Gainax

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"['Gainaxxy'?] I never know what people mean when they say that. It started out to mean big, bouncy breasts, then became existentialist angst, then became hyper-kinetic psycho-sexual slapstick. What's it mean now?"
"All of that, at once."

Gainax, also known as Studio Gainax, is one of the better-known Anime studios, having created such series as Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia), Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and causing the creation of such terms as Gainaxing and the Gainax Ending.

Gainax is known for impressive visuals, gripping storylines, confusing plot points, and running out of money before the series is finished. This last tendency has been a particular problem in the past; the last episodes of Gainax series tend to be lower in quality and take a lot of shortcuts. The last two episodes of Evangelion were produced when the studio had been cut off by the main sponsor, and mostly reused clips from previous episodes with different dialogue. Still shots are frequent as well. The final episode of Top o Nerae! (also known as Gunbuster) is due to the black and white presentation often thrown into this bin, a common misconception as the black and white animation was actually more expensive. Thankfully, they seemed to have learned their lesson by Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (see below).

Here is an image of the many characters created by Gainax over its lifetime.

As a small note, they have a good relationship with Production I.G, who did quite a lot of work on End of Evangelion and FLCL. The director of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt, and one episode of FLCL also worked with Production I.G on Dead Leaves.

But Gainax's time in the sun was about to come to an end. In 2006, Hideaki Anno founded Studio Khara and left Gainax not long after. In 2011, Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka left and founded Studio Trigger. There's also Gaina, which eventually became independent from the studio, taking rights to some series with them. Khara brought the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. All of this leads to a studio which was quickly shutting down operations and on the verge of collapse.

In the early 2010s, they switched to doing shonen anime with smaller budgets and routine animation (like Medaka Box), rather than the expressive style they were known for. In the mid 2010s, the studio even abandoned those smaller projects and stopped producing series. Hideaki Anno stated that Gainax has failed to pay back royalties and a loan from Khara, and later wrote a public letter expressing his disappointment with his former co-workers. By the 2020s, it's clear that Gainax is no longer what they used to be, with the studio operating out of an apartment.

Studio Gainax has created the following:
The company has also done minor work in the following:
Gainax provides examples of the following tropes: