Gainax

Gainax is a an anime studio most famous for the television series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The studio was formed in the early 1980s as Daicon Film by university students Hideaki Anno, Yoshiyuki Sadamato, Akai Takami, and Higuchi Shinji. 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, Genesis Climber Mospeada, and many others) until she finally reaches a desert plain and pours a glass of water on a daikon radish, which immediately grows into a huge spaceship and beams her aboard. While this animated short was ambitious, its animation quality 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 Veritech, a Pern dragon, Aslan, a Klingon battle cruiser, Power Rangers characters, Spider-Man, and a pan across a vast array of hundreds of other characters) as she surfs through the sky on the sword Excalibur. The action was set to the song Twilight from the group Electric Light Orchestra. This short firmly established Daicon Film as a talented new anime studio. The studio changed its name to Gainax in 1985. The bunny girl from the Daicon IV short was parodied in an episode of Furi Kuri, in which the main female character dresses up as her and exhibits some of the same abilities. Gainax works include:\n* Abenobashi Magical Shopping District\n* Blazing Transfer Student (a.k.a. Honō no Tenkōsei)\n* FLCL (a.k.a. Furi Kuri, a.k.a. Fooly Cooly)\n* Gunbuster (a.k.a. Aim for the Top! Gunbuster, a.k.a. Top o Nerae! Gunbuster)\n* His and Her Circumstances (a.k.a. Kareshi Kanojo no Jijō, a.k.a. KareKano)\n* Love & Pop\n* Mahoromatic\n* Melody of Oblivion (a.k.a. Bōkyaku no Senritsu)\n* Modern Love's Silliness\n* Nadia (a.k.a. The Secret of Blue Water, a.k.a Fushigi no Umi no Nadia)\n* Neon Genesis Evangelion\n* Otaku no Video\n* Puchi Puri Yuushi\n* This Ugly and Beautiful World (a.k.a. Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai, a.k.a. Konomini)\n* Wings of Honneamise (a.k.a. Royal Space Force) Gainax has also produced a number of computer games, most recently a strip Mahjong game featuring Evangelion characters, and its most famous game Princess Maker which was later adapted as Puchi Puri Yūshi.

External links

• GAINAX NET—The company's Web site\n*Gainax Network Systems—The English version of the site\n*The Most Holy Gainax Cult—a fan site

Category:Animation studio \n\n\n\n\n\n