In this order:
Top 10 Best Anime Studio List
The two companies will partner closely to integrate Epic’s Unreal Engine into Spire’s feature animation pipeline, enabling Spire to produce the highest quality animated visual content with stronger collaboration and higher efficiency while simultaneously building out worlds and experiences for the metaverse.
The 10 Best Kyoto Animation Anime Movies, Ranked. Kyoto Animation is one of anime's greatest studios, with these ten movies representing KyoAni at its absolute best. Established in 1981, Kyoto Animation has cemented itself as one of the anime industry's most prominent and respected studios. Predominantly known for its TV series, KyoAni is responsible for various genre-defying releases, including The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya , Lucky Star, and the Clannad series.
Kyoto Animation is one of the world’s most renowned animation studios. Located in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto Animation Co., Ltd., or simply KyoAni (Japanese:, Kyani), is a Japanese animation company and publisher of light novels.
Masao Maruyama, Osamu Dezaki, Rintaro, and Yoshiaki Kawajiri, all former Mushi Pro animators, created Madhouse Inc. in 1972. The impressive animation work done by Madhouse has made it a household name.
Their intricate designs have made Bones a popular choice. Bones was founded in October 1998 by Sunrise employees Masahiko Minami, Hiroshi saka, and Toshihiro Kawamoto. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, a feature film based on the anime series Cowboy Bebop, was one of his first efforts with Sunrise.
It was formed in 1986 by Tomoyuki Miyata, a former employee of Tatsunoko Productions, who had previously worked as an animator at J.C Staff Co., Ltd. Ytden was the first studio album released in 1987. The studio has produced a number of notable anime films in the past.
Former employees of the TMS Entertainment Telecom Animation Film division formed Ufotable, Inc. in October 2000 and it is based in Nakano, Tokyo. Many of his works feature a clay sequence, which is a distinctive feature. Anime aficionados regard the studio as one of the most innovative in the industry.
Japanese animation company WIT STUDIO Inc. was launched on June 1, 2012 by the producers of Production I.G as a subsidiary of IG Port and WIT STUDIO Inc. was established on June 1, 2012.
The Japanese animation company MAPPA Co., Ltd. Masao Maruyama, the creator and former producer of Madhouse, launched it on June 14th, 2011. The Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association is known by the acronym “MAPPA”. Studio M2 was created in April 2016 by Maruyama after he resigned from his position at the studio.
Kyoto Animation. Kyoto animation has been around since 1981. When it was first founded. The CEO of the company – Hideaki Hata had his start in 1985 at Kyoto Animation.
MAPPA studios doesn’t have as much anime as let’s say, Madhouse or Kyoani. But they do have a good set of shows under their belt. A lot of the anime either have solid visuals, story, or a good mix of both.With unique concepts. Here’s some MAPPA examples: Kakegurui.
1. The current anime industry is dominated by mega-studios. It can be seen that there is a huge gap between the top studios and “the normal majorities”. Very few studios are green and the majority of them are in orange or red, which means they receive low scores in our ranking.
N owadays, anime has become increasingly more mainstream and its market continues to expand all over the world. In 2017, the anime market set a new sales record of $19.8 billion owing greatly to overseas demand (Jozuka, 2019). This fast-growing industry has triggered people’s interest in studying it, and we are also part of them. Based on our online research, some anime fans carried out analysis by themselves out of a passion for anime and the curiosity of the industry. Their works include creating anime rankings, analyzing the changing trend of preferred anime genres, and demographic characteristics of anime audiences (Bilgin, 2019; Rafiq, 2019; Overlytic, 2019). Beyond that, the Association of Japanese Animations has been publishing annual reports about the Japanese Animation Industry, which has become one of the main sources of online analysis about the anime industry (AJA, 2019).
Kyoto Animation ranked 8 in our ranking. Similar to Toei animation, it has a high-quality score, which is even a little bit higher than Toei animation. While Kyoto Animation produces much fewer animes than Toei animation, thus generally speaking it is not that popular among anime audiences.
As a result, the overall popularity of Toei animation is also high. Furthermore, the loyal audience score is also competitive.
Furthermore, top studios do not necessarily collaborate only with top studios. For instance, despite being the top one studio, Toei animation collaborates less frequently than studios such as Madhouse, Production I.G., and Sunrise (see Figure 6).
Beyond that, the Association of Japanese Animations has been publishing annual reports about the Japanese Animation Industry, which has become one of the main sources of online analysis about the anime industry (AJA, 2019). Although these works are insightful, none of them specifically looked at anime studios.
Since the original dataset is based on anime, and one anime can be produced by multiple studios that have been stored in one cell, our first step was to split different studios into multiple columns. After that, we used the pivot option to have separate these multiple studios into individual rows.
The youngest studio on our list, Illumination Entertainment was founded only nine short years ago in 2007 when Chris Meledandri, then the President of Twentieth Century Fox Animation, left his post to pursue opportunities elsewhere. He started up the company under a new contract deal with NBCUniversal with the promise to produce at least two family-oriented motion pictures per year. After overseeing films such as Robots and Alvin and the Chipmunks during his time at Fox, Meledandri already had the experience to produce children’s films that could perform well at the box office. He would prove just that in 2010 when he brought in nearly eight times the production budget for the studio’s first release Despicable Me.
Only fourteen years young, Sony Pictures Animation is new on the scene compared to some of the other studios on our list. It got its start in May 2002 after its owner Sony Pictures Entertainment sought to sell its visual effects subsidiary Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Today, six different studios have been created by former employees, including the most recent Bandai Namco Pictures. Of all the top tier animes Sunrise has put out over the years, they are best known for series like Cowboy Bebop and the entire Gundam franchise.
Chief among the works for which Toei has become known is the Dragon Ball series, most notably Dragon Ball Z which ran for seven years on Fuji TV and was broadcast in the U.S. on Cartoon Network. Other shows have included Sailor Moon, One Piece, Saint Seiya and Yu-Gi-Oh!.
The name of the studio says it all, really. South Park has been creators' Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s baby since 1997 when the foul-mouthed escapades of four fourth grade boys in a small Colorado town first premiered on Comedy Central.
Cartoon Network Studios is one of the most watched animated television studios alongside its number one competitor Nickelodeon (which we’ll discuss in detail later). We’ve already talked about their sister studio Williams Street and their many creative programs stretching the limits for adults, so it’s only right that we switch gears to focus more on the kid-friendly fare. It all began in 1994, when the company began as a division of the now defunct Hanna-Barbera, the creator of such notable shows as The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! At the time, the division was co-producing programs such as Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls. After Hanna-Barbera was folded into Warner Bros. Animation following the passing of William Hanna in 2001, Cartoon Network Studios took over the reins and it has been pumping out original content for Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network channel ever since.
A subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox, Blue Sky Studios has released eleven different feature-length animated movies since 2002 to varying levels of success. Based out of Greenwich, Connecticut, the company was founded by six animators who found themselves out of jobs after the CGI effects company MAGI - the group which created the visuals for the 1982 film Tron - shut its doors. For a ten year period, between 1987 and 1997, Blue Sky worked mainly in the world of television advertising and feature films, creating special effects. When Fox approached the studio with intentions of buying, the focus shifted to animation with some films such as The X-Files, Titanic and Alien: Resurrection also being treated by the company for visual effects.
SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Doug, Hey Arnold! Starting out as a humble little animation studio in California, Nickelodeon Animation Studios wasted no time in creating highly recognizable shows for viewers of all ages.
This Japanese animation studio is actually older than most people think, having been founded back in 1948. Since then it’s crafted well over 100 animated series for viewers in Japan and the rest of the world. Today, Toei uses its talented artists to help create everything from full CGI films to video games.
The Iron Giant, The Lego Movie , Batman: The Animated Series, Looney Tunes. With a history as far back as the early 1930s, Warner Bros. has one of the strongest legacies when it comes to animation.