Gainax

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since October 2006.
DVD cover of North American release of Otaku no Video.
DVD cover of North American release of Otaku no Video.

Gainax Company, Limited (株式会社ガイナックス Kabushki Gaisha Gainakkusu?) (pronounced "guy-nax") is a Japanese anime studio most well known for the series Neon Genesis Evangelion and its ambitious, experimental works and ambiguous endings. [1]

Until Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gainax typically worked on stories created in-house, but the studio has increasingly developed anime adaptations of existing manga like Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou and Mahoromatic. Gainax could be said to produce two types of anime today[citation needed]: 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 heavily merchandises its famous properties. For example, even though Evangelion ended in 1996, games, t-shirts, and various other memorabilia are still being produced.

Contents

[edit] 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 film 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 resurrects itself and grows into a huge spaceship and beams her aboard. While this animated short was ambitious, its animation was rough and low-quality.

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, preventing the short from being officially released on DVD, making the limited laserdisc release (Daicon Film) of the Daicon shorts very rare and highly sought after. 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.

In 1995 Gainax produced perhaps their best known series, the commercially successful and critically acclaimed Neon Genesis Evangelion. In the wake of Evangelion's success, Gainax was accused of tax evasion and its president, Takeshi Sawamura, was sentenced to jail for accounting fraud[2].

Gainax marked their 20th anniversary with the production of the sequel to Gunbuster, Diebuster.

[edit] Works

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

Gainax has also produced a number of computer games, including a strip mahjong game featuring Evangelion characters, and its most famous games, the Princess Maker series, which was later adapted as Puchi Puri Yūshi.

[edit] Daicon Tokusatsu fan films

As Daicon Films, Gainax was also notable for making a series of tokusatsu fan film shorts in the 1980s[citation needed], usually parodies of monster movies and superhero shows, which have gotten lots of favorable media coverage[citation needed]. These productions included:

  • Patriotic Task Force Dai-Nippon (愛国戦隊大日本 Aikoku Sentai Dai-Nippon?) (1982)—A parody of the popular Super Sentai shows, which is also a satire of the Russo-Japanese War. The title team is based on Japanese culture (of course) and the villains, the evil Red Bear Empire led by "Death Kremlin", are Russians. In this "episode", Red Bear confronts our heroes with the giant shark monster, Minsk Mask, while attempting to brainwash the children of Japan by swapping out the pages of their textbooks with red paper. Shinji Higuchi worked on the special effects.[citation needed]
  • Swift Hero Noutenki (快傑のーてんき Kaiketsu Nōtenki?) (1982)—A parody of Shotaro Ishinomori's Kaiketsu Zubat; the name of the hero's alter-ego (Ken Hayakawa) is the same, but the hero wears a sillier costume! Daicon/Gainax producer Yasuhiro Takeda played Ken Hayakawa. It spawned three sequels: "Kaiketsu Noutenki 2" in which he faces off against a mechanical clone of himself, Mecha Noutenki; "Noutenki in USA" where the hero walks around in San Francisco, California, seeing the sights whilst in costume; and a supposed role-playing video.[citation needed]
  • Return of Ultraman (帰ってきたウルトラマン Kaettekita Urutoraman?) (1983)—A same-title parody of Return of Ultraman, with some impressive special effects, even for a low budget. The usual Ultraman derring-do ensues, only replace New Ultraman/Ultraman Jack with a giant Hideaki Anno in a vinyl Ultraman trick-or-treat outfit and glasses! Anno directed while Takami Akai directed the special effects.[3]

[edit] Trivia

  • After a running gag where scenes were depicted in manga form on-screen, FLCL's characters make a tongue-in-cheek remark about the use of stills in animation (something for which Gainax had become notorious) being a cheap and annoying budget saving device. Ironically, one of the characters laments that the manga scenes in FLCL were "hard work" but necessary, in order to avoid getting "accused of being lazy".[citation needed]
  • Several Kare Kano animated sequences and clothing designs are remarkably similar to Neon Genesis Evangelion, as well as a handful of more overt references. (For example, the shot of Miyazawa in Asuka's yellow dress and her imitation of EVA-01's berserker mode in one episode.)[citation needed]
  • Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi contains dozens references to anime, including Gainax. The third episode features a giant robot "suit up" sequence using musical identical to the EVA unit launching sequence in Neon Genesis Evangelion.[citation needed]
  • In FLCL the character Haruko dons a playboy bunny outfit in homage to the Daicon Bunny (see above).
  • In American fandom, Gainax popularized the term and usage of fan service, and unusually precise animation of a woman's chest bouncing became known as "the Gainax bounce" or "gainaxing"[5], first seen in a scene of Gunbuster featuring Noriko Takaya.[6]
  • "Gainax" has recently been used as a verb on occasion; as in "to gainax." Its meaning is generally understood to mean taking an anime that is perfectly good up until the last couple of episodes, and to then deliver a "Gainax ending" that is regarded as confusing and unsatisfying by some.[citation needed]
  • Gainax have also worked on a 1987 promotional video for the song "Marionette" by Boøwy.[7]
  • The Character known as Gainax Boy was created in 2002 as an amalgamation of various Gainax Male Characters and mannerisms.
  • In 2006, Gainax even collaborated with a Japanese fashion doll company to create Momoko-based "Gainax Girls" fashion dolls.[8]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Gainax Ending" on Television Tropes Wiki
  2. ^ Anime News Service - July 1999 Anime News: President Of Gainax Arrested. Yomiuri Shimbun (1999-07-13). Retrieved on 2006-10-23.
  3. ^ Takeda, Yasuhiro (2005). The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax and the Men Who Created Evangelion. ADV Manga, 109. ISBN 1413902340. 
  4. ^ Takeda, Yasuhiro (2005). The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax and the Men Who Created Evangelion. ADV Manga, 109-110. ISBN 1413902340. 
  5. ^ Otaku-Megami (1993-02-17). Otaku-Slang! ^o^. rec.arts.anime. Retrieved on 2006-10-23.
  6. ^ "The Gainax Bounce and other marvels."
  7. ^ Takeda, Yasuhiro (2005). The Notenki Memoirs: Studio Gainax and the Men Who Created Evangelion. ADV Manga, 173. ISBN 1413902340. 
  8. ^ Momoko Doll as Gainax Girls
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../g/a/i/Gainax.html"