Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., still famously known as Sunrise Inc., is a Japanese entertainment company owned by Bandai Namco Holdings with its business focused on production, planning and management for anime, founded in September 1972 by former Mushi Production employees.
Animate Ltd. is the retailing arm of MOVIC and is the largest retailer of anime, video games and manga in Japan. The first and flagship store of Animate was opened in 1983 in Ikebukuro, a district in Tokyo, Japan.
Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., often abbreviated as SMEJ or simply SME, and also known as Sony Music Japan for short, is a Japanese music arm for Sony. Founded in 1968 as CBS/Sony, SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Group Corporation and is operating independently from the United States–based Sony Music Entertainment due to its strength in the Japanese music industry. Its subsidiaries include the Japanese animation production enterprise, Aniplex, which was established in September 1995 as a joint-venture between Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, but which in 2001 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. It was prominent in the early to mid 1990s producing and licensing music for animated series such as Roujin Z from acclaimed Japanese comic artist Katsuhiro Otomo and Capcom's Street Fighter animated series.
Aniplex, Inc. is a Japanese entertainment company. It is part of the Sony Group, being a division of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. The company is mainly engaged in the planning, production, and distribution of anime series with a focus on multimedia deployment of its own and licensed intellectual properties (IPs).
A-1 Pictures, Inc. is a Japanese animation studio founded by ex-Sunrise producer Mikihiro Iwata. It is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan's anime production firm Aniplex.
Crunchyroll EMEA, formerly known as Viz Media Europe, is a European anime distributor. Established as Viz Media Europe, it was Viz Media's European sister company until 2019. It holds partnerships with TV channels, DVD distributors, and manga publishers. The company was once headquartered in Amsterdam, before the company opened its current Paris operations on January 15, 2007. The division is made up of two subsidiaries, Crunchyroll SAS based in Paris, France, and Crunchyroll SA based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Crunchyroll EMEA is run by Sony through Crunchyroll, LLC, a joint venture between Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex, with Shogakukan, Shueisha and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions (ShoPro) retaining full ownership of the former Viz Media Europe's Publishing/Licensing Business for manga publishing in the region.
Marvelous Inc. is a Japanese video game developer and publisher, and anime producer. The company was founded in 1997 but formed in its current state on October 2011 by the merger of the original Marvelous Entertainment with AQ Interactive, and Liveware.
Aniplex of America, or Aniplex USA, is an anime distributor based in Santa Monica, California that serves as the American distribution enterprise of Aniplex, an entertainment company owned by Sony Music Entertainment Japan, where its goal is to reinforce the parent company's licensing business in the North American market. They operate the English language version of the Aniplex+ store, and from 2013 to 2017 operated a streaming service called Aniplex Channel through their website. The company most of the time only directly releases its titles in the Americas, however, some of its titles have been released in other territories by other distributors, such as Anime Limited, MVM Films, Siren Visual and corporate siblings Crunchyroll UK and Ireland and Crunchyroll Store Australia.
Wit Studio, Inc., stylized as WIT Studio, is a Japanese animation studio founded on June 1, 2012, by producers at Production I.G as a subsidiary of IG Port. It is headquartered in Musashino, Tokyo, with Production I.G producer George Wada as president and Tetsuya Nakatake, also a producer at Production I.G, as a director of the studio. The studio gained notability for producing the first three seasons of Attack on Titan, and has also produced other notable series such as Ranking of Kings, Spy × Family, and the first seasons of The Ancient Magus' Bride and Vinland Saga.
Bandai Namco Pictures Inc., also known as BN Pictures and BNP, is a Japanese animation studio. It is a spinoff of Sunrise, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Filmworks which is owned by Bandai Namco Holdings. The company was formed as a part of the medium-term management plan of Bandai Namco Holdings on restructuring itself. All the anime intellectual property and production divisions of Sunrise that aims at children and family were transferred to Bandai Namco Pictures. The company began its operations in April 2015.
TMS Entertainment Co., Ltd., formerly known as Kyokuichi is a Japanese animation studio owned by Sega Corporation.
Kadokawa Corporation, formerly Kadokawa Dwango Corporation, is a Japanese media conglomerate that was created as a result of the merger of the original Kadokawa Corporation and Dwango Co., Ltd. on October 1, 2014.
Cygames, Inc. is a Japanese video game development studio established in 2011 by CyberAgent. Mobile and e-commerce company DeNA acquired a 24% stake in the studio in 2012, and Nintendo acquired another 5% stake in 2018, leaving CyberAgent with 69% of the shares and as such, they are the parent company of Cygames. From its formation, the company produced mobile games, initially on the Mobage platform, and from 2013 on Android and iOS. The company headquarters is located in Tokyo while other divisions are located in Osaka and Saga in Japan and Seoul, South Korea.
Darling in the Franxx, abbreviated as DarliFra, is a 2018 Japanese science fiction monster romance anime television series co-produced by A-1 Pictures and Trigger and animated by Trigger and CloverWorks that premiered in January 2018. The series was announced at Trigger's Anime Expo 2017 panel in July 2017. A manga adaptation by Kentaro Yabuki and another four-panel comic strip manga began serialization in January 2018.
Persona 5: The Animation is an anime television series produced by CloverWorks based on the video game Persona 5 by Atlus. The anime series is directed by Masashi Ishihama and written by Shinichi Inotsume, with Tomomi Ishikawa adapting Shigenori Soejima's original character designs for the animation. Atlus employee Kazuma Kaneko created the original demon designs, while music composer Shoji Meguro reprised his role from the game. The series follows high schooler Ren Amamiya (Joker), the leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, whose mission is to reform the hearts of corrupted adults in Shibuya using a mysterious phone application called the Metaverse Navigator.
CloverWorks, Inc. is a Japanese animation studio that was rebranded from A-1 Pictures' Kōenji Studio. It is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan's anime production firm Aniplex.
ENGI Co., Ltd., also known as Entertainment Graphic Innovation, or Studio ENGI, is a Japanese animation studio founded by Kadokawa, Sammy Corporation, and Ultra Super Pictures, and is a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation.
Revoroot Inc. is a Japanese animation studio based in Tokyo. Revoroot was founded as a subsidiary of Twin Engine, but as of 2021, it operates as an independent studio. The studio was originally headquartered in Nishitokyo, but relocated to Suginami in 2022. Following the move, part of Revoroot's staff stayed in Nishitokyo to operate as a separate studio, Crew-Cell, which would continue to work as a subsidiary of Twin Engine. Kazuki Emani, the CEO of Revoroot, is also the CEO of Crew-Cell.
