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Animation studios in Tokyo

  • GEMBA (studio)GEMBA, a Japanese animation studio, spent ten years as a behind-the-scenes contractor before its 2016 debut.
  • MillepenseeMillepensee is a Tokyo animation studio run by a married couple. A director and a producer founded it in 2013.
  • Studio GhibliStudio Ghibli is named after a hot Saharan wind. Miyazaki wanted it to blow through a stagnating animation industry.
  • CoMix Wave FilmsToho bought a 6.09 percent stake in CoMix Wave Films on the 15th of October 2024.
  • Liden FilmsLiden Films, an anime studio founded in 2012, now has five branches. They span Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.
  • Bandai Namco FilmworksJapanese fans kept voting for one anime studio, Sunrise, for five decades. It is now called Bandai Namco Filmworks.
  • Studio PonocStudio Ponoc took its name from a Serbo-Croatian word for midnight. It signifies the start of a new day.
  • Science SaruThe first home of Science Saru, a Japanese animation studio now based in Kichijōji, Musashino, Tokyo, was a small suburban house. Someone had converted it into an improvised animation studio. By the end of 2013, the whole company numbered…
  • Mushi ProductionOsamu Tezuka built Mushi Production in 1961 to compete with his former employer.
  • Studio PierrotStudio Pierrot, the anime studio behind Naruto and Bleach, was founded by four animators in May 1979.
  • A-1 PicturesA-1 Pictures began in 2005 when Aniplex spun off its animation division into a new studio.
  • SatelightBit the Cupid was the world's first fully digitally-animated television series. It was Satelight's first project.
  • Nippon AnimationNippon Animation was born when debt split its parent studio in two.
  • TMS EntertainmentLittle Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland took nearly a decade to make and never recouped its cost.
  • Wit StudioWit Studio made Attack on Titan from its first season in 2013 through its third.
  • OLM (studio)The Japanese studio behind Pokémon began as nine people who walked out of two other studios.
  • J.C.StaffJ.C.Staff is a Japanese animation studio, founded in January 1986 by Tomoyuki Miyata. Miyata had previously worked at Tatsunoko Production. The studio's first release, Yōtōden, followed in 1987. Its credit list now reaches from that debut…
  • Bones (studio)The anime studio Bones got its name from its eight-person starting team.
  • Madhouse, Inc.Madhouse is a Japanese animation studio with only about 70 employees, and even that number rises and falls with the productions underway. Yet this small crew has animated Death Note, Trigun, Parasyte: The Maxim and the first season of…
  • MAPPAAt seventy, Masao Maruyama left Madhouse to start the anime studio MAPPA.
  • Production I.GQuentin Tarantino traveled to Production I.G's offices in person to ask for help with Kill Bill Vol. 1.
  • Toei AnimationIn 2022, a ransomware attack on Toei Animation interrupted broadcasts of One Piece.
  • UfotableIn 2025, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba , The Movie: Infinity Castle became the highest-grossing anime film of all time. It passed the earlier record held by the studio's own Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba , The Movie: Mugen Train,…
  • GainaxGainax began with a student film about a girl who waters a withered radish. In it, the radish turns into a spaceship.
  • Studio TriggerStudio Trigger, a Japanese animation studio, asked the public for money on the 8th of July 2013. The request was for $150,000, enough to pay for a second episode of a short film called Little Witch Academia. Fans met that target in under…
  • Studio 4°CA Tokyo animation studio is named for the temperature at which water is densest. It was founded in 1986.

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