and Kyomoto's backgrounds are better than anything Fujino can draw. Fujino starts practicing to beat her.
From a one-shot web manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man, published on Shueisha's Shōnen Jump+ in July 2021. The film, by Studio Durian, opened in Japan in June 2024, and GKIDS released it in the US.
Drawing for Someone
Most stories about artists are about getting good. Look Back is about who you get good for. Fujino starts drawing seriously out of jealousy, and the film follows what changes once the two girls actually meet.
The second half turns on an event that is better not read about in advance, so I will stop there. At about an hour, it fits into one evening.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Streaming |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Included with Prime Video in the US.
3. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Comedy | 12 episodes | Hype, Funny |
Midori Asakusa fills sketchbooks with places and machines she wants to put in an anime, and has never made one. Her friend Sayaka Kanamori cares about money, not anime, but can see what Asakusa could do. When their classmate Tsubame Mizusaki, an amateur model, turns out to want to be an animator, the three start their own club to make anime at school.
Based on Sumito Ōwara's manga in Shogakukan's Monthly Big Comic Spirits. Masaaki Yuasa directed the 12 episodes at Science Saru, and they aired in Japan from January to March 2020.
The Producer Gets Equal Time
Stories about making art usually center on the person holding the pencil. Eizouken makes Kanamori, who handles the budget, the deadlines and the student council, a full third of the team, and treats getting a project paid for as part of making it.
When Asakusa imagines a scene, the show slips into her pencil sketches and lets the three of them walk around inside them. It won Best Animation and Best Director at the 2021 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Crunchyroll has it. The Prime Video listing is the Crunchyroll channel, which costs extra on top of Prime.
4. Bakuman
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Drama, Comedy | 75 episodes over 3 seasons | Hype, Moving |
Moritaka Mashiro can draw, and his classmate Akito Takagi can write. Takagi asks him to make manga together. Mashiro says no, because his uncle was a manga artist who died from overwork. A promise to a girl who wants to be a voice actor changes his mind, and the two ninth graders set out to get a series into a weekly boys' manga magazine.
Written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata, the team behind Death Note. J.C.Staff made 75 episodes over three seasons, which aired on NHK Educational TV from October 2010 to March 2013.
What Worked for Me, and What Didn't
There are no fights in Bakuman, and every episode still has a winner and a loser. Each chapter the two boys publish comes back as a rank in the magazine's reader survey, and a series that sinks too low gets cut. Their editor, Hattori, is my favorite character. He does not praise a draft unless it has really improved, and he can explain exactly why a page that is drawn well can still be boring.
What didn't work for me: Miho Azuki, the girl whose promise starts the whole thing, never felt like a real person, and the two leads recover from setbacks a little too fast. Season 1 covers the road to their first serialization, so if it hooks you, plan on all three.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
All three seasons are free with ads on Tubi. Not currently on any of the seven services above.
Read the full review: Bakuman Season 1 (full review)
5. Shirobako
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Comedy, Drama | 24 episodes, plus a 2020 film | Moving, Funny |
Five friends made an anime in their high school club and promised to make another one together someday. Years later, Aoi Miyamori is a production assistant at a studio called Musashino Animation, keeping a TV series on schedule, while the others are scattered across the industry as an animator, a voice actress, a 3D artist and a would-be writer.
An original story rather than an adaptation, made by P.A. Works and directed by Tsutomu Mizushima. It aired in Japan from October 2014 to March 2015, and a film sequel followed in 2020.
The Job Nobody Draws
Aoi does not draw. Her job is to make sure everyone else's drawings arrive on time, and Shirobako is the only entry that makes that job the story. Scheduling meetings, retakes, recording sessions: it is closer to a workplace drama than to the others, and it shows how many people it takes to finish one episode.
If you have ever wondered why the credits of an anime episode run so long, this is the show that answers it.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Not available |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
The series streams on HIDIVE. The 2020 film is free with ads on Tubi and also on Shout! Factory TV. Neither is on the seven services above.
6. Honey & Clover
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Romance, Drama | 36 episodes over 2 seasons | Bittersweet, Moving |
Takemoto, Mayama and Morita are students at an art college in Tokyo who live in the same apartment building. Then Hagumi, a shy first-year with a real gift for painting, moves in with her relative, a professor at the school, and two of the three fall for her.
From Chica Umino's manga Honey and Clover, which won the Kodansha Manga Award in the shōjo category. J.C.Staff made it as the first series on Noitamina, Fuji TV's late-night anime block: 24 episodes in 2005 and 12 more in 2006. I could not find an official English trailer, so the one here is the Japanese Blu-ray promo.
Art School Without the Answers
Art is closer to the background here than anywhere else on the list. Hagu is the only one whose talent is obvious. Everyone else, Takemoto most of all, is still working out what they want to make and whether they are any good, and art school does not settle it for them.
It is also the most romantic entry, with unrequited love running through the whole cast, and at 36 episodes the longest after Bakuman.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Streaming |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Prime Video lists one season, included with Prime and also free with ads. I could not confirm whether the 12-episode second season, Honey and Clover II, is there.
7. Arte
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Historical, Drama | 12 episodes | Moving, Hype |
In early 16th-century Florence, Arte is the daughter of a noble family that is running out of money. She has painted since she was a child, but after her father dies, her mother wants her married off as soon as possible. Arte goes looking for a master painter who will take her on as an apprentice, and a young painter named Leo finally agrees.
From Kei Ohkubo's manga, serialized in Monthly Comic Zenon from 2013 to 2025. Seven Arcs, which later animated Blue Period, made the 12 episodes, aired in Japan from April to June 2020. The trailer is the Japanese one, because the English trailer will not play in some regions.
Permission to Learn
Arte is the only show here set outside Japan, and its obstacle is the most basic one. In her time and place, a noblewoman was not expected to work at all, let alone in a painter's workshop. She can already paint. What she has to win is the right to learn the trade.
It shares a studio with Blue Period, which makes the two a good pair: two painters about five centuries apart, both trying to get through a door that most people tell them is closed.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Crunchyroll, or inside Amazon's Crunchyroll channel if you already pay for that.
8. Kakushigoto
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Comedy, Drama | 12 episodes | Funny, Bittersweet |
Kakushi Goto is a single father raising his daughter Hime in Nakameguro, Tokyo. He is also a manga artist whose work is built on dirty jokes, and he has decided she must never find out what he does for a living. The title is a pun on his name and the Japanese word for a secret.
From Kōji Kumeta's manga in Kodansha's Monthly Shōnen Magazine. Ajiado made the 12-episode series, which aired in Japan from April to June 2020.
A Sitcom With Something Under It
Most of each episode is a comedy about a man covering his tracks, with help from his assistants and his editor. Episodes also cut ahead to short scenes of Hime as a high school senior, which give the comedy a second layer.
It is also about manga as a small business: Kakushi runs his own studio with a staff of assistants, and the deadlines are as much his problem as the drawing.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Streaming on Crunchyroll. Prime Video carries it only through the Crunchyroll add-on channel.
9. Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Comedy, Romance | 12 episodes | Funny, Wholesome |
Chiyo Sakura works up the nerve to confess to her classmate Umetarou Nozaki. He mistakes her for a fan, gives her an autograph and invites her home, where she learns that this tall, quiet boy is a popular shōjo manga artist who publishes under a woman's pen name. She ends up as his assistant, inking his pages.
Adapted from Izumi Tsubaki's four-panel manga on Square Enix's Gangan Online by Doga Kobo, as 12 episodes that aired in Japan from July to September 2014.
The Romance Writer Who Misses Every Signal
The joke that runs the show: Nozaki writes love stories for teenage girls and cannot see that the girl inking them is in love with him. His classmates keep turning into material for his manga, including a boy whose personality becomes the model for his heroine.
It also shows how a shōjo manga page gets made: his friends pitch in on screentones and backgrounds, and Nozaki holds it all together.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Not available |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
On Prime Video through the HIDIVE channel, a paid add-on, and free with a library card on Hoopla.
10. Comic Girls
| Format | Genre | Length | Emotional tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anime series | Comedy | 12 episodes | Wholesome, Funny |
Kaoruko Moeta is a first-year high school student who already draws a four-panel manga under the pen name Kaos. When it lands at the bottom of the magazine's reader survey, her editor suggests she move into a dormitory for teenage manga artists. Her roommates draw shōjo, shōnen and teen romance manga.
From Kaori Hanzawa's four-panel manga in Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara Max, the same magazine that runs Bocchi the Rock!. Nexus made the 12-episode series, which aired in Japan from April to June 2018. Its English trailer is region-locked, so this is the Japanese promo.
Bakuman's Survey, Played Gently
Comic Girls starts where Bakuman's worst weeks end: with a manga that ranked last. Bakuman treats the survey as a fight. Here it is the reason Kaoruko finds people who understand the job, and the four girls spend the series helping each other get better.
If Look Back or Blue Period sounds too heavy for tonight, this is the gentler option.
| Service (US) | Status |
|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Streaming |
| Netflix | Not available |
| Hulu | Not available |
| Amazon Prime Video | Add-on |
| HBO Max | Not available |
| Disney+ | Not available |
| Apple TV+ | Not available |
Streaming on Crunchyroll. Prime Video has it only through the Crunchyroll channel, a paid add-on.
US Streaming Comparison at a Glance
| Title | Crunchyroll | Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime Video | HBO Max | Disney+ | Apple TV+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Period | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Look Back | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Bakuman | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Shirobako | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Honey & Clover | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Arte | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Kakushigoto | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Comic Girls | ◎ | ✕ | ✕ | △ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Checked in the US region on October 16, 2026. ◎ means included with the base subscription, △ means a paid add-on channel or a rental, and ✕ means that service does not carry it. Every △ on Prime Video here is the Crunchyroll or HIDIVE channel sold inside Amazon. Two entries have no mark at all: Bakuman is free with ads on Tubi, and Shirobako streams on HIDIVE, which is not one of the seven columns.
Which One to Start With
Netflix subscribers have one pick, Blue Period. On Prime Video, Look Back fits into one evening and Honey & Clover, at 36 episodes, fills a month. Crunchyroll has the most: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! first, then Arte, Kakushigoto and Comic Girls in any order.
No subscription at all? All three seasons of Bakuman are free with ads on Tubi, and so is the Shirobako film. Watch the Shirobako series on HIDIVE before the film, because the film continues the story.
If you only have time for one, choose by what you do. If you draw, Look Back. If you have ever worked on a team with a deadline, Shirobako. If you want to see what it takes to keep a weekly series alive in Japan, Bakuman. That one I have actually sat through, two seasons of it.
Streaming information was verified in the US region on October 16, 2026 and can change without notice.
