Studio Gainax, founded in 1984 is one ofthe anime industry’s most prolific and influentialproduction houses, having been responsible for medium-bending, genre-defining titles like the legendary classic,Neon Genesis Evangelion(1995),FLCL(2000) andGurren Lagann(2007).
Anime studios all have their strengths, weaknesses and proclivities. Anime titles produced by this production studio tend to have their characters assert their dominance in an iconic standing pose seen in various characters. So, who are Gainax, and what exactly is the Gainax Pose?
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The Birth of a Giant
Formed in 1980 as Daicon Film by seven university students: Shinji Higaki, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Yasuhiro Takeda, Toshio Okada, Akai Takami, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and Hideaki Anno. They created their first project for the Daikon III festival in Osaka in 1981, and it was an ambitious short animation featuringa small girl who engages in combatwith various monsters, robots and spaceships from popular fiction to make her way to a dried out daikon radish, which she then watered. They returned to the following Daikon convention held in 1983, where they did an updated rendition of their original project with an even wider scope of characters than before.
This project would be the one to propel the young production studio into its initial success. In 1985, the studio adopted the name “Gainax” from adding the suffix “-x” to an obscure Tottori prefecture term which meant giant. Gainax would go on to produce its first commercial project, the critically acclaimed anime film,Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise,which was released in 1987 and had a chaotic production period. The production ofHonnêamisewent on to define Hideaki Anno’s relationship with the production process for the rest of his career.
The Magnum Opus
The series for which the studio came to be known, and continues to be celebrated for, is the notoriousmecha anime classic,Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is one of the most influential pieces of fiction of all time, and created new directions for science fiction and mecha in anime. This was Gainax’s biggest commercial success, with theEvangelionfranchise spanning a promotional manga released in 1994 to garner interest for the upcoming anime, the original television anime released in 1995, as well as various film series, the latest of whcih being theRebuild of Evangelionseries announced in 2006.Rebuild of Evangelionconcluded with a third film in March 2021. The franchise is lauded for its rich and complex world and characters, with both continuing to have huge influences on other productions in various other media.
Despite this critical acclaim, the original television anime series has been largely criticized for the last two episodes' confusing and convoluted conclusion of the story, and the ending remains a polarizing discussion in the anime and manga community to this day. Animage magazine’s Anime Grand Prix was awarded toNeon Genesis Evangelionin the three consecutive years between 1996 and 1998, becoming the first anime series ever to do so. A TV Asahi poll released in 2007 found that the series is the second most beloved and appreciated anime in Japan.Neon Genesis Evangelion’s success was unprecedented, and earned the production studio 1.6 billion yen between the series' debut in October 1995, and July 1997, and it remains one of the mecha genre’s most defining titles.
Click, Click, POSE!
One of the reasons why Gainax has such an influential touch is related to the studio’s emphasis on producing in-house creations, rather than adaptations of existing works. In this regard, Gainax bears similarity to another legendary studio: Manglobe. This led to the refinement of Gainax’s signature stylisations – the notorious Gainax plot-twist, and theover-the-top, dramatic and fluid movementof the characters in Gainax productions.
One of the things exhibited by various characters in the anime produced by Gainax is a particular stance that powerful characters assume in an expression of a total confidence or understanding of their absolute dominion. The stance involves the character standing with feet shoulder width apart and their arms crossed as they stare ahead with a scowl of determination etched on their face. This performance of superiority is known to fans simply as “Gaina Dachi” – the “Gainax Pose”; or the “Gainax Stance”, also known to English audiences as the “Gunbuster Pose”.
It is not enough that the character be standing with their arms crossed. A proper Gainax Pose features several important elements, one of which is the aforementioned “scowl of determination”, or any kind of commanding look from the subject. Another element is the atmosphere of such a scene – Gainax Poses are notable because they are extremely dramatic in a way that can be understood to be one of anime’s major undercurrents, but because they set the scene.
Therefore, an effective Gainax Pose is one that is performed prior to an important moment, be it in the context of the series as a whole, or the character’s individual development; but they can also be gags. They also usually feature dramatic visual elements, like sparkles, flames, lightning and the like. Despite the name, Gainax poses are performed by characters from a plethora of different sources, which is a clear illustration of the studio’s influence.
