It’s not day by day that you simply get up to discover a firm with a legacy like anime studio Gainax is shutting its doorways. The prolific studio behind works like FLCL, Gurren Lagann, and the legendary Neon Genesis Evangelion has been struggling financially for a number of years. On June 7, the corporate introduced it’s submitting for chapter and shutting down.
Regardless of the status related to the studio, Gainax has been coping with monetary woes all through its almost 40-year historical past. As IGN lays out, the studio had been marred by manufacturing points, tax fraud within the ‘90s, and a number of lawsuits —together with some involving Studio Khara, which was based by Gainax founder and Evangelion director Hideaki Anno. All of those points snowballed over the a long time till lastly a debt assortment firm filed a lawsuit in opposition to Gainax this Could, resulting in a chapter submitting on Could 29. A press release on the corporate’s official web site explains that the corporate had racked up lots of debt, particularly within the years since 2012. The studio lays the blame on the ft of firm administration, who operated the corporate as if it had been their personal property, in response to Automaton’s translation.
The studio is closing, however the Gainax trademark has been transferred to Studio Khara. That firm has launched its personal assertion on its web site, explaining that whereas Anno left the corporate in 2007 and have become a shareholder at Gainax, makes an attempt by him and others to right the studio’s poor administration couldn’t proper the ship given its a long time of debt. Studio Khara will work to switch IP rights to corporations and creatives. The assertion indicators off expressing remorse that Gainax’s work has ended on this be aware.
It’s a disgrace that Gainax got here crashing down like this, and at the same time as somebody who has watched all of Neon Genesis Evangelion and its films, I didn’t notice simply how fraught the studio’s state of affairs had been over time till I noticed the chapter information. Simply one other reminder that even corporations that create a number of the most beloved works of their medium generally is a trainwreck internally. What a catastrophe.
