Madhouse, Inc.

• 1. Introduction

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  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 One-Punch Man.

  Who paid for the studio at the start, and who owns it now? Why do its animators turn up inside films made by other Japanese studios and by foreign companies? And what kind of workplace attracts directors whose styles differ so much from one another?

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• 2. Founders and Owners

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  Yutaka Fujioka, the founder of Tokyo Movie, supplied the money when Madhouse opened in 1972. The studio was started by animators who had left Mushi Production, among them Masao Maruyama, Osamu Dezaki and Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Tokyo Movie co-produced its earliest series, beginning with Aim for the Ace! in 1973.

  Studios founded in the same period, such as AIC and J.C.Staff, went in other directions. Madhouse built its strength mainly on television series and theatrical features. Early television work included Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi from 1976 to 1979, Jetter Mars in 1977 with Toei Animation, and Treasure Island in 1978-79.

  On the 8th of February 2011, Nippon TV became the studio's primary stockholder. It bought 128,667 newly issued shares at 7,772 yen each, for a total of 999,999,924 yen, about 12.4 million dollars. That purchase lifted its stake from 10.4 percent to 84.5 percent.

  Index Corporation, which had made Madhouse a subsidiary in February 2004, saw its holding fall from 60.91 percent to 10.54 percent. In March 2014, Nippon TV bought all of Index's remaining shares and reached 95 percent.

  In January 2012, between those two deals, Madhouse announced that it had acquired the animation rights to the Peanuts comic strip.

  Seven presidents have led Madhouse since 1972. Yasuo Oda was the first president and chief executive, serving from 1972 to 1980. Maruyama held the post for twenty years, until 2000, and then served as chief operating officer until 2011.

  Jungoo Murata, Masami Ochiai, Hiroyuki Okada and Masahiro Takahashi followed in turn. Takahashi served from 2015 to 2020 and was also chairman of the board. Sanae Tashiro, the seventh president and chief executive, has led the studio since 2021.

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• 3. Theatrical Ambitions

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  The Barefoot Gen films, released in 1983 and 1986, were among the first theatrical projects where Madhouse lent a hand. In 1984 came Lensman, an anime movie based on the space opera series by pulp science fiction author E.E. "Doc" Smith.

  Yoshiaki Kawajiri then steered the studio toward action. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he made a string of action titles, including Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku and Ninja Scroll.

  The late 1990s brought a change of audience. Madhouse aimed at younger women and girls with Morio Asaka's two Cardcaptor Sakura films, based on the popular television series.

  Metropolis, in the early 2000s, was an ambitious collaboration with Tezuka Productions. Rintaro directed it, adapting the manga by Osamu Tezuka. Madhouse had worked with that company before, making two feature-length films for Sanrio about Tezuka's unicorn character Unico.

  In 2003 the studio released Nasu: Summer in Andalusia, adapted from the manga Nasu by Iou Kuroda. Kitarō Kōsaka, a Studio Ghibli veteran, directed it. It was the first Japanese animated film ever selected for screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Kōsaka followed it with an OVA sequel in 2007.

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• 4. Directors Arrive

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  Morio Asaka, Masayuki Kojima and Satoshi Kon were the important directors Madhouse recruited during the 1990s. The 2000s added Mamoru Hosoda, Takeshi Koike and Mitsuo Iso, along with many younger television directors.

  Hosoda began his career with the studio in 2006, directing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. His acclaimed Summer Wars followed in 2009. In 2012 Madhouse co-produced Wolf Children with Studio Chizu, which Hosoda had newly founded.

  Others made their feature debuts in the same stretch. Kojima's theatrical debut was Forest of Piano in 2007, and Koike's was Redline in 2009. Sunao Katabuchi directed Mai Mai Miracle that same year.

  Yona Yona Penguin, also from 2009, was the company's first CG animated film. A theatrical version of Trigun, called Trigun: Badlands Rumble, arrived in 2010. In 2011 The Tibetan Dog appeared as a co-production with China.

  Satoshi Kon made all four of his feature films at Madhouse: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. His television series Paranoia Agent was made there too. He was also working on a fifth film with the studio, The Dreaming Machine, but it was left incomplete when he died in 2010.

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• 5. Manga Partners

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  Naoki Urasawa's Yawara! reached television in 1989 and ran until 1992. It was the first of several Urasawa stories that Madhouse adapted. Master Keaton ran from 1998 to 2000, and Monster followed in 2004-05. Masayuki Kojima directed both of those.

  The studio has also animated a number of titles by CLAMP. Tokyo Babylon came as an OVA series between 1992 and 1994. X was made twice, first as a theatrical movie in 1996 and then as a television series in 2001-02.

  The Cardcaptor Sakura television series ran from 1998 to 2000, and Chobits followed in 2002. The sequel to Cardcaptor Sakura, titled Clear Card, arrived in 2018, preceded by a prologue OVA in 2017.

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• 6. Western Commissions

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  Between 2010 and 2014, Madhouse worked with Marvel Entertainment and Sony Pictures on anime versions of Blade, Iron Man, Wolverine, X-Men, Black Widow and Punisher. In 2017 it teamed with Marvel, Disney+ and Walt Disney Japan on an adaptation of the Avengers.

  Marvel's rival DC Entertainment was a partner as well. With Warner Premiere and Warner Brothers, Madhouse made an anthology adaptation of Batman, released in 2008 as Batman: Gotham Knight. It made Ultraviolet as a series with Warner Brothers and Supernatural as a series with Sony.

  An animated Highlander film came from work with Imagi Animation Studios and Davis-Panzer Productions. Between 2008 and 2010 the studio worked with Disney on the first and second arcs of Stitch!, a total of 56 episodes.

  Not every commission reached the screen. Top Cow Productions, an imprint of Image Comics, hired Madhouse to adapt Aphrodite IX as anime. The project was suddenly canceled without any explanation.

  The traffic also ran the other way. In 1985 the studio did uncredited work on the third season of The Jetsons, alongside Hanna-Barbera and Toei Animation. In 1986 it provided uncredited key and in-between animation for The Transformers: The Movie.

  Todd McFarlane's Spawn, made with HBO Animation, ran from 1997 to 1999. X-Men: Evolution, made with Film Roman and Marvel Studios, ran from 2000 to 2003. Uncredited work also went into The Boondocks, which aired from 2005 to 2014.

  Many such cartoons passed through DR Movie, the South Korean studio in which Madhouse has invested. A second subsidiary, Madbox, mainly handles computer graphics.

  The Animatrix, released in 2003, drew on Madhouse alongside the Wachowskis and other famed Japanese animators and studios. Madhouse particularly worked on the short films Program and World Record. In 2006 it assisted with the animated sections of Hood of Horror, a horror-comedy anthology made with the rapper Snoop Dogg.

  2010 also saw publication of Devil, a manga made for the American market as a collaboration with Dark Horse Comics. Torajiro Kishi wrote and drew it. Madhouse also took part in animating Ogrest, la légende, a Wakfu television special made with Ankama Japan.

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• 7. Helping Hands

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  My Neighbor Totoro, in 1988, is the earliest Studio Ghibli film on the list where Madhouse contributed key animation assistance. Spirited Away in 2001, Howl's Moving Castle in 2004 and The Secret World of Arrietty in 2010 followed.

  The same help went to Tomomi Mochizuki's I Can Hear the Sea in 1993 and to Goro Miyazaki's Tales from Earthsea in 2006.

  Video games gave the studio another outlet. Madhouse designed the characters for Virus, the first installment of the Virus Buster Serge franchise from Hudson Soft. For Square Enix it made the OVA Last Order: Final Fantasy VII.

  With Capcom, Madhouse made Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie and Street Fighter: The Animated Series.

  Opening sequences became a specialty. Madhouse animated the intro cutscene for the PlayStation game Wild Arms and the opening movie for Persona 4 Golden on the PlayStation Vita. It also did the opening for the PSP remake of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. As recently as 2022, it animated a trailer for Echoes of Mana.

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• 8. Honors and Horizons

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  Two Japan Academy Prizes and four Grand Prizes in the Animation Division at the Japan Media Arts Festival belong to Madhouse's films. Collectively they have also won two Gertie Awards, two Tokyo Anime Awards for Animation of the Year, and five Animation Kobe Feature Film Awards.

  Six Mainichi Film Awards are on the list as well, split evenly between three Ōfuji Noburō Awards and three Animation Grand Awards.

  The production calendar keeps filling. Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom opened on the 20th of September 2024. Liar Game and Scenes from Awajima are listed for 2026, and a film titled Ghost is listed for 2027.

  Frieren: Beyond Journey's End began in 2023, with a second season listed for 2026. A third season is listed for 2027, the same year as Ghost.

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