Gainax, the studio behind the Evangelion series, goes bankrupt amidst unmanageable debt 

Gainax has announced that their petition for bankruptcy was acknowledged by the Tokyo District Court. 

Founded in 1984, Gainax is an anime studio best known for its work on TV series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. The company was also involved in the development of the Princess Maker video game series. Back in 1992, core staff members, including star filmmaker Shinji Higuchi, left the company. In addition, despite the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno also left the company in 2007, going independent and establishing Khara. Due to financial difficulties in recent years, Gainax has transferred copyrights to many of their titles to Khara and other companies.   

Gainax apparently filed for bankruptcy with the Tokyo District Court on May 29, which has since been approved. As the reason for the bankruptcy, the company states that since around 2012, Gainax’s management and executives had been operating the company as if it were their private property, including managing restaurants with poor prospects, establishing unplanned companies and taking out high-cost unsecured loans.  

The company’s financial condition continued to deteriorate, and many employees left, making Gainax unable to resume its activities as an anime production studio. In 2018, with the approval of the management at the time, shares were transferred to a person with no knowledge of video production, and in 2019, that person was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor shortly after assuming the position of CEO (source: Business Insider Japan). The company is said to have lost its ability to operate completely, while being saddled with a large amount of debt. 

Despite these circumstances, Studio Khara provided goodwill support to the company, and it was thought that efforts were being made to rebuild Gainax by revamping its management. However, many members of the former management remained as shareholders, and the company was unable to do anything about the large debt that had accumulated under the previous management. In May of this year, a debt collection company filed a lawsuit against Gainax, which ultimately resulted in the latter filing for bankruptcy. 

In response to Gainax’s bankruptcy, Khara has commented, “We deeply regret to see an animation studio with a history of almost 40 years come to such an end.”