A Brief History of Gainax: The Notenki Memoirs

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Ever wondered about Gainax's early days?

Yasuhiro Takeda's The Notenki Memoirs will tell you about Gainax's really early days. Before Evangelion, before The Wings of Honneamise, even before DAICON IV, Takeda reveals in this chatty memoir the events that brought Gainax's core members together.

He actually spends very little time on Gainax's anime production years, focusing instead on the years in the 1980's they spent organizing science fiction conventions and running General Products, their garage kit store. A few interesting bits:


 * The core Gainax group got their start as SF fans who organized a good sci-fi con, then got involved in (then-new) resin-based model kits.
 * They never intended to be an anime studio.
 * They actually organized Daicon IV, and brought in Hideaki Anno to animate the opening sequence (he was a rising animator at the time, who'd leave them to work on Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind).
 * The Wings of Honneamise came about because Bandai approached Gainax with a film budget. A similar thing happened with Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water: the TV studio was shopping around the basic idea (which had originated with Hayao Miyazaki, actually), and one of the studios who passed on the project recommended Gainax.

This origin has always been their biggest problem. They weren't businessmen; they just did stuff that sounded interesting. They lucked into things that made money. For example, General Products always turned a profit, and ended up partly funding their anime productions for a long time.

Ironically, Takeda points out another fundamental issue for the studio. Before they made Evangelion, they moved forward on four different anime adaptations of existing manga properties. These would be "easy money;" well-known manga practically guaranteed to keep them afloat for a while.

All four projects failed. Takeda explains that Gainax staffers just couldn't get passionate about a story that wasn't their own.

Soapbox incoming:

And here they are, so many years later, doing mostly adaptations of existing manga properties. Their original projects crackle with energy and passion (Abenobashi, Gurren Lagann), while their manga adaptations are mostly just there -- what I saw of Hanamaru Kindergarten was cute, but could've been done by practically any anime studio.

Maybe they've changed; maybe they're okay with that. I just wish they'd do more Gurren Lagann and less He Is My Master.