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Creator / Studio Gainax

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gainax.png

"['Gainaxy'?] 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."
— Forum thread

Gainax Co., Ltd. is a Japanese anime studio founded in 1984 by Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Takami Akai, Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda and Shinji Higuchi. It is best known for producing works such as Gunbuster, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Their work provides the origin for terms such as Gainaxing and the Gainax Ending.

Gainax is known for their impressive visuals, gripping storylines, and confusing (but no less engaging) plot points. On a less flattering note, they also had a tendency to run out of money before finishing some of their longer projects, with the last episodes of Gainax series often being lower in quality and taking a lot of creative shortcuts. The most famous example of this are the last two episodes of Evangelion, which mostly consisted of reused clips from previous episodes with different dialogue due to the show's main sponsor leaving the project out of frustration with the production. Thankfully, they seemed to have learned their lesson about production planning and budgeting by the mid-2000s.

A crowd picture◊ for some of the many characters created by Gainax over its lifetime is available.note 

While Gainax has collaborated with a good number of other anime studios on the majority of its projects for years, it shared its closest business relationship with Production I.G, who did quite a lot of work on End of Evangelion and FLCL.

However, Gainax is not what it used to be. During the latter half of the 2000s, the studio began to lose some of its longstanding and most noteworthy talent. In 2006, Anno would depart to form Studio Khara and take the Evangelion IP with him. A few years later in 2011, fellow alumnus Hiroyuki Imaishi would follow suit and establish Studio TRIGGER. Then there's the situation with Gaina (note the lack of an "X"), previously known as Fukushima Gainax: despite being founded by the company in 2015, it soon became a legally-distinct entity that was later bought out in 2018; a sale which included the rights to Gainax properties such as Gunbuster and Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise sequel Uru in Blue. Toss in a number of troubling financial and legal issues, and the end result is an anime studio that was all but dead by the end of the 2010s, now operating out of an apartment. Perhaps most damning, Anno would publicly express severe disappointment towards the conduct of his old employers in an open letter published in 2020, saying the studio had taken several large loans from Studio Khara in the first half of the 2010s, but so far have failed to pay any of them back, and even all but outright stating that he strongly suspected that all that was left of the company was little more than an embezzlement scheme. But whatever may befall Gainax in the 2020s, be it a decisive death or surprise comeback, at least the "Daicon Spirit" lives on through their aforementioned descendant studios.

Studio Gainax has created the following:

    Original Productions 

Daicon Film-era: The period during which the founders were producing hobbyist films for showcasing at fan conventions.

  • Daicon III & IV: Two introductory animated short films for III (1981) and IV (1983), both iterations of a major Science Fiction convention in Japan. These were their first creations, before they had really formed the studio. Due to the truly staggering amounts of shout-outs to both anime and American science fiction in both, plus the latter using Electric Light Orchestra's song "Twilight" and featuring the protagonist in a Playboy Bunny costume (which is copyrighted by Playboy in the US), any release above and beyond 8mm copies sold at the convention and an unauthorized LaserDisc version based on said 8mm copies have been vetoed by pretty much every license holder.
  • 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.

Era One: Loosely defined as the period from the studio's official establishment in the mid-80s to the financial troubles of the 90s.

Era Two: The period from the mid-90s to the late 2000s, marked by the studio's high commercial and critical success.

Era Three: The current era, categorized as following the talent exodus of 2011 and plagued with financial and legal trouble.

    Production Assistance 

Studio Gainax and their works provide examples of:

  • Author Appeal: In relation to Japan Takes Over the World, no studio (besides Tokyo Movie Shinsha and Studio Ghibli) has ever done it with more boldness.
  • Animation Bump: Most (if not all) of their series exhibit this.
  • Art Evolution: Compare the style and design of Gainax's works before FLCL, between that and 2011, and after 2011, and you'll notice huge differences between each other.
  • Ass-Kicking 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 Pose in Japan.
  • Decon-Recon Switch: A meta example: they made GunBuster in the 1980s, Neon Genesis Evangelion in the 1990s, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the 2000s. The first two series even had the same director.
  • Development Hell
    • The live-action Evangelion film they, ADV Films, and WETA wanted to make throughout the 2000s.
    • Uru in Blue, a planned sequel to Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, 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 a couple of (admittedly spectacular) artbooks by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. By the time it will (supposedly) release, Gainax wouldn't even be a part of the project, with the film now being produced by Studio Gaina.
  • Fanservice: As far back as Diacon IV in 1984, fanservice has practically been a staple of their output and you'll be hard-pressed to find an anime from them that doesn't have some degree of fanservice. They are the trope codifier and trope namer for Gainaxing for a reason.
    "It's Gainax! Fanservice adds to our character development!"
  • In Name Only: In a sense, many feel that Gainax has become this since 2011. Studio TRIGGER is generally considered to be the Spiritual Successor to what Gainax was.
  • Limited Animation: Due to extreme budget shortages, Evangelion and Kare Kano had to make do with reused footage, static shots, and many other ways to cut corners. The effect the use of limited animation had on the last two episodes of Eva was a watershed moment in anime and is still one of the most notable things about the show even after the end of the Rebuild movies.
  • 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. The overarching theme of Gainax is Nothing makes sense.
  • Postmodernism: A staple of nearly all of their works.
  • Promoted Fanboy: The studio was founded by a bunch of young anime fans.
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Three staff members fell victim to this trope over the course of two decades:
    • The accounting fraud charges stemming from the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion became this trope to Takeshi Sawamura's career as president of Gainax. Not long after Evangelion saved Gainax from bankruptcy, it was discovered that the studio kept 1.56 billion yen in profits, which allowed the company to avoid paying 560 million yen in corporate taxes. Sawamura was eventually arrested and convicted in 1999 along with tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki. He resigned from Gainax the following year and longtime co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga took his spot as the company's third president.
    • Co-founder Takami Akai left his position during the airing of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in 2007. This occurred because during the show's run in Japan, one of the episodes received heavy criticism from fans over at 2ch due to guest director Osamu Kobayashi's different artstyle for the episode, and during a discussion on said episode made very negative comments towards the viewers and critcs. Once this was revealed to the public, he resigned. While he still does work in the industry, he has little involvement in major productions, likely as a result of this.
    • A far more fatal case related to Gainax management occured in late 2019, when it came out that representative director Tomohiro Maki had been arrested after it was outed he was a serial sexual harasser of underage girls. The incident would lead to Hideaki Anno's production company Studio Khara publicly distancing themselves from Gainax, leaving what was one of the most famous studios in the industry practically dead in the water. Even Anno, no stranger to controversy himself, was publicly disappointed that the studio's current management ranks allowed the situation to happen in the first place.
  • Shout-Out: To the brim, being a studio of Promoted Fanboys, hence why some of their works are also filled with self-references.
  • Trash of the Titans: According to Yasuhiro Takeda's memoir, "Gainax House", where most of the animators boarded in the 80s, was like this:
    Make no mistake, Gainax House was a den of rabid bachelors. Nobody cleaned or even straightened up — ever. We received a visit from Hiroe Suga (who for a time was staying at a boarding house in Tokyo and working as an author), she was literally sickened by the smell. The color drained from her face and she beat a very hasty retreat. Ultimately, we elected to move out of Gainax House. When the landlord came by to give the place a once-over and release us from our contract, he was stricken speechless. Almost immediately after we vacated, the house was demolished."

Alternative Title(s): Gainax

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