Gainax files for bankruptcy

In the most tragic of 40th anniversary surprises, Studio Gainax has filed for bankruptcy. 

Starting life as a project by University friends in the early 80's and calling the venture Daicon Film, Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Takami Akai, Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda and Shinji Higuchi got to work on an animated short for Japanese anime convention Daicon III in 1981 and after more successful projects - most notably their follow up video for Daicon IV - changed the studio name to Gainax.

Having created many iconic anime that have shaped the cultural anime landscape in Japan, not least Gunbuster, Nadia, Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL, the company filed for bankruptcy on May 29th, detailing the issues that brought events to this sad conclusion.

Truthfully the studio had been bleeding talent for years, with Studio Khara and Studio Trigger being major beneficiaries while Gainax mostly survived on licensing IP. Unfortunately the owners made some rather unfortunate decisions until the studio collapsed under the weight of financial mismanagement and unrecoverable debts.

Studio Khara tried to help Gainax out of its financial problems and, following the bankruptcy announcement, issued a statement on its website, some of which we've reproduced below.

It's sad to see such a seminal creative studio meet such an ignominious end, but spiritually the studio will live on in the wider anime industry.

Excerpt from Studio Khara's statement: 

Since we had been aware of Gainax's poor management and the existence of debt for some time, Anno expressed his concerns about the management and made proposals to improve the management, but it was not accepted for a long time, and even in such a situation, we accepted the offer from the management at the time and provided a supportive loan as a color. However, the situation at Gainax did not change, and the situation continued to deteriorate, and in 2019, the representative director at the time was arrested in a criminal case unrelated to the management of the corporation.

After the arrest of the former CEO of Gainax, Hideaki Anno, the representative director of our company, asked for the cooperation of KADOKAWA, King Records Co., Ltd., and Trigger Co., Ltd. in order to prevent reputational damage to related works centered on the "Evangelion" series. We have been working with each partner company to solve the problem of non-payment to studios, writers, and creators in the anime industry and to prevent the dissipation of intellectual property and materials.

However, as stated in Gainax's press release, by the time we grasped the internal situation, we were already in a state of insolvency that we could not handle, and Gainax has determined that it will be difficult to continue operations.

In light of this situation, with the cooperation of each production committee, we proceeded with the confirmation and arrangement of the rights to the works and intellectual property, and worked to transfer the rights to the companies and individuals who were deemed most suitable, so that creators, original authors, and writers could somehow continue to produce and operate their works in the future.

In order to eliminate the debt to many people involved in the industry as much as possible, we considered supporting from our company, but it led to an unreasonable situation where we had to guarantee the debts of the former management and the former representative director, and we were not able to fully repay the debt.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the newly structured directors and the companies to which they belong to the board for their cooperation in the reorganization and transfer of intellectual property, which put writers and creators first. We would also like to express our gratitude to the production committee for their efforts.

Finally, it is unfortunate that an anime studio with a history of less than 40 years has met such an end. The trademarks and titles of GAINAX are acquired and managed by our company, as stated in the release from Gainax.