Gainax


GAINAX Co., Ltd. is a Japanese anime studio famous for productions such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, ', Gunbuster, ', Kare Kano, FLCL, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, and Gurren Lagann, which have garnered critical acclaim and commercial success. Evangelion has reportedly grossed over 150 billion yen, or approximately 1.2 billion. In a discussion at the 2006 Tekkoshocon, Matt Greenfield claimed that Evangelion had grossed over 2 billion; Takeda reiterated in 2002 that "It sold record numbers of laserdiscs in Japan, and the DVD is still selling well today", as well as for their association with award-winning anime director and studio co-founder Hideaki Anno. The company is headquartered in Koganei, Tokyo.
Until Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gainax typically worked on stories created in-house, but the studio has increasingly developed anime adaptations of existing manga like Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou and Mahoromatic. Series produced by Gainax are often known for their controversial twist endings.
The Animage Anime Grand Prix has been awarded to Gainax for in 1991, Neon Genesis Evangelion in 1995 and 1996, and The End of Evangelion in 1997.

History

Beginnings

The studio was formed in the early 1980s as Daicon Film by university students Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Takami Akai, Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda and Shinji Higuchi. Their first project was an animated short for the 20th Annual Japan National SF Convention, also known as Daicon III, held in 1981 in Osaka, Japan. The short film is about a girl who fights monsters, robots, and spaceships from early science fiction TV shows and films until she finally reaches a desert plain and pours a glass of water on a dried-out daikon radish, which immediately resurrects itself, grows into a huge spaceship, and beams her aboard. Though the short had an ambitious scope, the animation was rough and low-quality.
The group made a much bigger splash with the short they produced for the 22nd Annual Japan National SF Convention, Daicon IV, in 1983. Starting with a better animated recap of their original 1981 short, the short then moves to the girl as a grown woman, wearing a bunny suit and fighting an even wider range of science fiction creatures while surfing through the sky on the sword Stormbringer. The action was all set to the Electric Light Orchestra song "Twilight", though the group's failure to properly license the song would prevent the short's official release on DVD.
The Daicon IV short firmly established Daicon Film as a talented new anime studio. The studio changed its name to Gainax in 1985, basing the term "Gainax" on an obscure Tottori Prefecture term for "giant", with the English suffix -x added because it sounded "good and was international".
Gainax's first work as a commercial entity was ', released in 1987. Honneamise was critically acclaimed and a classic anime movie; however, it had a tepid commercial reaction.
The next release, the 1988 OVA Gunbuster, was a commercial success and put Gainax on a stabler footing to produce works like ' and Otaku no Video. During this period, Gainax also produced a number of items such as garage kit and adult video games.

''Evangelion''

In 1995, Gainax produced perhaps their best known series, the commercially successful and critically lauded Neon Genesis Evangelion. In the wake of Evangelion's success, however, Gainax was audited by the National Tax Agency at the urging of the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau on suspicion of committing tax evasion on the massive profits accruing from various Evangelion properties. It was later revealed that Gainax had concealed 1.56 billion yen worth of income which it had earned between the release of Evangelion and July 1997 by paying closely related companies various large fees, ostensibly to pay for animation expenses, but then immediately withdrawing 90% of the sums from the other company's accounts as cash and storing it in safe deposit boxes.
Gainax president Takeshi Sawamura and tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki were arrested on July 13, 1999 and later jailed for accounting fraud. Yasuhiro Takeda later defended Sawamura's actions as being a reaction to Gainax's perpetually precarious finances and the shaky accounting procedures internally:
Sawamura understood our financial situation better than anyone, so when Evangelion took off and the money really started rolling in, he saw it as possibly our one and only opportunity to set something aside for the future. I guess he was vulnerable to temptation at that point, because no one knew how long the Evangelion goose would keep laying golden eggs. I don't think he purposely set out with the goal of evading taxes. It was more that our level of accounting knowledge wasn't up to the task of dealing with revenues on such a large scale.

21st century

In 2004, Gainax marked their 20th anniversary with the production of Diebuster, the sequel to Gunbuster. Gainax's most recent successes on television have been the popular anime series Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.
In August 2011, Gainax was sued by A.D. Vision, which claimed Gainax's refusal to accept an option payment for the perpetual live-action rights to Evangelion was a breach of contract and had resulted in losing an opportunity to produce the film with a major studio. A.D. Vision has asked to be awarded the live-action rights to Evangelion and any accruing legal fees.
In 2012, Gainax announced it would be producing its first live-action television series, EA's Rock, with director Nobuhiro Yamashita. At the 2013 Tokyo Anime Fair, Gainax announced that they would be making once-dead Blue Uru film with Hiroyuki Yamaga as the director and screenwriter and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto as the character designer. In March 2015, a new studio and museum were opened in Miharu, Fukushima, with the studio named Fukushima Gainax.
In 2016, Gainax was sued by Studio Khara for 100 million yen in unpaid royalties from an agreement that Khara would earn royalties from income received on works and properties that founder Hideaki Anno had worked on. The suit alleged that Gainax delayed on paying royalties and incurred a large debt with Khara, which had loaned 100 million yen in August 2014, but had yet to receive payment on the loan. In 2017 the suit was ruled on by a judge at the Tokyo District Court which ordered Gainax to pay the full amount in debt owed to Khara. Further, it was reported that Gainax was not expected to appeal the ruling. Gainax President, Hiroyuki Yamaga posted a public apology on the Gainax website stating the company was now undergoing restructuring. To date, Anno claims nobody from Gainax has contacted him personally with any kind of apology or explanation.
In August 2018, it was announced that Fukushima Gainax had been acquired by Kinoshita Group Holdings on July 26, making it Kinoshita's new subsidiary. Fukushima Gainax changed its studio name to Gaina and relocated to Koganei, Tokyo on August 9. In December 2019, representative director Tomohiro Maki was arrested on allegations of quasi-forcible indecency on an aspiring voice actress. Maki had been appointed representative director in October, but had been a board director of the company since 2015 and previously served as head of Gainax International, a separate company that trained voice actors and other talents, at the time of the alleged incidents. In February 2020, Yasuhiro Kamimura was appointed the company's new director and a new board was hired on to the company.

Filmography

TV series

Films

OVAs and ONAs

Daicon tokusatsu fan films

TitleYearSynopsis
Patriotic Squadron Dai-Nippon1982Parody of the popular Super Sentai shows and the Russo-Japanese War, with the members of the title team fighting the evil plan of the Red Bear Empire to brainwash the children of Japan by replacing the pages of their textbooks with red paper in this "episode."
Kaiketsu Noutenki1982Parody of Shotaro Ishinomori's Kaiketsu Zubat
Return of Ultraman1983Parody of a title of the same name, with New Ultraman/Ultraman Jack replaced with a giant Hideaki Anno in a vinyl Ultraman trick-or-treat outfit and glasses.
Kaiketsu Noutenki1984Parody of Shotaro Ishinomori's Kaiketsu Zubat, in which the titular hero faces off against Mecha Noutenki, a mechanical clone of himself.
Kaiketsu Noutenki1984Parody of Shotaro Ishinomori's Kaiketsu Zubat, in which the titular hero sightsees in San Francisco, California
Yamata no Orochi no Gyakushū1985A 72-minute sendup of daikaiju movies and the most heavily promoted of the Daicon tokusatsu short films.
Kaiketsu Noutenki1988Role-playing parody of Shotaro Ishinomori's Kaiketsu Zubat'', in which the titular hero sightsees in San Francisco, California

Other works

Gainax has also teamed with other groups to create various works, such as a 1987 promotional video for the song "Marionette" by Boøwy and the 2006 Momoko-based "Gainax Girls" fashion dolls created in collaboration with a Japanese fashion doll. Gainax also collaborated with Game Arts in 1992, resulting in the video game Alisia Dragoon.
Gainax has also produced a number of computer games, including a strip mahjong game featuring Evangelion characters and its most famous, the Princess Maker series.
Gainax also collaborated with Saudi Arabian media content company ARiNAT on a three-minute anime trailer titled "Desert Knight", which debuted at the "ANI:ME" Japanese pop culture festival in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Gainax also created the Mahoromatic Digital Maiden 1 - 3 PC game series in 1998 which allowed Konami to publish the PS2 game exclusive Mahoromatic in Japan that is lesser known to the public.

Relationship to fan community

Since Gainax originated as a group of fans, it has maintained ties to the general otaku community, allowing dōjinshi of its work, fan-made action figures, promoting series like Evangelion at private festivals, and so on.
The term "Gainaxing" has been coined by fans to describe exaggerated bouncing of a female character's breasts. Similarly, the term "Gainax ending" has been used in reference to several Gainax productions to describe an ending to a work which is surreal, or seems to come out of nowhere and resolve little.