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.
Gainax is known for impressive visuals, gripping storylines, confusing plot points, and running out of money before the series is finished. This last tendency has been a particular problem in the past; the last episodes of Gainax series tend to be
lower in quality and take a lot of shortcuts. 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. 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. Thankfully, they seemed to have learned their lesson by
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (see below).
Click here
◊ to see some of the many characters created by Gainax over its lifetime.
As a small note, they have 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 & Stocking with Garterbelt, and one episode of
FLCL also worked with
Production I.G on
Dead Leaves.
Recently they seemed to have switched to doing
shonen anime with smaller budgets and routine animation, rather than the expressive style they were known for, due to many of their best animators quitting and moving to do work themselves at the same time.
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 (With 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.
- 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 & 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
- Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian
- Medaka Box
The company has also done minor work in the following:
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.
- 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).
- Fanservice: Tons and tons of it.
- 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.
- Postmodernism: 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, It's Not Symbolic?
◊ to see some of the many characters created by Gainax over its lifetime.As a small note, they have 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 & Stocking with Garterbelt, and one episode of FLCL also worked with Production I.G on Dead Leaves.Recently they seemed to have switched to doing shonen anime with smaller budgets and routine animation, rather than the expressive style they were known for, due to many of their best animators quitting and moving to do work themselves at the same time.
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