The Indestructible Studio Gainax: Part IV
by Callum May,Welcome to Part IV of our continuing history of Studio Part Three right here.
GAINAX's former-president Neon Genesis Evangelion. By undervaluing their profits, GAINAX was able to avoid paying 560 million yen (approximately 5 million USD) in corporate taxes. The tax scheme lasted for two years, but even after the studio got caught out, they were still on the rise.
1998 - A Post-Evangelion GAINAX
Despite one of their studio presidents now being in jail, Studio GAINAX had finally become a company that was able to consistently produce new anime. The four year anime gap between Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water and Neon Genesis Evangelion never happened again (watch this space). Instead of focusing on just one series, GAINAX were suddenly able to pitch multiple series, expect one or two to be accepted, only for their sponsors and investors to approve all of them. A post-Evangelion GAINAX was an unprecedentedly busy one.
In 1998, Hideaki Anno was offered the chance to direct the adaptation to the His and Her Circumstances manga. Anno was so used to creating his own original projects and being able to expand on his own interpretations and ideas that the original author believed he'd gone too far and had the wrong emphasis on the material.
During the early years of GAINAX, The End of Evangelion, he maintained that the original TV ending was fine and that the film was unnecessary.
FLCL (2000)
It wasn't until 2000 that Tsurumaki would finally make his solo directorial debut with the six-part King Records was eager to accept new pitches from the studio. After completing work on Evangelion, it was Anno that asked Tsurumaki to come up with a new idea for an anime series that they could pitch. This became a lot of pressure for a new director and it took him a year before he'd finally decided on a concept. Anno's advice was to not worry about whether everyone would like it or not and just focus on making something that he wanted to create.
The result was a high paced series that worked as a love letter to many different subcultures or otaku. It was a series that even Tsurumaki himself advocated watching several times and recognises that it wasn't easy to understand. Like many other GAINAX productions, it was one that broke from tradition and was later recognised as one of the crazy shows that was only greenlit because of a post-Evangelion Gainax.
2004 - GAINAX Aims For The Top!... again
In 1999, studio president Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi after pitching them to enthusiastic investors excited about working with the studio behind Evangelion.
Cutie Honey film at the time and so it was up to Anno's understudy, Kazuya Tsurumaki to direct yet another hot-blooded original OVA series. There were discussions about making it into a TV series, but they settled with producing six OVA episodes just like the original Gunbuster.
By making it into a series of OVAs rather than a TV series, it could be made into a kind of two year event with episodes being released periodically. It also meant that Hideaki Anno could participate later when he had free time. To conclude the series in 2006, Gainax produced a theatrical version of both Gunbuster and Diebuster by condensing each of the OVAs. Meanwhile, whilst fans clamoured to the cinema, Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki were looking ahead towards their next challenge.
2006 - Farewell, Studio Khara. Hello Gurren Lagann.
At first, it was theorised that Studio Khara was created as a sub-studio for Studio GAINAX where they would create a sequel or alternate ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion . It surprised nobody to hear that Hideaki Anno was working on Evangelion again since the series had become such a major part of his image as a director, but the real shock came when it was realised that Anno was leaving GAINAX to make it. It was his belief that to produce a new vision of Evangelion, it was important that he moved on to a new company. GAINAX would still co-operate on the films but Khara would lead the production.
At Gainax, this was to become a cycle. The old guard create something popular, leave and then give the new generation a chance to create their own productions. The problem was that with creators comes funding. The King Records connection that Gainax used to greenlight Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL was a connection with Hideaki Anno specifically and not GAINAX. The studio would have struggled to find sponsors for new projects if their attempts to elevate the next generation were unsuccessful.
When Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, he jumped on board to help.
Gurren Lagann The Movie: Childhood's End (2008)
Hiroyuki Imaishi took a similar approach to Kazuya Tsurumaki in that he immediately set out to create something hot-blooded and unconventional. Imaishi had been working at GAINAX for over ten years at that point and had picked up inspirations along the way. Of course, much of the rest of the core staff were GAINAX staff as well who have spent years learning from Evangelion and FLCL. What resulted was a cultural phenomena that even today is regarded as one of Aniplex's biggest properties and is a series that Imaishi spent years trying to recreate the appeal of.
2011 - Farewell, Studio Trigger. Hello… is there anybody there?
In 2011, a large portion of the GAINAX staff to have worked on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann left with Hiroyuki Imaishi and producer A-1 Pictures on an adaptation of The Idolmaster, taking a different team of talented GAINAX animators with him.
The cycle continued and the first director they chose to represent the next generation of GAINAX was Kōtarō Uchikoshi.
With the departure of Khara, Trigger and talented individual creators, GAINAX no longer had the sort of creative staff that could get a show greenlit by name alone. In 2012, the studio produced Wish Upon the Pleiades.
Wish Upon the Pleiades (2015)
In response to a lack of funding and , GAINAX's output slowed dramatically to one series a year, many of which being adaptations. With a lot more time on his hands, Yamaga started planning Uru in Blue again. In the 1990s, it was going to be directed by Hideaki Anno, but after Anno made it clear that he was no longer interested, the film would now be directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga himself. In 2014, he announced that the film would be released in 2018 with a short six minute film being released the next year in 2015 titled Uru in Blue: Overture (this did not happen). As of 2017, Hiroyuki Yamaga had just started on the script.
2017 - Khara Hits A NERV
It wasn't uncommon of GAINAX to be unable to pay other anime companies. GAINAX didn't pay co-producers Lea Hernandez back in 1989. Additionally, the studio president told their entire staff in 1992 that they would no longer be able to pay them, forcing the large majority to quit on the spot. Therefore, it was probably very clear to Hideaki Anno that GAINAX had no intentions on paying back a loan from Studio Khara anytime soon.
Khara celebrates its 10th year in business
When Hideaki Anno left GAINAX, he did so with the agreement that his Studio Khara would receive royalties on sales of any GAINAX projects that Anno had been involved in. Khara had also lent the studio roughly 100,000 million yen (approximately 1.1 million USD) in 2014. Since then, GAINAX fell behind on payments, incurring a lawsuit from Khara. This is GAINAX's second public lawsuit, with the first being related to the rights surrounding a live action Evangelion film. It was confirmed in 2017 that GAINAX had lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay Studio Khara the full amount.
2018 - We're Down, But We're Not Out
Today, Studio GAINAX is a splintered company. In 2014, Leiji Matsumoto known as The Zero Century Trilogy.
Zero Century trilogy announced at Japan Expo in Paris
Studio GAINAX is a different entity to many different people. To some, they're the has-beens that keep promising to make a movie about fighter pilots who are also knights. To others, they're the terrible businessmen that made their lives hell. And to the many, they are the legendary creators that shaped modern anime.
Yamaga has referred to Studio GAINAX as a school where people come and go. They learn whilst working at the studio and leave when they can stand on their own feet. It's in this way that even if GAINAX as business was to fold, the ideas and enthusiasm of a group of college kids who loved sci-fi in 1981 will always be a part of anime.
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