Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd. (株式会社タツノコプロ, Kabushiki-gaisha Tatsunoko Puro; often shortened to Tatsunoko Pro (タツノコプロ, Tatsunoko Puro)) is a Japanese animation studio headquartered at the Musaino YS Building in Nakacho, Musashino, Tokyo, Japan. Originally founded on October 19, 1962 by manga author Tatsuo Yoshida and his brothers Kenji Yoshida and Ippei Kuri as a manga studio, three years later the studio entered animation production as it produced its first television series, an original work titled Space Ace. Since then, the studio has produced numerous anime series, such as Speed Racer, Gatchaman, The Genie Family, the Time Bokan series, Samurai Pizza Cats, Pinocchio: The Series, The Adventures of Hutch the Honeybee, and The Littl' Bits, among others. It holds numerous original rights and character copyrights for its original works in Japan and abroad.
The studio is responsible for the planning and production of anime films and television series, as well as character licensing.
The company is one of Japan's leading anime studios in terms of the breadth and richness of its content, ranging from hard action heroes to comedies, science fiction, anthropomorphic animals, and domestic dramas.
Although the company later began producing works set in Japan, since its inception it has essentially aimed to produce works that can be used anywhere in the world in a stateless manner.
In the genealogy of animation studios in the history of Japanese animation, Tatsunoko is known as the studio that created many derivative studios along with Toei Animation, Mushi Production, and Tokyo Movie (currently TMS Entertainment).
In the past, Tatsunoko had a production system in which almost all processes, from planning to scriptwriting, drawing, cinematography, and editing, were completed in-house. The company continued to use this system for a long time after Toei Animation and Mushi Production, which had a similar production system, became unsustainable due to streamlining and bankruptcy.
Initially, founder Tatsuo Yoshida tried to establish his studio's own style with realistic drawings that accurately depicted muscles and skeletons.
At that time, it was common knowledge that animation was to be abbreviated or deformed, and that pictures were to be simplified as much as possible to show movement.
Even Mushi Production and Disney used to draw the car so that when it starts, it first contracts like rubber and then jumps out like a bullet due to the recoil, and when it stops, it contracts once due to braking and then extends and returns to its original state.
However, Tatsuo Yoshida insisted on realistic animation and produced Mach GoGoGo.
For the scene where the car spins, he rented a driving school and had the driver actually demonstrate the spin with the car, and had the animators draw the scene without deforming it by referring to the demonstration.
It was so well received that it became the studio's origin and led to subsequent realistic, hard-action works.
However, Yoshida's drawings, with their many lines, precision, and sharpness, were unsuitable for animation, which required many drawings of the same picture, and were difficult for other animators to imitate.
Most animators refused to participate in the production, and the company's schedule was on the verge of collapse. However, the company was able to get through the busy season when a comedy with a simple design happened to enter the production rotation.
This allowed the company to learn how to run a studio that alternated between serious action animation with detailed drawings and comedy animation with simple drawings using deformation, resulting in a wide range of styles.
After 43 years running as an independent studio, an 88% stake of the studio was purchased by Takara on June 30, 2005 a year prior to its merger with Tomy to form Takara Tomy. Nippon Television Holdings, the parent company of Japanese television broadcaster Nippon Television, purchased the studio in a share swap with Tomy in 2014.
The studio's name has a double meaning in Japanese: "Tatsu's child" (Tatsu is a nickname for Tatsuo) and "seahorse", the latter inspiring its logo.
Contents
History
The studio was founded in October 1962 by mangaka and anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida and his two younger brothers: Kenji, who managed Tatsuo, and manga artist Toyoharu, better known by his pen name "Ippei Kuri", at Tatsuo's house.
It initially began as a production company specializing in manga to manage the copyrights of Tatsuo Yoshida's manga and his assistants.
However, at the time, the manga artist community was abuzz following the beginning of the broadcast of Astro Boy, Japan's first domestically produced anime television series produced by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production.
Tatsuo Yoshida became interested in anime production after hearing from Hiroshi Sasagawa, a manga artist who had worked as Tezuka's assistant, and Tatsunoko set out to produce anime.
Tatsuo saw that more people were buying televisions in the early 1960s and predicted that they would demand higher quality anime program in the future, so decided to provide it to them.
Around that time, Toei Animation, having heard of Tatsuo's hopes, invited Tatsunoko to produce an anime TV series.
It was a good deal for Tatsunoko, which was entrusted with the original story, script, and direction, while Toei worked on the subsequent inbetweening, finishing, cinematography, etc. Toei trained animators over a three-month period, with Tatsunoko staff, including Tatsuo and Sasagawa, also able to participate in training.
However, the negotiations broke down due to copyright issues, so Tatsunoko decided to produce an original work on its own. They bought a plot of land in Kokubunji, cleared out a wooded area, and built a prefab house, which became an improvised animation studio.
As for animators, Tatsunoko had three manga artists, Tatsuo, Kuri, and Sasagawa, and about 10 assistants to Tatsuo, so they were confident that they could manage. However, most of them refused, saying that they wanted to be manga artists rather than making animation. With no other choice, Tatsunoko placed an advertisement in the newspaper looking for animators and trained 50 amateurs from across the country based on their training experience at Toei.
Main productions
Original works that are produced in-house are in bold.
Anime television specials
Ninja Box (2019–2020; co-production with C2C)
Idol Land PriPara (2021)
Exception (Netflix) (2022, co-production with 5 Inc.)
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – Northern War (2023)
Pole Princess!! (2023)
King of Prism: Dramatic Prism.1 (2024)
King of Prism: Your Endless Call - Minna Kirameki! Prism☆Tours (2025)
Co-productions
Genesis Climber MOSPEADA: Love Live Alive (1985; co-production with Artmic)
Lady Lovely Locks and the Pixietails (1987)
Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Flash Back 2012 (1987; co-production with Studio Nue and Artland)
Anime studios founded by former members
Ashi Productions/Production Reed (since 1975)
Artmic (1978–1997) (defunct)
Pierrot (since 1979)
J.C.Staff (since 1986)
Production I.G (since 1987)
Animation 21 (since the 1990s) (defunct)
Xebec (1995–2019) (defunct)
Radix Ace Entertainment (1995–2006) (defunct)
Bee Train Production (1997–2012) (dormant)
Actas (since 1998)
TNK (since 1999)
A-Line (since 2000)
P.A. Works (since 2000)
Yanchester (since 2024)