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GAINAX Evangelion Production Company

GAINAX is a Japanese anime production company co-founded by Anno Hideaki and has been successful in releasing animated works such as Neon Genesis
Evangelion, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Gunbuster, FLCL, Gurren Lagann and many more. Best known as the animation studio that launched the global Evangelion franchise and sparked the craze.

History

The studio was founded under another name, "Daicon Film," by Hideaki Anno while he was in college with fellow students Yoshiyuki Sadamoto , Hiroyuki Yamaga, Takami Akai, Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda, and Shinji Higuchi.

The group began creating animated shorts and presenting them at competitive conventions. Their very first project was Daicon III (1981) at the 22nd Annual All-Japan National SF Convention. Daicon III was a crudely designed film about a girl with a radish that transforms into a spaceship. Their first breakthrough in the industry was Daicon IV (1983), about a young woman in a bunny suit battling a variety of space creatures.

This Daicon IV film made them a household name in the animation studio world. In 1985, Daicon Film changed its name to GAINAX, taking a Tottori Prefectural dialect phrase "Gaina," meaning "giant" or "big," and adding an "x."

Evangelion Success

Of all the series, live action, and films released by GAINAX, the Evangelion franchise is arguably the studio's most successful. In total, Evangelion is estimated to have grossed over 150 billion yen, or about $1.2 billion to date. However, original co-founder Hideaki Anno left the studio in 2007 to start his own company, Studio Khara , and a series of legal battles, GAINAX now has no role in new iterations of the Evangelion franchise. Including the new 2020 Evangelion Rebuild film , Rebuild of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 None

Awards

In 1991, GAINAX's creation Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water received first prize at the
Animage Animation Grand Prix. GAINAX's most famous series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, also won the award in 1995 and 1996. The End of Evangelion: The Movie received the same award in 1997.

Controversial

In the midst of Evangelion's success, GAINAX was approached by the Tokyo Regional Tax Bureau on suspicion of tax evasion on profits accrued by the Evangelion franchise. The Tax Bureau later revealed that GAINAX had hidden approximately 1.56 billion yen in taxable income. Then-GAINAX president Takeshi Sawamura and tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki were arrested in 1999 for tax evasion, concealing sums of money in other company accounts and safe deposit boxes.

In August 2011, AD Vision, an American counterpart to the anime, filed a lawsuit against GAINAX over the live-action rights to Evangelion due to GAINAX's refusal to accept an optional payment, which caused it to lose the opportunity to produce a live-action film with a major production company. GAINAX claimed that the live-action film was a breach of contract.

In December 2019, Tomohiro Maki, the deputy director of GAINAX, was arrested for sexual assault and indecent exposure toward a prospective voice actress. Maki was not appointed director of GAINAX until October of that year.