It was only the other day when I took a quick glance at the news and saw something that I found quite sad. Studio Gainax, arguably one of the most important and venerable studios in the history of the medium of anime, was declaring bankruptcy. However, as I thought about their releases, I realised that I couldn’t name a single thing they’d done in recent years. In fact, the only news concerning them I could recall was a lawsuit which they lost to Studio Khara. Taking all of this into account, I thought I’d take a look at Studio Gainax, a bit about their history and releases and how their eventual tragic fall came about.
Originally formed in 1984 by several notable creators such as Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto as Daicon Films, their first commercial work was the 1987 film Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, an ambitious project that, due to its oversized budget, ended up being a failure at the box office despite critical acclaim. This nearly put the new studio out of business and it was only the success of titles like Gunbuster which allowed Gainax to avoid bankruptcy.
Gainax began to broaden their repertoire by expanding into the production of video games, with perhaps their most famous being the Princess Maker games, as well as the production of their first TV series, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Despite the popularity of the show, Gainax was driven even further into debt with, ironically, the video game adaptation of the series saving them as it became one of their most popular titles.
If there is one thing Gainax is known for, it would be their next TV series, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The show ended up becoming a megahit, both commercially and critically, although not without controversy. The show’s reinterpretation of the Super Robot genre which emphasised the psychological impact on the characters as well as the sexual content and the abstract final two episodes provoked plenty of debate and outrage but this didn’t stop the follow up films, Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion, from being box office hits the following year.
The next decade was kind to Gainax with many popular series such as FLCL, Gurren Lagann and Diebuster achieving further critical and commercial success. However, Gainax soon began to lose the talent that had made these successes possible. Hideaki Anno established his own animation studio, Khara, while the people behind Gurren Lagann established Studio Trigger. By 2015, their production had essentially fizzled and the company faced financial ruin, borrowing money from Studio Khara and being so ineptly run that Hideaki Anno had to sue in order to be repaid. As if that wasn’t enough, in 2019, Gainax’s representative director was arrested for indecency! That Gainax would eventually be shuttered seemed like an inevitability and it’s something that we’ve now seen come true. While their fall is most certainly tragic, I’ll continue to remember them in their heyday when Gainax was seen as possibly the most creative studio in the industry.
Let me know your thoughts on the closure of Studio Gainax, what works from them you’ve seen and whether you liked/disliked them, any other projects of theirs you’re aware of, how you think their legacy will be viewed 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!