Nippon Animation

• 1. Introduction

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  Nippon Animation was founded on the 3rd of June 1975, but its story begins six years earlier in a moment of creative ambition that nearly broke the company before it started. A raccoon named Rascal serves today as the studio's official mascot, a small furry figure standing in for decades of children's television that shaped how Japan, Europe, and parts of the wider world experienced classic Western literature on screen. How does a Japanese animation studio come to adapt Johanna Spyri's Heidi, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, and Mark Twain in the same generation? And why did financial near-collapse in the mid-1970s end up producing two of the most influential figures in anime history? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Zuiyo Years

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  Shigeto Takahashi, a former manager at the animation company TCJ, founded Zuiyo Eizo in April 1969. The company began not as a full production house but as a planning and sales operation. Its early years were spent organizing animated series based on Western literature for a broadcast strand on Fuji TV, which would later become famous under the name World Masterpiece Theater. For those first projects, including Moomin and Andersen Stories, Zuiyo farmed out the actual animation work to Mushi Production and Tokyo Movie Shinsha. Takahashi had already attempted a Heidi series at TCJ back in 1967, but that pilot was shelved.

  By 1972, Zuiyo had built its own internal animation division and taken on its most ambitious project yet: a full adaptation of Spyri's Heidi. Both Isao Takahata and a young Hayao Miyazaki joined that production. The same period saw Zuiyo co-producing Vicky the Viking with German broadcasters ZDF and ORF, drawing on Runer Jonsson's book series. Both Heidi and Vicky the Viking reached Japanese audiences in 1974 and quickly found large audiences in Europe as well. A feature-length edit of the Heidi television series even received a VHS release in the United States in 1985. Despite that popularity, the production costs of selling these series to European buyers pushed Zuiyo into serious financial difficulty.

• 3. A Studio Born from Debt

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  In 1975, Zuiyo Eizo was split into two separate legal entities. Zuiyo Co., Ltd. absorbed the company's debt along with the rights to Heidi and the earlier series. Nippon Animation, by contrast, was constituted from Zuiyo Eizo's production staff, Miyazaki and Takahata among them, and retained rights to series the team was still actively working on, including A Dog of Flanders and Maya the Honey Bee. Kochi Motohashi was named company president. The split meant Nippon Animation started life unburdened by its predecessor's debt but carrying on the creative mission of the old studio. Zuiyo Co. itself continued operating until 1988, when its mounting debt caused its program copyrights to move to yet another separate company under the Zuiyo name.

  Maya the Honey Bee and A Dog of Flanders became the first World Masterpiece Theater entries produced under the Nippon Animation name. That franchise would define the studio's public identity for the next two decades. Miyazaki stayed with the studio through several productions but departed in 1979 while working on Anne of Green Gables, leaving mid-production to direct The Castle of Cagliostro, the Lupin III feature film.

• 4. World Masterpiece Theater

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  The World Masterpiece Theater slot on Fuji TV gave Nippon Animation a reliable annual showcase for literary adaptations throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. The series brought to Japanese television a long list of titles recognizable to Western readers: Tom Sawyer, Anne of Green Gables, Romeo's Blue Skies, Tales of Little Women, and Rascal the Raccoon, among others. Each production was a full-season commitment. The studio's output of adaptations from Western literature peaked with Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair in 1992, after which the studio shifted toward a more varied production slate.

  The choice of source material was deliberate and systematic. Nippon Animation treated children's literary classics from Europe and North America as a renewable resource, adapting them in a visual style that emphasized emotional realism and long-form storytelling. That approach required significant research and often close cooperation with European broadcasters and co-producers. Several titles, including Vicky the Viking, were German co-productions, and the studio later collaborated with BRB Internacional in Madrid on titles including Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and Around the World with Willy Fog.

• 5. Chibi Maruko-chan

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  Momoko Sakura's manga gave Nippon Animation its biggest domestic hit. Chibi Maruko-chan launched as an anime series in 1990, depicting the daily life of an unusually perceptive elementary-school-aged girl within her family and circle of friends. At its peak, the series achieved an audience rating of nearly 40 percent, making it the highest-rated anime program in Japanese history at the time. A film followed in December 1990, with a second theatrical release in December 1992. The series was revived in 1995 and has continued running since, with a third film released in 2015.

  Coji-Coji, a 1997 series, came from the same creator, Momoko Sakura, connecting her two most popular works under the Nippon Animation banner. The studio also produced an ongoing spin-off lineage from Rascal the Raccoon, including Pokapoka Mori no Rascal in 2006, Meitantei Rascal in 2014, and Araiguma Calcal-dan in 2025.

• 6. The Royalties Lawsuit

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  361 voice actors filed suit against Nippon Animation and its recording subsidiary, Onkyo Eizo System, seeking unpaid royalties from DVD releases of the studio's library. The case ran for four years. In 2003, a judge awarded the actors 87 million yen, equivalent to roughly 796,000 US dollars, but dismissed the claim directly against Nippon Animation, finding that actor compensation was the recording studio's responsibility. Both sides appealed. On the 25th of August 2004, the Tokyo High Court upheld the financial award against Onkyo Eizo and also reversed the dismissal, finding Nippon Animation jointly liable. Both companies were ordered to pay the 87 million yen together. The Supreme Court of Japan upheld that ruling in 2005.

  The case drew attention to royalty practices across the anime industry at a time when DVD releases of classic television series had become a significant secondary revenue stream for studios. Nippon Animation's long back catalogue, built over three decades of World Masterpiece Theater productions, gave the issue particular weight.