Production I.G, Inc. (株式会社プロダクション・アイジー) is a Japanese animation studio. Headquartered in Musashino, Tokyo Production I.G was founded on December 15, 1987, by producer Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and character designer Takayuki Goto as I.G Tatsunoko, a branch studio of the animation giant Tatsunoko Production, changing its name to the current Production I.G in September 1993. The letters I and G derive from the names of the company founders. Since 2007, Production I.G is a subsidiary of the IG Port holding company, causing a restructuring which led to the second incarnation of the studio being formed. Ishikawa was president and CEO of the studio until August 2022 when that position was given to George Wada with Ishikawa remaining as chairman of the company. Production I.G went through a number of structural changes, not only stepping up from subcontractor to prime contractor to financier of animation production, but also changing the very scheme of the animation business in Japan. The studio has implemented a series of measures that break with industry norms, such as investing in productions that are unprecedented for a animation studio, entering the copyright business, establishing a finance company, establishing overseas subsidiaries, and negotiating directly with major Hollywood movie studios. The studio established a holding company, IG Port, which owns Production I.G itself as well as animation studios Wit Studio and Signal.MD. And the studio has continued to change and expand its business format, merging with publisher Mag Garden, establishing electronic content distribution company Lingua Franca, and forming a comprehensive business alliance with Netflix. While other major studios are being acquired one after another by large companies and placed under their umbrella, The studio has remained independent (as of 2024). Since its inception, Production I.G has produced many of Japan's leading creators, including Mamoru Oshii and Kenji Kamiyama. It has also produced a number of acclaimed feature films, television series, OVAs (Original Video Animations), ONAs (Original Net Animations), and video games. Its representative works include the Ghost in the Shell series, the Psycho-Pass series, Blood: The Last Vampire and its derivative works such as Blood+, the animation sequences of Kill Bill Vol. 1, Eden of the East, Guilty Crown, Kuroko's Basketball, and Haikyu!! It is also known in the video game industry for developing intros, cut-scenes and artwork for games such as Bandai Namco's Tales series. Furthermore, it has also spawned such influential animation studios as Wit Studio and Signal.MD, and its influence on the Japanese animation industry is immeasurable. Production I.G's works have received critical acclaim outside of Japan, with Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell reaching #1 on the U.S. Billboard Top Video Sales Charts in 1996, and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence was the first Japanese animation film to be nominated in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Hiroyuki Okiura's Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and Hiroyuki Kitakubo's Blood: The Last Vampire have also been highly acclaimed. Those works have also influenced famous Hollywood creators. As a result, it was decided that The Matrix, directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, would be produced, and Production I.G produced the animation sequences for Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1. When pitching the idea for The Matrix to producer Joel Silver, The Wachowskis showed him Ghost in the Shell anime film and told him they wanted to make a similar movie. Quentin Tarantino liked Blood: The Last Vampire so much that he himself visited the studio and asked Production I.G to participate in the production of the film. However, Production I.G was very busy at the time and was in no condition to accept the request, so Ishikawa initially declined the request. Then Tarantino began sending drafts of screenplays to the studio one after another without asking. As Ishikawa read them, he gradually became interested in the film and eventually accepted the request.

History

On December 15, 1987, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, a producer at Tatsunoko Production, established IG Tatsunoko Ltd., the predecessor of Production IG, with Takayuki Goto, who had organized Studio Chime. It was in the form of an independent Tatsunoko production branch led by the staff who participated in the Tatsunoko-produced TV series Zillion. Japan was experiencing a booming economy at that time thanks to the economic bubble, but it was a difficult time for the animation industry to create new anime. Original animation projects that may or may not be successful were particularly difficult to pass, and there were few opportunities for young talent to demonstrate their abilities. Ishikawa therefore planned Zillion to provide them with a place to play an active role. Ishikawa, already a freelancer, was entrusted with the work as a Tatsunoko Production branch separated from the company. Takashi Nakamura, Kōichi Mashimo, Takayuki Goto (later Production I.G board member), Hiroyuki Okiura and Kazuchika Kise (later Production I.G board member) who were at Anime R and Mu in Osaka at the time, as well as Mizuho Nishikubo and Mamoru Oshii helped in the production. Kyoto Animation also participated in the production. After Zillion, he could have disbanded the team, but he sensed that everyone wanted to continue working together with this group, so he started I.G Tatsunoko. The company was formed by merging the Zillion production team and Studio Chime, which was run by Takayuki Goto, who designed its characters, with the cooperation of Kyoto Animation. Animator Kazuchika Kise also joined the studio early on. Hideaki Hatta, President and CEO of Kyoto Animation, who encouraged Ishikawa to become president, supported him in establishing the company and even invested in it. The company name "I.G" was named by Takayuki Goto, after the initials "I" of Ishikawa, the head of the production team, and "G" of Goto, the head of the animation studio. It was Ishikawa's idea to put Tatsunoko in the company name because he thought it would make it easier to get work and out of consideration for Tatsunoko, which had trained him. The company name was changed to Production I.G in 1993. After becoming independent, I.G's work was mainly subcontracted to other studios for a while. Soon after becoming independent, I.G received an offer from Studio Deen to subcontract the production of Mamoru Oshii's Patlabor OVA and the movie, and with these hits, I.G solidified its position in the industry. However, Ishikawa began to feel dissatisfied with the fact that even though his company, a subcontractor, actually produced the works, it was only credited as a production partner in the end credits, while the name of the main contractor came to the forefront, and he also began to think that the studio would not be able to survive on low-budget subcontract work in the future. Ishikawa therefore founded Ing Co., Ltd. in 1990, a planning and production company that handles copyright business. In the anime industry, studios cannot make a profit if they only subcontract production. Ishikawa therefore established Ing with the idea of earning income not only from anime production but also from copyrights, and the studio invested in its works. During his time at Tatsunoko Productions, Ishikawa had seen how the company generate revenue through the operation of the copyrights for original works, so he decided to follow suit. However, he chose a name that was as unobtrusive as possible and not reminiscent of I.G, so as not to alarm the large companies that were already in the copyright business. For Patlabor, Production I.G was a subcontractor for the first film in 1989, but was promoted to prime company for the second film in 1993, and even invested in the film. After that, Ishikawa continued to use Ing as a company responsible for matters related to contracts and funding, and invested in I.G works under the Ing name. Neon Genesis Evangelion was the only non-I.G studio's work that Ing invested in, and Ishikawa said that investing in this blockbuster work turned out to be a very good result for the studio. Production I.G produced the film Ghost in the Shell, which was released in Japan in 1995. When this video was released in the U.S., it was ranked No. 1 in the U.S. Billboard magazine's Sell Video category in 1996, and the studio became known as one of the top animation studios in the world, both in name and reality. The film would go on to spawn a Ghost in the Shell franchise that includes sequel and reboot films, television series, original video animation, and original net animation. Ishikawa says this work was the biggest turning point for the studio. In Japanese anime production, manufacturers which are involved in the manufacturing, sale and distribution of video software, television stations, publishers and advertising agencies form a production committee, and animation studios generally join after the committee is formed. Since this would not be profitable enough for the studio, Ishikawa decided that the studio needed to move from being the one who was given permission to produce works to being the one who had the right to grant permission. He approached Kodansha, the publisher of the original Ghost in the Shell manga, and obtained permission to produce three forms of production: an anime TV series, a movie, and a video game. Since Production I.G has a direct contract with Kodansha for the rights to produce anime adaptations from the original manga, it is able to take the initiative when forming the production committee, including the ability to issue usage licenses to each of the participating companies. This allows Production I.G to develop a wide range of Ghost in the Shell anime franchises, including animation TV series, games, and movies. Ishikawa's decision was successful and brought in a fairly large amount of money for Production I.G, and the studio subsequently expanded its activities. After that, Production I.G began to get involved in the copyright business and grew into a company that was not just a production company, but also an investor. In the 2004 film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Ishikawa took a major risk to change the scheme of the Japanese animation business. He planned to make Production I.G, which had become a prime contractor and could invest somewhat, but was still just an animation production company, cut into a client position previously dominated by TV stations, publishing companies, and advertising agencies. Traditionally, it has been common knowledge that once an animation studio produces and delivers a work and receives payment for it, its relationship with the work ends, and any further profits are monopolized by the publishing company, television station, or advertising agency that has invested in the work and holds the copyrights. Anime studios need a lot of money to continue to produce high-quality works and to pay their animators, directors, and other staff appropriately, but it was impossible to do so under such conditions. Therefore, Ishikawa decided to become an investor. Ishikawa decided to produce Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence on the studio's own, rather than relying on the publisher or other companies in Japan. In order to obtain production financing from major Hollywood film companies, he and Director Oshii traveled to the U.S. with a screenplay and negotiated directly with them without going through a major Japanese advertising agency. Ishikawa narrowed down the list of negotiating partners to DreamWorks, Warner Bros., and 20th century Fox, and finally signed a contract with DreamWorks, founded by Steven Spielberg, and succeeded in raising a huge amount of money and securing a promise of worldwide distribution. On the other hand, advertising and publicity in Japan was entrusted to Toshio Suzuki, a producer at Studio Ghibli. Suzuki's power made possible a large-scale advertising campaign that I.G. would not have been able to carry out alone, but it also created some difficulties. Ishikawa's strategy was to first work with a major global distributor to make Ghost in the Shell 2 a hit in the U.S., where the first Ghost in the Shell video sold well, and then import it back to Japan, but Suzuki rejected this. He suggested that the film be a hit in Japan before the rest of the world and that the studio forget about the success of the previous film and make it not as a sequel but as a completely new film. As a result, the Japanese title was changed from Ghost in the Shell 2 to Innocence. Furthermore, most of the investors have changed from the original lineup. This was an unthinkable situation, and the project could have been scrapped, but Ishikawa was able to renegotiate the contract with his remarkable negotiating skills. In May 1995, Production I.G established a subsidiary studio, Xebec. In 1997, Production I.G invested in Bee Train, a studio founded by Kōichi Mashimo, and also established Production I.G.,LLC, an overseas subsidiary based in Los Angeles. The company co-developed and co-produced the television series IGPX, directed by Mitsuru Hongo, with Cartoon Network in 2005. This was the first collaboration between an American cable network and a Japanese anime studio. Production I.G was recapitalized and became a joint-stock company from a limited company in April 1998, and merged with Ing in September 2000. In 2000, Production I.G produced the movie Blood: The Last Vampire, the first full-digital animation in Japan. This was the first time for Production I.G to acquire the original rights to a work. In the 2000s, Production I.G began to produce more TV series, especially those based on popular manga series published in magazines such as Shōnen Jump. This was the result of Ishikawa's focus on creating a business scheme and leaving the animation production site to younger staff and producers, giving priority to their wishes. In 2004, Bee Train acquired the shares held by Production I.G and ceased to be an equity method affiliate of Production I.G. Mitsuhisa Ishikawa also resigned from Bee Train's board. In 2005, Production I.G. Inc. went public on the JASDAQ stock exchange. With the funds raised through the IPO, Production I.G founded a new studio capable of producing the latest 3DCG animation at the time, and co-founded FILM LIP, a studio capable of digital editing, with Fuji Television. In 2007, Production I.G, Inc. changed its trade name to IG Port Inc. and at the same time established a new subsidiary under the name Production I.G. Inc. The company name and its function as an anime studio were taken over by the subsidiary, and the listing was maintained under the name IG Port. Mitsuhisa Ishikawa was also the representative director of Production I.G and IG Port. In the same year, IG Port acquired Mag Garden, a publisher specializing in comics, which publishes the monthly Comic Blade, as a subsidiary. The norm in the animation industry is for anime studios to obtain permission from major publishers such as Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa to adapt popular manga into anime, and then produce anime adaptations based on the original manga. Because of this, none of the animation studios wanted to have a publishing division, but Mag Garden was the perfect publisher for Production I.G to add to its group because it was not large enough to make those major publishers wary or hostile. In September 2010, Production I.G moved its headquarters to Musashino, Tokyo. In 2010, IG Port acquired an 11.2% stake in Tatsunoko Production and Mitsuhisa Ishikawa became a non-executive director of the company. On June 1, 2012, Wit Studio, I.G's subsidiary animation studio, was founded, with the studio's first project being Attack on Titan, which I.G assisted in producing. IG Port invested 66.6%, while George Wada and Tetsuya Nakatake who were in the planning section of Production I.G invested 21.6% and 10.0%, respectively. In 2017, IG Port created Lingua Franca, an electronic distribution service company, as a wholly owned subsidiary, with Kyohei Shinpuku as its president. On June 5, 2017, Production I.G launched Tate Anime (vertical anime), an anime distribution app optimized for viewing on smartphones. It was completely renewed in 2018 and replaced with a new app, Anime Beans, with expanded functions, including the ability to deliver Yoko anime (horizontal anime), and more content available for viewing. The service was launched on December 18 worldwide except for China. The app ended service on March 31, 2023. In 2018, Production I.G and Wit Studio entered into a comprehensive business partnership with Netflix for anime productions. On November 20, 2018, IG Port sold Xebec to Sunrise. Prior to that, Xebeczwei, a subsidiary of Xebec, was transferred to Production I.G on January 12, 2018, becoming a subsidiary and changing its name to IGzwei accordingly. On August 30, 2022, George Wada, who founded Wit Studio, was promoted from Executive Vice President of Production I.G to CEO, while Ishikawa resigned as CEO to become Chairman. Wada also continued to serve as president of Wit Studio.

Works

Television series

OVAs

ONAs

Films

Live-action series

Music videos

Video games

Production I.G website