On the 30th of December of 2019, the president of Gainax was arrested.
After some News outlets produced many misleading headlines associating the studio with Evangelion, Hideaki Anno decided to speak up about his complicated story with Gainax on an exclusive feature to Diamond Online.
Followed is Anno’s extensive declaration on the subject, translated to English.
(This is based on this article in Brazilian Portuguese. All credits to Yohei for the original translation in a Twitter thread (currently locked) and to Nintakun for compiling it. Thanks to MD_Prometh for helping me with revision)
___________________________________________________________________
The individual who got arrested in the Gainax incident has no involvement with Eva.
Someone I don’t even know and haven’t worked with ended up as president of Gainax, where I used to work. Then, there was the news that he was suspect of criminal activity.
Before anything, I would like to express my deepest sympathies to all the victims of the incident. I think it’s extremely sad for the company that I took part in founding, where I worked for years and was even executive director for some time, to be reported like this.
Gainax was originally created in 1984 to make the film “Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise”.
At that time, I valued the primacy of the work and considered production and management two sides of an antinomy. Because of this, even though I was an employee, I didn’t have any involvement with management, focusing only in creating.
The Gainax from that time prioritized quality, so it was the ideal studio for creators like us. Stopping to think about it, we lacked the ability to control budget. The focus on creativity in the workplace was something planned since its inception.
We kept producing a tightrope of expenses and profit, until 1995 when the anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion” became a hit.
We were making money like never before and the company was profiting a lot. So, it’s natural that people would think that was at this moment that Gainax’s balance started to fall apart and advance in a weird direction. 20 years later, it became “the company ran by a president accused of commiting a crime”.
A lot of news articles used the name “Evangelion” in this incident. It’s a marketing ploy to use the name of a famous show to attract more attention. However, the man that was arrested joined Gaiax a few years ago and had no involvement with Evangelion.
Not only that, but currently there isn’t a single person at Gainax that worked on EVA.
In this report, I’ve come to protest against these articles in the name of the creators.
The company currently responsible for Eva is Khara, of which I am the president. If you write a headline that reads “president of the company that created Evangelion gets arrested”, it leads to people thinking I was arrested. This news caused a lot of people to think this case and Eva were somehow related.
In the name of the creators, I want to object to the news created to spread further misinformation like “it’s a fact that Gainax made Eva so it’s not exactly a lie”.
We actually had projects related to Evangelion cancelled and our work affected by the reports.
To this day, even if people said things that weren’t true, I remained silent.
However, letting these vague headlines go around showed that our work from over 20 years ago continued to be associated with the current form of Gainax, thus creating this situation.
As president of Khara, and director and writer of Evangelion, I have the responsibility to protect my work and my employees.
Therefore, I also wish that people would stop using Gainax’s name and Evangelion like this.
This introduction ended up pretty long, but I want to use this opportunity to register why I left Gainax and created Khara.
Originally, I didn’t plan on making Neon Genesis Evangelion at Gainax, but at another company, King Records, who was the production’s main sponsor and shared this interest. But I wanted to show respect for the place where I worked.
When I talked with Gainax’s president at the time, Takeshi Sawamura, he said they wanted to do it, so I decided to make Eva there.
However, it was impossible for Gainax to create a TV series by itself in 1995, so we had the support of other companies.
The result is that, fortunately, Evangelion was a huge success and that the company, which was previously considering to close doors, started to make money like never before.
I say “make money” but as Gainax didn’t invest in the production due to a decision in the adminstrative department, the initial profits only came because of my script and direction. That was also due to King Record’s good will. I consulted the company about the initial payment, and we restricted the split to the main employees, that strived and and accepted working for a cheap contract.
Meanwhile, it looked like Gainax was profiting a lot with Evangelion CDs and games. I say “looked like” because, as I mentioned before, I wasn’t involved in management, so I didn’t know anything about that part.
Because of Eva, the company kept profiting.
It was around this time that wasting money was normalized at Gainax, ignoring expenses and business plans. In 1997, the production committee for Eva moved to the Gainax’s production section and started to receive part of the payments, raising Gainax’s profit with Evangelion.
However, many projects and products ended up facing big losses, even though a good chunk of the investment money went to the employees. Despite requesting many times to improve working conditions, the higher ups refused to listen to me. They didn’t care as long as they were making money. Even in this situation, there was almost no compensation for the staff who suffered the most during production.
To be honest, I wasn’t against the other departments using the Eva brand for the sake of profit. However, at this time, I remember our expenses far surpassing any profit, and the higher ups refused to accept that it was primarily Eva that allowed the company to stay afloat.
In 1999, while Gainax was growing exponentially with the profits from games and other products following Eva’s original broadcast, President Sawamura caused a scandal by committing tax fraud.
As a director who worked at the company, I was called to TV Tokyo, Eva’s original network, to offer apologies. However, I only found out about the incident after reports in the news, because of lack of communication with the higher ups.
After Sawamura resigned, Hiroyugi Yamaga, another executive director, assumed the position of president. He told me: “if I don’t put you as executive director, no one will trust me. It can be in name only, but please” and I accepted, saying “I have no interest in adminstration but it’s okay if it’s in name only”.
But the eva craze wouldn’t last forever. The “overtrading” went on and eventually the administration started to lose its balance. I think it was in 2003 or 2004. And then it was the first time I did something that an executive director would do: checked all the numbers and inside data from the company. The results surprised me.
For example, there was a clear disparity in the salaries, people that weren’t even working there anymore were still getting paid. I remember getting shocked with the salary of an employee that wasn’t contributing being higher than the one from someone who worked hard on Eva.
Since I worked at and even after I left the company, I pushed a reform in salaries and interal structure to the management, but no one would care.
The management of Gainax, which had already been in trouble several times, was approached by 2 large companies to produce Pachinko in 2004, recovered the money and, with it, its wasteful habit. The administrative sector continued with new businesses with no future, while insisting in keeping others even without conditions to do so.
When my opinions started to be ignored in meetings and I no longer felt any reason to be an executive director, I stopped my next project that I was working on to do Evangelion once again. Even if I think about creating a new project, it would be nothing more than na Evangelion epilogue. So if I did Evangelion again, as a film, wouldn’t it be better for the animation industry and for me?
For this new Evangelion film, I did not choose Gainax as a studio.
There were several reasons for this, it is difficult to create a new environment in the same studio as before, and Gainax was planning another TV series. If I were in the studio, the second batch of employees would be contained, but the biggest reason was that I wanted to manage the cost of production, employees, benefits and give the due return. For this, I created the company Khara to reflect my feelings and responsibilities.
But in the beginning it was just me and my assistant in a small office.
The plan was to make the “Rebuild of Evangelion” series by renting another animation studio’s space. But with that support, the natural flow was to create a video production company with a production studio.
This was in 2006.
When I decided to leave Gainax, before creating Khara, I gave up the position of executive director. President Yamaga asked me to stay as a normal employee in order not to sever relations, and I did, but in 2007 there was no reason for that anymore and so I left the company.
It was immediately accepted that I do Evangelion outside of Gainax because “Eva is Anno”. Making it clear that I was the writer of Evangelion and that I would receive royalties was discussed and decided.
Copyrights and commercialization went to Gainax.
At the time, Khara did not have many members and the rights officer at Gainax knew a lot about the work. As Gainax would earn Royalties and fees, it was a win-win situation for both sides.
After that, Khara produced “Rebuild of Evangelion” with its own investments and distribution. During the production of the second film, in 2008, the relationship between the companies began to change. The internal direction of Gainax has changed and the percentage of profit that Eva brought to Gainax has decreased. Even so Eva’s money kept going to Gainax.
By the way, as of 2012, the payment of royalties to Khara began to stagnate, there were requests on payment in installments. President Yamaga and Executive Director Yasuhiro Takeda personally came to our company and accepted the proposal.
On thop of that, the royalties paid to Khara were just those of my creation, Eva. Distribution and royalties of works that I directed, like “Gunbuster” and “Nadia: The secret of Blue Water” were not allowed and works produced by other companies, such as “Love & Pop”, continue to go to Gainax.
Then, in 2014, I was asked for more loans.
They owed me a lot of money already, but Takeda asked me to “borrow 100 million yen in 3 days”. He told me “we can only go bankrupt” and I had to run to get 100 million.
I found it dangerous to leave Eva’s rights in a company with this administration, so I moved forward one year in transferring the royalties that were in Gainax’s custody as a condition of the loan.
Originally, they were to return to Khara in steps, at the request of Gainax. Apart from this condition, there would be no interest or collateral as long as they are returned as planned.
It was an unbelievable decision to lend money under these conditions that I even asked myself “what kind of entrepreneur does that?”. But he was my high school classmate, and I wanted to help a company in trouble, like someone in the animation industry. I would also be returning to the company that took care of me for so long.
I mentioned to President Yamaga and Director Takeda that, when business calmed down, I planned to buy the rights to works that the Khara team had a lot of involvement in, such as Gunbuster, Diebuster and FLCL in 2014. Under these conditions, it would be difficult for Gainax create a new work, so I also thought about the future of these works.
Initially, Yamaga was satisfied and we were discussing the conditions of the purchase, when suddenly, he asked me 6 times the original price.
There were no compelling reasons to increase the price and while we were confused, the conversation became more and more vague and in 2015, the rights to the 3 works were sold to other companies. In May of that same year, I heard that Gainax had a banking intervention, and a readjustment of employees on a large scale and needed money more than ever, so they must have sold at a higher price to another company. I think they prioritized money over the development of the work and the team’s feelings.
Other works that I had no involvement with were also sold in 2014.
When the rights began to disband, I felt it was necessary to understand Gainax’s financial situation and I asked several times to show me the situation and a payment plan. Depending on the situation, it wasould be necessary to suspend payments or provide greater financial support.
However, they replied with only “there are no administrative problems and we will pay as planned”.
And it was under these conditions that, in 2015, the company Fukushima Gainax (currently Gaina) was founded without our knowledge. It was initially a subsidiary of Gainax, but suddenly President Yoshinori Asao took all the shares and the capital relationship was severed, becoming a separate company.
It was a company that had nothing to do with Eva, using the name Gainax. However, Fukushima Gainax started to behave so that people would associate his name with EVA.
When Gainax caused problems, Fukushima Gainax said: “we have no capital relations with Gainax and we have a completely independent management”. I think if that is the case, they should have taken “Gainax” out of their name when they became independent.
And in April 2016, Gainax payments stopped suddenly. There were no answers when we asked for explanations, or messages or calls from President Yamaga. And so, several companies using the name Gainax started appearing across Japan.
Just before the foundation of the subsidiary Fukushima Gainax, in May 2014, Yonago Gainax was founded in Tottori. In April 2016, GAINAX WEST in Hyogo and July of the same year, Gainax Niigata in Niigata, without us knowing anything.
By the way, this is just something I heard from news and related people, but the executive director of GAINAX WEST caused problems at an anime establishment in Kobe that he himself produced in 2017, and in addition to causing problems for those involved, he ended up causing the place to close doors. Whoever used the name of Gainax and caused problems was from Gainax at the time, but in this situation they claimed not to have relations with it.
We were pouring our hearts and souls ito it, and I was concerned with preserving our work.
Gainax’s managers continued to found new companies under the name Gainax and I even heard stories about selling to foreign companies.
Researching further, this company asked “if we buy Gainax, will you make films for us?”
Under these conditions, waiting for Gainax’s payments and the works’ rights to be sold to other companies, we began to be increasingly concerned with its dissolution.
Even though there was nothing we could do about the borrowed money, we were concerned with securing the documents for the works we produced voluntarily with our sweat and blood.
In order to prevent these valuable documents from being lost, on August 1, 2016, we filed a seizure of assets, which occurred on August 26. There was no other option, since we were unable to contact President Yamaga.
After that, even after the seizure, with no sign of payment under the law of obligations, to prevent documents and rights from being lost, we had no option but to sue for the refunding of the payment, on September 9.
We did not choose this course of action as means of obtaining the rights, but thinking about Gainax, so as not to bring up the case. Everything would have been solved if their administrative sector had contacted them, but Gainax decided to go to trial, which made the case famous throughout the country..
This case was decided on June 23, 2017, unanimously in favor of Khara. Then, it was clear that several documents of works in which we were deeply involved were sold to Fukushima Gainax (current Gaina). All this without the companies and employees involved knowing.
By the way, these documents were acquired by Khara through work, time and money invested, and with the approval of the companies involved they are filed under the management of ATAC.
And it was at that time that the suspect in the criminal incident was named president.
On September 30, 2016, all employees in the animation department of Gainax had their contracts terminated and immediately transferred to Fukushima Gainax Tokyo Studio (now Studio Gaina). All the support we have offered to Gainax until today has been lost. In November of the same year, Gainax Kyoto was founded in Kyoto.
Gainax’s payments to Khara have stopped for over 3 years. We haven’t received any messages, explanations or apologies yet.
Then, in October 2019, someone I never saw or knew became the largest shareholder and president of Gainax. Until, in December, he became a suspect in a crime.
Whoever brought this individual, gave him shares and made him president, is none other than the administrative sector at that time.
Not only with the management of the company, but even in cases like this, entrepreneurs are not responsible neither for themselves, nor for employees, works or companies.
This coming from people I have known since college, is unfortunate.
But the worst part is that it’ll never be the same again.
(Director and producer, Hideaki Anno)
