Movies - Gainax

	Movies - Gainax

Gainax (ガイナックス) (pronounced 'guy-nax') is a Japanese anime studio most famous for the television series Neon Genesis Evangelion. Gainax is known for its ambitious, experimental anime and controversial endings. Throughout its history, Gainax has been plagued by budgetary problems and poor management, and in the wake of Evangelion's success, Gainax evaded taxes and its President, Takeshi Sawamura, was sentenced to jail for accounting fraud.

Although until Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gainax typically worked on stories created in-house, the studio has increasingly adapted existing manga like Kare Kano and Mahoromatic into anime shows. Gainax could be said to produce two types of anime today: commercial works like Mahoromatic and He is My Master versus more experimental works that follow the company's traditions, such as FLCL and Gunbuster 2. In addition to anime production, Gainax relies heavily on merchandising its famous properties. Even though the show ended in 1996, Evangelion video games, t-shirts, and accessories are still being produced.

History

The studio was formed in the early 1980s as Daicon Film by university students Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Takami Akai, and Shinji Higuchi. Their first project was to make an animated short for the 20th Annual Japan National SF Convention, also known as Daicon III, held in 1981 in Osaka, Japan. The short is about a little girl who fights all sorts of monsters, robots, and spaceships from earlier science fiction TV shows (including Ultraman
, Space Battleship Yamato, Star Trek, Star Wars, Godzilla
and many others) until she finally reaches a desert plain and pours a glass of water on a dried-out daikon radish, which immediately ressurects itself and grows into a huge spaceship and beams her aboard. While this animated short was ambitious, its animation quality was rough and low-quality. An interpretation of the short that has floated around the net is that the water represents creativity and imagination, and the monsters and other adversaries confronting the girl represent those who try to quash the creative spirit for whatever reason.

The group made a much bigger splash at the 22nd Annual Japan National SF Convention, Daicon IV, in 1983. The short they produced for this convention started with a recap of the original short, showing highlights of the little girl's adventures with much better animation quality; then it showed the girl all grown up: wearing a Playboy bunny suit, fighting an even wider selection of creatures from all sorts of science fiction and fantasy movies and novels (appearances include Darth Vader, an Alien, a Macross Valkyrie, a Pern dragon, Aslan, a Klingon battle cruiser, Spider-Man, and a pan across a vast array of hundreds of other characters) as she surfs through the sky on the sword Stormbringer. The action was set to the song Twilight from the group Electric Light Orchestra. The use of this song, however, was unlicensed, and so all recent releases of the Daicon IV short (LD and DVD) have been silent, animation-only releases. The song was used again, legitimately licensed for the opening of the Japanese live-action TV series "Densha Otoko," which had opening animation by GONZO. The Daicon IV short firmly established Daicon Film as a talented new anime studio. The studio changed its name to Gainax in 1985.

Works

Gainax works include (year given is that of first broadcast, theatre showing, or publishing):

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise
(1987)
Gunbuster (1988) ("Top o Nerae!" or "Aim for the Top!")
Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990) ("Fushigi no Umi no Nadia")
Otaku no Video
(1992)
Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) ("Shin Seiki Evangelion")
Love & Pop
(live action) (1998)
His and Her Circumstances (1998) ("Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo" or "Kare Kano")
Modern Love's Silliness (1999)
FLCL (2000) (pronounced "Furi Kuri," or "Fooly Cooly" in English)
Mahoromatic (2001)
Shiki-jitsu (2001)
Puchi Puri Yuushi (2002)
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi (2002)
Melody of Oblivion (2004) ("Boukyaku no Senritsu")
This Ugly and Beautiful World (2004) ("Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai" or "Konomini")
Re: Cutie Honey (2004)
Diebuster (2004) ("Top o Nerae! 2 or "Aim for the Top! 2")
He is My Master (2005)

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Gainax ]

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