Studio Gainax går i graven: Evangelion-skaparna tackar för sig

Den legendariska animationsstudion Gainax går i graven. Efter att varit en trendsättande kraft inom branschen under 42 år så stänger man nu sina dörrar och verksamheten upplöses. Enligt medgrundaren Hideaki Anno avslutades nyligen konkursprocessen, vilket formellt satte punkt för bolagets existens.

Gainax föddes 1984 ur det oberoende filmkollektivet Daicon Film och blev snabbt en av Japans mest inflytelserika krafter. Verk som Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêmaise satte dem på kartan och genom det odödliga mästerverket Neon Genesis Evangelion cementerade man sin plats som en av de mest inflytelserika namnen i branschen.

Men internt har det stormat länge och år av problem har slutligen tagit ut sin rätt. Bland annat blev den tidigare chefen Tomohiro Maki gripen för sexuella övergrepp, vilket fick studions operativa kraft att fullkomligen stanna av. Därtill så avslöjade en granskning omfattande misskötsel: tvivelaktiga lån, uteblivna betalningar och annat skumrask.

Efter en stämning från ett indrivningsföretag i maj för två år sedan stod det klart att konkurs var den enda vägen framåt för Gainax. I sitt uttalande tackade Anno de samarbetspartners som i sex års tid försökt reda upp situationen, men konstaterade samtidigt att tiden hunnit ikapp studion.

I ett uttalande (översatt med Google Translate) sa Anno följande:

As announced in the Official Gazette on December 10, 2025, the animation production studio Gainax Inc. has completed its bankruptcy reorganization and ceased to exist as a corporation, bringing an end to its nearly 42-year history.

As someone who has been a shareholder for over 20 years since the company's founding, I find this truly disappointing, but I am accepting it with a sense of calm.

First of all, we would like to express our gratitude and respect to all the related companies that worked with us for nearly six years, free of charge, to rebuild and subsequently reorganize Gainax following the arrest of then-CEO Maki Tomohiro in 2019. Thanks to your cooperation, we were able to properly process the rights for each work, transfer the rights, and transfer all production results and other materials, and safely return them to the respective rights holders and creators.

Once again, we are grateful. Thank you very much.

What I have revealed up until now about Gainax's past is almost everything that can be made public, but there is something new that I find disappointing, so I would like to take this opportunity to mention it.

The problem was that the transfer of rights and materials had been carried out without due process under the former management.

As a result, we filed a civil lawsuit against the management at the time, and on January 20, 2023, a settlement was reached in which the plaintiff's claims were accepted and the defendant apologized.

When Gainax changed to a new management structure, contract documents and emails related to transactions were scrutinized in order to understand the company's critical financial situation and to prevent the loss of rights and materials, and as the company's largest creditor, we cooperated with the investigation.

During this process, we witnessed firsthand the dishonesty of Gainax regarding repayments after we provided emergency financing to the company in response to its financial difficulties, as well as various exchanges within the former management team that showed a lack of respect for Gainax's works and staff regarding company management and the preservation of production materials.

Specifically, upon learning about the various false statements made by former Fukushima Gainax representative Yoshinobu Asao, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Yasuhiro Takeda, whom I considered friends since college, toward my company and myself, including instructions from then-President Yamaga to Gainax employees to pretend he was hospitalized, statements that viewed our company as hostile, and schemes to unfairly avoid repayment, I have gone beyond anger to sadness.

I have come to realize once again that our relationship with them will likely never return to what it was before, and I am truly sorry. The reason we agreed to the previous settlement as a company is because we did not want to waste any more of our time dealing with them.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to President Yasuhiro Kamimura, a friend from my university days and the last representative director of Gainax, who, despite the fact that the previous management team had abandoned the historic anime studio Gainax without taking responsibility for its many responsibilities and creditors, managed to prevent the rights and materials from being lost and inherit them with the understanding of all parties involved, faced creditors sincerely, and did his best to the end, witnessing the studio's demise.

"Thank you, Kamimura. And thank you for your hard work."

Hideaki Anno, CEO of Khara Inc.

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