It was recently brought to my attention that Sunrise, undoubtedly one of my favourite anime studios, is going to be changing their name to Bandai Namco Filmworks in April. While it makes sense for Bandai Namco to consolidate their companies via a rebranding, I still admit that it saddens me to see this. Sunrise has always been an anime studio close to my heart and, considering how much I love their works, I thought it worth taking a look at the fascinating history of Sunrise.
Sunrise began in 1972 when a group of former employees of Mushi Production, the animation studio established by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, set up their own animation studio. By the end of the year, they had managed to release their first anime series, Hazedon. As time went on, they started to specialise in mecha anime, producing such series as Zero Tester, Brave Raideen and Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 while still producing non-mecha series such as La Seine no Hoshi, Kum-Kum and the 1970s Cyborg 009 anime series.
However, the release of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series in 1979 would end up having a big impact on both Sunrise themselves as well as the mecha genre. Notable for introducing more realism to the mecha genre, Mobile Suit Gundam actually ended up being cut short due to low ratings. However, reruns of the show as well as model kits of the mecha ended up doing really well. The Gundam Movie Trilogy, compilation films telling the story of the original series, ended up being a big box office success and Gundam has since developed into a media franchise worth approximately $25 billion.
Besides Gundam, Sunrise continued to release many other anime series such as Giant Gorg, a personal favourite of mine, Dirty Pair and City Hunter. By 1994, Sunrise had been acquired by Bandai, the company responsible for producing Gunpla. Afterwards, Sunrise continued to produce Gundam series while also creating other series such as Cowboy Bebop, Code Geass and Tiger & Bunny. However, their most recent success has clearly been the Love Live! franchise which has managed to continually gross billions of yen per year.
Despite all of this success, Sunrise has been changing for a while now. Back in 2015, Bandai Namco split Sunrise into two halves, one half remaining Sunrise while the other half was named Bandai Namco Pictures. Shinji Takamatsu, a former employee of Sunrise, laments these changes, both Bandai Namco Pictures and Bandai Namco Filmworks, noting that the end of Sunrise “seems to have finally come”.
Nonetheless, I remain a fan of Sunrise and look at their anime such as the Gundam franchise, Giant Gorg, Code Geass, Tiger & Bunny etc. with both respect and admiration. Let me know your thoughts on the fascinating history of anime studio Sunrise, which have been your favourite and least favourite of their anime series, what you think about their rebrand to Bandai Namco Filmworks and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!