I have been researching Studio Graviton for a while, a small studio notable for its activities during the ‘80s, and I’ll articulate what I found in this post here. As for why this small studio is relevant, let’s say an individual with the name of Hideaki Anno was one of the founders, and it was there that he had his debut as a director.



So it all starts with Anno back in 1984, just after finishing his work on “Macross: Do You Remember Love?”. To get an idea about the nature of Studio Graviton we need to understand Anno’s situation back then, as he was still a newling in the industry, not even sure if he was going to continue in this line of work or not. It’s well-known that Anno moved to Tokyo based on an invitation from Miyazaki to work on Nausicaa, after dropping from university, but he moved with only his backpack and barely any money. It was a hard time for him, moving from one place to another, sleeping in the studio when he could, and so on. People might think the harsh working conditions of the anime industry are something recent, yet, while admittingly getting a bit worse recently, it’s always been like that, especially for newcomers.

A comic drawn by Anno detailing how he spent 1984. Translation here.

While working on Do You Remember Love he met with one young animator called Shoichi Masuo. They and two other friends, Kouji Itou and Katsuhiko Nishijima, decided to establish their own studio and called it Graviton. Exact date for establishing the studio is around June of that year, and Anno worked on Megazone 23 there.

I say studio because that is used to refer to Graviton, but let’s clarify the nature of this “studio” first. Studios in general are basically a place for creators to gather and work on the projects at hand, a place where they put their work material and tools and the like. The word “studio” might give off an impression of a place akin to a company or an organization of sorts, with representatives and management staff, yet this isn’t the case for most anime studios. The majority small studios exist mostly for the purpose of providing a place for creators to work in, with maybe one or two persons with management roles such as a producer to organize work and secure new contracts, but not always.

Graviton may be a bit special, but most small studios, which is to say most anime studios, are closer to Graviton than they are to larger studios like Bones or Toei. Graviton was just a rented apartment for the studio members to stay in whenever they pleased, with expenses shared among them. They didn’t have to work together on the same project, and they didn’t have any specific responsibilities or obligations, they could come and go whenever they wanted, really. Anno for example kept switching places between Graviton and Gainax a few times during those years. Another more recent example is Takafumi Hori, who works from Trigger on other studios’ projects, and him having his desk at Trigger is due to his good friendship with other studio members.

The benefits of having a shared working place like Graviton are obvious I believe, like sharing expenses or getting to work on other studio members’ projects if there is a vacancy, I’ll mention some examples on that in a moment. My examples are mainly related to Anno, because getting information on him and his career is much easier, but each one of the original studio members had a notable career of his own and is worth checking out.

So starting with the projects Anno worked on while being at Graviton we have the first part of Megazone-23 where he did some scenes. I guess he worked on the infamous Pop Chaser 4 while being at Graviton too, and then went back to Gainax to work on Wings of Honneamise, and then went back and forth between the two studios juggling different projects till around 1988, when he took over as the director of Gunbuster. He didn’t come back to Graviton after that, probably because his financial situation became much more stable and just settled at Gainax.

Among the things Anno worked on back then were ads, one of them was an ad for a music player from JVC, which he did at Gainax in 1987. The ad evidently has nothing to do with neither music nor electrical devices, which is what the company’s representatives said if I’m not mistaken, but it’s a good piece of animation. Another ad, the really interesting one, was a promotional video for a game on NES called “Mugen Senshi Valis”. This ad is by the way the first directorial (paid) work for Anno. He did it in the same year but this time at Graviton, and I’d have said by this point that the studio at which he worked was a mere difference in location no more, yet this ad was a rare collaboration between all of Studio Graviton members. Also, as a side note, Anno spent the money he got from this job on buying a cooler for the studio in place of the one that broke.

The promotional video was promoted in magazines and posters with focus on two points: The first is being directed by Hideaki Anno, a genius animator who played a major role in DAICON and Wings of Honneamise. The second is having Katsuhiko Nishijima, the director of Project A-Ko, as a character designer and animation director. I think that the target audience for this promotional video was obvious. The production company behind this was Sunrise, and I think they were the ones who reached out to Anno in one way or another to direct this, who in turn invited his friends from Graviton, so as a result Graviton was credited with the animation.

Director - Storyboard: Hideaki Anno

Character Designer - Animation Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima

Key Animation: Graviton

Backgrounds: Atelier Musa

Finishing: Studio Fantasia

Production: Hideoki Tomoika(Sunrise)

This is a great opportunity to talk about Nishijima, who was a key figure in the ‘80s. He wanted to become a mangaka at first, but wanting to make a living drove him to enter a university, which he left after his first year to join the anime industry. Applying for a place at Sunrise at first, after watching Gundam during his year at the university, he was referred to Studio Live because Sunrise didn’t accept new in-betweeners at the time. He passed the entry test there and had his first gig as an in-betweener on Cyborg 009 episode 27 I believe. His first key animation came shortly thereafter on episode 26 of Maeterlinck no Aoi Tori: Tyltyl Mytyl no Bōken Ryokō.



He started attracting attention due to his scenes in Urusei Yatsura, being a big fan of the manga to begin with he personally asked Toyo Ashida(Studio Live’s president) to work on the TV anime. There he started developing his own style, and although a hint of Kanadism was there, his style was pretty distinct even early on, which led to his scenes standing out from the rest. Even when Studio Live stopped working on Urusei Yatsura, Nishijima moved to Deen where he continued working on it. It can be said that the long time he spent working on Urusei Yatsura culminated in his magnum opus, Project A-Ko, but that’s a whole discussion of its own for another time. Before Nishijima left Studio Live he participated in a dozen of their shows, such as Minky Momo and Dr. Slump Arale-chan, and even after leaving he kept ties with them and worked on things like the Kyoufu no Bio Ningen Saishuu Kyoushi OVA.

There’re a lot of characteristics for his style. First there’s the way he draws bodies, as he was known for drawing girls with sexy bodies while keeping the faces simple and cute with large round eyes. No wonder such style was popular among otaku of the day, especially considering the “idol” status of Lum from Urusei Yatsura back then. His popularity only increased after Project A-Ko OVA, and the Valis PV came shortly after all of that.

Nishijima’s designs are pretty beautiful if you ask me, and this PV is one of the few works where you’ll find his designs. Aside from that his scenes are a joy to watch. I think he was capable of adding a sense of dynamism to his scenes without unnecessary or excessive movement, which not a lot of young animators could do giving his style a hint of “maturity” so to speak, all the while without losing attractiveness. He achieves this through his good use of perspective, for example, or his unique impact frames, which are a favourite of mine.

Some of his impact frames.

If we take a look at his scene in the PV we see how both characters exchange position relative to the camera, as if the camera is rotating around them as they exchange blows. It reminds of his scene in Outlanders OVA, one of his best overall. Just like a lot of other young animators of that generation, however, he sadly didn’t put out any work worthy of note after the ‘80s, especially after switching his focus to directing and participating in less projects overall.

As for people he works\worked regularly with there was Moriyama Yuuji, a friend of his since the ‘80s. I bet the person who introduced them to each other was Hideaki Anno, since Anno met Moriyama around the year 1984 while the latter was at Studio MIN, which is another small studio located not that far from Graviton. Again, the word “studio” isn’t to be taken at face value here, as MIN was akin to Graviton in being more or less an apartment for animators to work in, hinting at the fact that such studios weren’t all that rare.

MIN was founded in 1982 and dissolved in the year 1991, yet it was full of prolific creators throughout its short lifespan. Other than the aforementioned Moriyama we have Hiroyuki Kitakubo, Hideki Tamura and Yoshiharu Fukushima as the studio’s founders, while Nobuteru Yuuki joined them later on. You’re free to look up any of those names, no short post is enough to cover the career of any single one of them, and this short post has already been dragged beyond its original intended length. As a side note though, I now notice that most of the people behind the infamous Cream Lemon Pop Chaser were either form MIN or from Graviton, and it’s an amazing realisation that a few very young creators in their small apartments created one of the most memorable and striking episodes of the whole ‘80s.

Before I end this post I’ll add that the period in which Anno met Moriyama was when Moriyama was working on a manga by Mamoru Oshii (the acquaintance between them goes back to when Moriyama worked on Urusei Yatsura). The manga was named “In The End… “ (とどのつまり) and was published (or was to be published?) in a sub-magazine from Animage called Animage Comics (アニメージュコミックス). That caused Toshio Suzuki, who was still an editor at Animage, to visit MIN regularly and run into Anno, whom he probably knew due to his participation in Nausicaa 2 years prior.