The Four Color Media Monitor

Sora News 24 wrote about the dissolving of Gainax, one of the most notable anime studios, and one of their contributors, Hideako Anno, was disappointed it's now gone. But, there's also scandals involved, to the point you have to wonder if it's for the best they closed:

Anno posted about the development on December 11 on the official website of Khara, the studio he established in 2006 after leaving Gainax. According to the statement, as of December 10 Gainax no longer exists as a corporation, having been completely dissolved and liquidated.

It’s a sad, but not shocking, end to Gainax, which was formally founded in Christmas Eve in 1984, meaning it just barely missed making it to its 41st birthday. Over the years, instability was one of the few near-constants for Gainax. Established by college-age amateur artists who produced the fabled Daicon festival opening animation student films, most of the Gainax staff was always clearly more interested in the artistry of making anime than managing the economic realities and responsibilities of operating on a professional scale. Shady accounting and tax evasion, whether to prop up the company’s perennially shaky financial foundation or simply for personal greed, got Gainax’s then-president Yasuhiro Takeda and the company’s tax accountant arrested in 1999, at a time when Evangelion was a huge hit and had revenue pouring into the company.

In 2016, 10 years after Anno had formed Khara, his company sued Gainax over unpaid royalties from Gainax properties Anno had been involved in, resulting in a messy courtroom dispute that ended in Khara’s favor. Three years later, in 2019, Gainax’s then-president Tomohiro Maki, who was 50 years old at the time, was arrested on charges of taking nude photographs of a teenage girl who had entered into a contract with Gainax in hopes of becoming an anime voice actress. This sunk Gainax’s reputation to an even lower level, with a subsequent restructuring including the creation of a new board of directors with the goal of rebuilding the company. Anno, who was a Gainax shareholder, and Khara also lent support, but even these combined efforts have proven to be not enough to save Gainax.

“I am genuinely saddened, but quietly accepting of the situation,” said Anno in his statement regarding Gainax’s final fate. “I wish to express our gratitude and respect to all of the individuals and organizations who have been working without compensation for nearly six years, since the arrest of former representative director and president Tomohiro Maki in 2019.”

It sure sounds like Gainax's reputation was tarnished, and while they may have had some gems to offer in their resume, it's clear they were affected in the long run by the scandals, the latter which is serious, and so, maybe it's best they've now gone out of business. Here's also a report on Automaton Media, which says:

In an official statement posted on Khara’s homepage, Anno expressed gratitude to the individuals and companies who helped with the reconstruction and subsequent liquidation of Gainax, particularly after the arrest of then-president and representative director Tomohiro Maki in 2019 (Maki was charged with sexually assaulting an underage voice actress). Anno thanked all parties for dedicating nearly six years of work without compensation to ensure that the rights of each Gainax project, along with their associated materials and documents, were returned to their rightful owners through proper legal procedures.

If Maki did worse than take lewd photos of the actress, he's just as bad as Harvey Weinstein. Whatever the quality of their anime productions, the studio's reputation was clearly tainted by Maki's crime, so again, it's probably for the best they've folded, though other studios obviously aren't any cleaner of mistakes than Gainax was. We can only hope lessons will be learned from what's been told about Gainax.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, manga and anime, misogyny and racism, violence