OLM (studio)

• 1. Introduction

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  OLM began its life not as a household name, but as Oriental Light and Magic, a small Japanese animation company founded on the 3rd of October 1990 by nine people who had all walked out of two other studios to build something of their own. That name was a deliberate nod to Industrial Light and Magic, the legendary American special effects company. The ambition was plain from day one. Within a decade, this upstart studio in Setagaya, Tokyo would be producing one of the most-watched children's anime franchises in human history. How did a founding team of nine former employees from Studio Gallop and OB Planning turn a shared professional background into a studio that would go on to animate Pokémon, Berserk, Odd Taxi, and The Apothecary Diaries? The answers lie in how OLM was structured, how it grew, and what it chose to make.

• 2. Nine Founders, One Studio

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  Toshiaki Okuno, Shukichi Kanda, Shoji Ota, Kunihiko Yuyama, Naohito Takahashi, Yuriko Chiba, Nobuyuki Wasaki, Tsukasa Koitabashi, and Takaya Mizutani signed their names to the founding documents of Oriental Light and Magic, Inc. on the 3rd of October 1990. All nine came from either Studio Gallop or OB Planning, which meant they already knew how to work together before the company existed. That shared history shaped how OLM operated from the start, with production divided into distinct teams often named after those original figures. In 1995, Okuno founded a separate CG-focused subsidiary, OLM Digital, which became the main visual effects and computer graphics arm behind a large portion of the parent studio's output. Okuno led both companies simultaneously as representative director from their establishment all the way until the 1st of April 2024, when he stepped down from that role. Hideki Kama, then vice president, was named his successor at the main studio, while Misako Saka took over as representative director of OLM Digital. Okuno did not disappear from the company entirely; he remained on the board of directors.

• 3. A Studio of Teams

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  OLM operates not as a single monolithic production house but as a collection of semi-independent production lines, each named after its Animation Producer. The structure resembles the arrangement used by studios like Bandai Namco Filmworks and Bones. As of 2025, six such teams are active. Several of the original founding-era teams are now defunct. TEAM KOITABASHI, one of the oldest, is assumed to have disbanded after its last credited work, Pochitto Hatsumei: Pikachin-Kit, with no activity recorded since 2020. TEAM WASAKI likewise went quiet after Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama in 2018. Not every team that ended simply dissolved. TEAM IWASA disbanded in 2007 after completing Utawarerumono, but in doing so it spun off and established the studio White Fox. Similarly, TEAM KOJIMA disbanded in 2022 following Summer Time Rendering and gave rise to Bug Films. Some teams were reshuffled rather than disbanded; TEAM KATO was restructured into TEAM KUMEMURA after episode 45 of Pokémon Horizons: The Series, with Hiroyuki Kato staying on as Creative Producer. That fluidity, teams forming, merging, spinning off, and occasionally folding, has been one of the defining characteristics of how OLM has evolved.

• 4. Pokémon and the Children's Franchise Engine

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  Pokémon began its run on the 1st of April 1997 and has not stopped since, accumulating more than 1,300 episodes across multiple production teams. It is the series most tightly associated with OLM's identity, even though the studio has rotated three different internal teams through the project over the decades. TEAM OTA handled it from 1997 to 2006, TEAM IGUCHI took over from 2006 to 2009, TEAM KATO carried it from 2010 to 2024, and TEAM KUMEMURA holds the reins now. The first Pokémon feature film, Pokémon: The First Movie, reached theaters on the 18th of July 1998, and the franchise has produced more than 20 theatrical films since then. OLM also contributed the Pokémon Generations web series in 2016, a celebration of the franchise's 20th anniversary, and followed it with Pokémon Evolutions in 2021 for the 25th anniversary. Beyond Pokémon, OLM developed a substantial portfolio of children's series: Yo-kai Watch ran for 214 episodes between 2014 and 2018, multiple Beyblade Burst series filled the schedule through the late 2010s, and the Inazuma Eleven franchise generated a sprawling catalogue of TV series, OVAs, films, and game animations beginning in 2008. That combination of a dominant flagship property with a rotating supporting cast of toy and card game adaptations gave OLM a reliable production infrastructure and a consistent relationship with major toy and game companies.

• 5. Beyond Children's Fare

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  Berserk premiered on the 7th of October 1997, just six months after Pokémon launched, a scheduling accident that neatly captures how OLM has always been two studios at once. TEAM IGUCHI animated all 25 episodes of that dark fantasy series adapted from Kentaro Miura's manga. Years later, the studio's range in mature programming proved equally surprising with Odd Taxi in 2021, an original work co-produced with P.I.C.S. and helmed by TEAM YOSHIOKA, and with Komi Can't Communicate, a quiet comedy from the same year. The Apothecary Diaries, a co-production with Toho Animation Studio that began on the 22nd of October 2023 and ran for 24 episodes, drew significant attention and generated enough demand for a second season, which ran through mid-2025, and a theatrical film scheduled for December 2026. The early OVA catalogue also reflects range. Gunsmith Cats, a three-episode adaptation of Kenichi Sonoda's manga, arrived in 1995 and 1996 via TEAM KOITABASHI. Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple ran for 39 episodes between 2004 and 2005 under TEAM IWASA. Catwoman: Hunted, a direct-to-video film released on the 8th of February 2022, added a DC Comics property to the list.

• 6. Live Action, CG, and Music

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  OLM Digital, the subsidiary Toshiaki Okuno launched in 1995, took the lead on computer graphics work across the studio's projects and eventually branched into its own distinct productions. Silk Road Kids Yuto in 2006 was an original 3DCG series produced entirely by OLM Digital. Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, a 52-episode co-production that ran from 2013 to 2015, was another all-CG venture. Rudolf the Black Cat, released theatrically on the 6th of August 2016, was co-produced with Sprite Animation Studios via OLM Digital. In live action, TEAM MIIKE operates as the division responsible for works directed by Takashi Miike, a filmmaker who has worked on multiple projects within the OLM umbrella. The Girls x Heroine! franchise, a run of live-action tokusatsu series for younger audiences, has been produced continuously since 2017, with the sixth entry RizSta -Top of Artists!- airing in 2022. On the music side, OLM Digital produced CGI elements for Koji Kikkawa's Koi No Jellyfish in 2003, and TEAM OTA worked on Kanye West's Good Morning video in 2008, which was directed by Takashi Murakami. The K-pop group Twice had their Candy Pop video produced by TEAM KATO in 2018.