Studio Gainax

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"['Gainaxxy'?] I never know what people mean when they say that. It started out to mean big, bouncy breasts, then became existentialist angst, then became hyper-kinetic psycho-sexual slapstick. What's it mean now?" "All of that, at once."

Studio Gainax, also known just as Gainax, is one of the better-known Anime studios, having created such series as Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia), Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and causing the creation of such terms as Gainaxing and the Gainax Ending. It also helped launch the careers of acclaimed directors Hideaki Anno and Hiroyuki Imaishi as well as character designer/animator/manga artist Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Sadly, the success and acclaim Gainax amassed through its animated works were undone by poor business dealings and corruption, leading to the studio's eventual bankruptcy.

Founded in 1984 by a group of ambitious young animators (including Anno and Sadamoto), Gainax's early works, including The Wings of Honneamise, Gunbuster, and Nadia, attracted more critical acclaim than commercial success, and the studio found itself at the edge of dissolution more than once due to lack of money, Then came Evangelion in 1995, and everything changed. The series established Gainax's trademarks: impressive visuals, gripping storylines, confusing plot points, and running out of money before the series is finished. The last two episodes of Evangelion were produced when the studio had been cut off by the main sponsor, and mostly reused clips from previous episodes with different dialogue (fans didn't get to see the Kill 'Em All finale Anno had planned until The End of Evangelion came out in theaters). Still shots are frequent as well. The final episode of Top o Nerae! (also known as Gunbuster) is due to the black and white presentation often thrown into this bin, a common misconception as the black and white animation was actually more expensive. And then there's His and Her Circumstances, which looks a lot like the last two episodes of Eva through the entire show. Thankfully, they seemed to have learned their lesson by Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (see below), but any lessons learned were sadly not retained.

Click here to see some of the many characters created by Gainax over its lifetime.

As a small note, they had a good relationship with Production I.G, who did quite a lot of work on End of Evangelion and FLCL. The director of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt, and one episode of FLCL also worked with Production I.G on Dead Leaves.

Gainax's final years were troubled and turbulent. Anno left in 2007 to form Studio Khara (taking with him much of Gainax's top staff, including FLCL director Kazuya Tsurumaki) and make the Rebuild of Evangelion series, and Imaishi left three years later to form Studio Trigger. Aside from Imaishi's Gurren Lagann and Panty and Stocking, Gainax's output in the 21st century consisted mostly of shonen anime with smaller budgets and routine animation, rather than the expressive style they were known for, and most of it flopped critically and commercially, But that wasn't the worst of it. As early as 1999, Gainax executives were arrested for tax evasion regarding the massive profits generated by Evangelion. According to Anno, Gainax poured that money into bad business decisions, and neglected to pay royalties to him and other former employees for their hard work on the studio's past classics. Nevertheless, Anno maintained a business relationship with Gainax until he learned that the studio had been selling off cels and other production materials from their past hits without consulting him or other creative staff. The final nail in the coffin came in 2019 when Gainax's representative director, Tomohiro Maki, was arrested (and eventually imprisoned) for indecent and nonconsensual acts with an aspiring voice actress. Gainax officially declared bankruptcy in May 2024, although some of the subsidiary companies it set up are still active.

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Studio Gainax has created the following:

• Two original animated introductory films for Daicon III and Daicon IV, two iterations of a major Science Fiction convention in Japan. These were their first creations, before they had really formed the studio.
• Aikoku Sentai Dai-Nippon, a parody of the Super Sentai series. The first of several tokusatsu parodies made by them in the '80s. At this point, they weren't called Gainax yet, but Daicon Film.
• Kaiketsu Noutenki, a parody of Kaiketsu Zubat, made in 1982.
• Return of Ultraman, a parody of the Ultra Series of the same name, featuring Hideaki Anno as Ultraman!
• Yamata no Orochi no Gyakushu (The Revenge of Yamata no Orochi), a Direct to Video Kaiju movie made when Gainax was still Daicon Film, featuring Ancient Astronauts and a giant cybernetic Yamata no Orochi. Special effects by Shinji Higuchi.
• Wings of Honneamise Royal Space Force, Gainax's first feature film. Like the Daicon shorts, the short pilot version of this was animated and shot on 8mm film in Hiroyuki Yamaga's garage.
• Top wo Nerae! (Aim for the Top!), a.k.a. Gunbuster
  • There is also a sequel - Top wo Nerae 2! (AKA Diebuster or GunBuster 2) which was released 16 years after the original.
• Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water as subcontractor animation studio for Toho and NHK (Gainax subsequently subcontracted to Group TAC and Korean studio Sei Young)
• The Princess Maker videogame series, which had the player take responsibility for raising an orphaned girl to adulthood.
  • The anime Petite Princess Yucie was an adaptation of several of the games in the series.
  • Gainax also released variations of the game focused around Evangelion characters, such as The Rei Ayanami/Shinji Ikari Raising Project.
• Otaku no Video, a Mockumentary-style look at Otaku in Japan interspersed with an animated story about the life of one budding Otaking (Otaku King), whose company is a parody of Gainax itself.
  • Otaking is a real person - Toshio Okada, one of the Gainax founders, who left the studio in The Nineties for academia and now is a moderately renowned anime scholar (and an epic troll to boot).
• Neon Genesis Evangelion, notable for its Deconstruction of the mecha genre at the time, colossal impact on Japanese pop culture, and popularization of the Gainax Ending.
  • Congratulations!
• FLCL
  • The OVA was rumored to have started life as something to cheer up the staff after the fear and angst storm that was The End of Evangelion.
• Kare Kano
• Oruchuban Ebichu
• Mahoromatic
• Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai, a.k.a. Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (With Madhouse)
• This Ugly Yet Beautiful World
• Re: Cutie Honey, a re-imagining of of Go Nagai's classic magical girl series.
• He Is My Master
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
  • Spectacularly avoided the studio's typical money problems; a substantial portion of the show's budget (40%!) was reserved for the final episodes.
• Shikabane Hime, a.k.a. Corpse Princess
• Hanamaru Kindergarten
• Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt
  • Allegedly created when the crew headed to a spa for a get together and got drunk while telling stories to each other. They found the ideas hilarious and used that for the show.
• Houkago no Pleiades
  • A Magical Girl collaboration between Gainax and Subaru.
• Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian
• Medaka Box

The company has also done minor work in the following:

• .hack (Franchise Collaboration)
• Agent Aika (In-Between Animation)
• Akira (Animation Cooperation)
• Alisia Dragoon (art and story)
• The Animatrix (In-Betweens in "Second Renaissance" and "Beyond")
• Avenger (In-Between Animation)
• The Big O (In-Between Animation)
• Black Lagoon (Key Animation - Second Season)
• Dead Leaves (In-Between Animation)
• Eden of the East (2nd Key & In-Between Animation)
• Eureka Seven (2nd Key & In-Between Animation)
• Eyeshield 21 (Animation)
• Fairy Tail (In-Between Animation)
• Gintama (2nd Key & In-Between Animation)
• Gun X Sword (In-Between Animation)
• Green Lantern: First Flight (Production Assistance, Key & Assistance Animation alongside Studio Jungle Gym, Anime Spot and Mizo Planning (In South Korea, Key and In-Between animation, Key animation by Park Sung Hoo, a freelanced South Korean animator that was stationed at Mizo Planning during its production); Led by TMS Entertainment)
• Heroman (In-Between Animation)
• Highschool of the Dead (In-Between Animation)
• House of Five Leaves (In-Between Animation)
• IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix (In-Between Animation)
• Initial D (In-Between Animation - Fourth Stage)
• Michiko to Hatchin (Production Cooperation)
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam (Key Animation)
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (In-Between Animation)
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack (Mechanical Design)
• Naruto (In-Between Animation)
• Nodame Cantabile (2nd Key Animation)
• Noein (2nd Key Animation)
• Pandora Hearts (In-Between Animation)
• Pokémon Movies
  • Pokémon 2000 (Digital Animation Assistance)
  • Pokémon 3 (In-Between Animation)
  • Pokémon Heroes (Animation Assistance)
  • Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys (In-Between Animation)
  • Pokémon: Giratina and The Sky Warrior (Animation Assistance)
• Real Drive (In-Between Animation)
• Ranma ½ (Animation Assistance - OVAs)
• Red Line (2nd Key Animation Cooperation)
• The Case Files of Yakushiji Ryoko (In-Between Animation, Animation Assistance)
• Spirited Away (Supporting Animation)
• Tekken Chinmi (Key Animation)
• Tekkon Kinkreet (In-Between Animation)
• Tokko (Composite)
• Toradora! (2nd Key Animation)
• Trinity Blood (Animation)

Studio Gainax is responsible for the following Trope Names:

• Gainax Ending: Though to be fair, a lot of their more recent shows have tried to avert this.
  • Fully an Ascended Meme too.
• Gainaxing: Misty May, those shiners aren't going to heal if you keep jogging...

Studio Gainax follows the following tropes:

• Author Appeal: In relationship to Japan Takes Over the World, no studio (besides TMS Entertainment and Studio Ghibli) has ever done it with more boldness.
• Animation Bump: Most (if not all) of their series exhibit this.
• Ascended Fanboy: The studio was founded by a bunch of young anime fans.
• Asskicking Pose: The Badass Arm-Fold. Technically only used in two series and a continuation, it's done memorably enough to be known as the Gainax Stance in Japan.
• Decon Recon Switch: A meta example: they made Gunbuster, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (in that order).
• Development Hell: The Evangelion Movie they, ADV Films and WETA were supposed to make.
  • They were also supposedly working on some other Gurren Lagann projects which ended up in Development Hell.
  • Still nothing beats Aoki Uru, a planned sequel to the Wings of Honneamise Royal Space Force, which supposedly started initial pre-production back in 1988. So far the only output from this project seems to be a brief scenario draft and the couple of (admittedly spectacular) artbooks by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. They still reportedly plan to make it somewhere in the future.
• Fan Nickname: The Gainax Pose, which is where the giant robot arms from Gunbuster and Die Buster are crossed in a Badass way (given a Shout-Out in Gurren Lagann with the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann).
• Fan Service: Tons and tons of it.

"It's Gainax! Fanservice adds to our character development!"

• Limited Animation: Taken to extremes in the last two episodes of Evangelion.
• Off-Model: Episode four of Gurren Lagann changed its entire art style, The fans were pissed off to say the least.
• Playing Against Type: out of all the Japanese animation studios available to adapt the Hanamaru Kindergarten manga into a TV show, the choice of Gainax comes as something of a surprise.
  • Then again, does Gainax even have a type? even considering their most popular creations, it's very hard to find an overarching theme.
    • Blurring the line between Deconstruction and Reconstruction, somewhat thoughtful explorations of human nature, and tons and tons of big breasted women running, really tons of sexual humor in general.
    • The fact that Gainax would adapt Hanamaru Kindergarten is itself Gainaxian.
• Post Modernism: A staple of nearly all of their works.
• Promoted Fanboy
• Shout-Out: To the brim, being a studio of promoted fanboys. Recent works are also filled with self-references.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic