With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the hitherto slow transition of Japan’s animation industry from the Tokyo-centric traditional production methods using paper-based materials to a fully digital network that connects individuals over vast distances has accelerated. This coincides with an unprecedented uptick in the establishment of new animation production studios in the regional areas of Japan, and with incentives in the form of public subsidies for “regional revitalization” projects designed to mitigate the effects of depopulation, theoretically creating a mutually beneficial situation for all parties involved. This chapter introduces various examples of regional studios and analyzes their differences in approach, in particular with regard to the involvement with the local community. It illuminates their main function and position, be it serving as a contract-based independent entity, a subsidiary of a Tokyo-based company, or a studio developing in-house projects to subcontract work out for, thus earning license revenue.

This chapter takes a studio-centered approach to examining the relationship between the genre of science fiction (sci-fi) and anime production, using the animation studio Gainax as a case study. While Gainax became internationally celebrated in the mid 1990s through the creation of the smash hit Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki Evangelion, 1995–96), the studio’s growth during the “first anime boom” of the 1980s was much more precarious. Before its foundation, Gainax relied on the collective activities of sci-fi institutions for promotional marketing and professional labor. The studio’s pre-history and survival is an inflection point between the institutions of broad sci-fi fans and creators in the 1970s, and anime and manga otaku, or superfans, in the 1980s. Considering the historical precarity of Gainax, this chapter is framed around the frenzied organizations that comprised Gainax before it was established as GAINAX: the licensing store General Products and the production company Daicon Film. By analyzing Gainax’s business origins before it became incorporated as a studio, some of the ways in which the anime industry integrated sci-fi institutions become visible.