Early history (as Zuiyo Eizo)
What is now Nippon Animation is descended from Zuiyo Eizo (or Zuiyo Enterprise), an animation studio and planning and production company founded in April 1969 by TCJ former manager Shigeto Takahashi. [3]
Zuiyo Enterprise (瑞鷹エンタープライズ) was the former sales division of the animation studio, TCJ before it spun off in March and was formally established the following month.
The studio has been involved in the planning and production series based on Western literature in the early and mid-1970s such as Moomin, Vicky the Viking and 1974's Heidi, Girl of the Alps, an adaptation of Johanna Spyri's popular children's book Heidi.[4] The Heidi anime was enormously popular in Japan (and later in Europe, and the feature-length edit of the TV series saw a U.S. VHS release in 1985). Zuiyo Enterprise soon found itself in financial trouble because of the high production costs of a series (presumably Maya the Honey Bee) it was attempting to sell to the European market.
The company was involved in the production of animated series for the TV anime staple Calpis Comic Theater (カルピスまんが劇場), later known as World Masterpiece Theater, broadcast on Fuji TV. These series were based on children's literature such as Moomin and Andersen Stories. These earlier series' animation were commissioned to two other studios: Mushi Production and Tokyo Movie Shinsha, while Zuiyo was mainly involved in the planning.
In 1972, after changing its headquarters, Zuiyo Enterprise formed an animation studio division known as Zuiyo Eizo (ズイヨー映像). By this time, Zuiyo was working on its first independent production based on Johanna Spyri's Heidi, an ambitious project on which Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki also worked on. In 1967 Takahashi had already produced a short pilot for a Heidi series with TCJ, but the project was shelved. In the meantime Zuiyo also worked on Vicky the Viking, a German co-production with ZDF and ORF, based on Runer Jonsson's eponymous book series. In 1974 Heidi, Girl of the Alps and Vicky the Viking were broadcast in Japan, soon gaining a huge success also in Europe. Nevertheless, Zuiyo Eizo found itself in financial difficulties due to the high production costs of its series, not enough repaid by the selling of its properties to European market. In 1975, Zuiyo Eizo was split into two entities: Zuiyo Co., Ltd., which absorbed the debt and the rights to the Heidi anime and other previous series, and Nippon Animation, which was essentially Zuiyo Eizo's production staff (including Miyazaki and Takahata), which would continue to produce World Masterpiece Theater, retaining the rights of other series on which the studio was working on, such as A Dog of Flanders and Maya the Honey Bee.
Modern History (as Nippon Animation)
In 1975, Zuiyo Eizo's staff spun off its studio into a separate company known as Nippon Animation, which was essentially Zuiyo Eizo's production staff (including Miyazaki and Takahata). Officially, Nippon Animation Co., Ltd. was established on 3 June 1975 by company president Kōichi Motohashi. The newly rechristened Nippon Animation found success right away with Maya the Honey Bee and A Dog of Flanders (both of which began as Zuiyō Eizō productions), which became the first entry in the World Masterpiece Theater series to be produced under the Nippon Animation name. Hayao Miyazaki left Nippon Animation in 1979 in the middle of the production of Anne of Green Gables to make the Lupin III feature The Castle of Cagliostro. As a result, Zuiyo Enterprise absorbed the debt and the rights to the Heidi and Vicky the Viking television series and continued operations until 1988, when due to its debt, the copyrights for the Zuiyo Enterprise programs moved to a separate company under the Zuiyo name.
A lawsuit by 361 voice actors was filed against Nippon Animation and its recording production subsidiary Onkyo Eizo System in demand of unpaid royalties from DVD releases of the studio's series.[5] After four years, a judge ruled in 2003 that Onkyo Eizo owed 87 million yen (US$796,000) to the actors, but dismissed the case against Nippon Animation as they deemed actor compensation to be the responsibility of the recording studio.
