Bandai Namco Holdings announced on Tuesday the restructuring of its IP production division. A series of subsidiaries, including visual, music, film and creative production companies, joined the IP production division. These include Sunrise Inc., Bandai Namco Arts, Bandai Namco Rights Marketing Inc., which will be merged into the new company, Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. Also Bandai Namco Arts, Bandai Namco Live Creative, and Sunrise Music will be merged The newly established Bandai Namco Music Live Inc..
Bandai Namco Holdings also emphasized in the announcement that the group will still use and develop the independent brand Sunrise with a history of more than 40 years. Regarding Sunrise, Emotion and similar brands, the company said that in the new reorganization, "each brand delivers a unique piece around the world" and "each brand brings fans around the world together".
[The History of Sunrise]
In 1972, the employees of the Protozoa Production Company established Sunrise, and at that time, there were several spin-offs of the Worm Production, which was facing dissolution. . The seven high-level executives of Risheng cooperated with another media, Northeast News Agency, to invest in Chuangyingshe, which only participated in the production in the name of cooperation. During this period, it has been reorganized and renamed many times, including the limited company SUNRISE Studio (Limited Corporation SUNRISE Studio) used at the time of its establishment, Japan SUNRISE Co., Ltd. (Japan SUNRISE Co., Ltd.) used in November 1976, and Japan SUNRISE Co., Ltd. used since June 1987. Co., Ltd. (Sunrise Co., Ltd.).
In 1976, Risheng became independent from the Northeast News Agency due to the problem of dividing accounts, and underwent internal reorganization at the same time. Risheng's first self-planned work, Invincible Superman St. Peter 3, was launched in 1977, and the high-profile Mobile Suit Gundam series was also launched in 1979, making Risheng recognized as the best robot animation production company in the industry. Since then, Risheng's works have mostly been original, because the company has less budget to negotiate the rights to adapt the original comics. And because of its early establishment, its original series have a longer lifespan than ordinary animations. The characteristics of being good at painting robots and fighting also make it have stronger potential to develop the peripheral commodity market. Majin Heroes series, KERORO Junso, Inuyasha, Gintama, etc.
In the 1980s, Risheng introduced the studio system to classify different productions to more than 10 teams. In 1987, the company was restructured again internally. In addition to robot animation, the company has participated in more other types of works, and also adapted more comics in line with the trend, such as the master chef, the mother is a fourth-year elementary school student, etc.
Until the 1990s, there were comments that contemporary robot animations were heavily commercialized, especially for Risheng productions. The change in the tastes of anime fans also made Risheng unable to make topical works for a time, but the series of works can still maintain the standard, and new anime fans continue to join.
In February 1994, Risheng was supported by the Japanese toy supplier Bandai and joined the Bandai Group.
In the 2000s, Risheng once again followed the trend and joined the works featuring beautiful girls. But at the same time, Risheng's meticulous style, which focuses on plots and battle scenes, still attracts some anime fans who resist female characters, making the company's production mix the development of the two. Popular works include KERORO Gunso and Inuyasha.
On September 29, 2005, Bandai merged with Japanese video game company Namco to form Bandai Namco Holdings, and Risheng became a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings.
In April 2015, a subsidiary, Bandai Namco Pictures (Japanese: バンダイナムコピクチャーズ, English: BANDAI NAMCO Pictures Inc.), was established to receive most of the works for seasonal children and family fun. Sheng's mainly retains Gundam-based mechanical themed works and advanced age-oriented works that are broadcast late at night.
On March 1, 2019, Sunrise (Shanghai) Brand Management Co., Ltd. (English: Sunrise (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.) was officially established, and will mainly develop animation and image copyright and copyright in mainland China management and application, and promote the development of IP-related businesses. [2] The establishment of Risheng Shanghai is to better comprehensively manage Risheng's IP in China, and to improve its popularity while bringing high-quality Risheng works to fans.
In April 2019, Sunrise completed the acquisition of most of XEBEC's post-production and some original brands from Production I.G, and incorporated it into the newly established subsidiary SUNRISE BEYOND.
