Bee Train: Анимация студиясының тарихы мен ерекшеліктері

Japanese animation studio

The studio Bee Train was founded on June 5, 1997, by Kōichi Mashimo, who was previously a director at Tatsunoko Productions and the founder of Mashimo Jimusho, a small freelance staff working for other studios. Originally, Bee Train was a subsidiary of Production I. G along with Xebec but in February 2006, it ended its relationship and became independent. Koichi Mashimo's goal when he founded Bee Train was to create a "hospital for animators", an animation studio interested in nurturing young talents and artistic quality of production rather than in corporate strategies and profit. This studio as hospital approach was allegedly invented by Mashimo during his prolonged stay in an intensive care unit (after a severe skiing accident) and has been Bee Train's official strategy ever since. The first projects published by the studio in 1999 were anime adaptations of video game franchises popular in Japan: PoPoLoCrois, Arc the Lad, Wild Arms: Twilight Venom, and Medabots. Later, Bandai Visual joined forces with Bee Train to produce an anime OVA based on the famous hack video game series. Simultaneously, they decided to promote the games with an anime television series, that aired in 2002 as hack//Sign and is among Bee Train's most famous works. The OVA became known as hack//Liminality and its four episodes were added as bonus material to each of the original four games of the franchise. In 2006, Bee Train produced hack//Roots, a prequel anime to the hack//G. U. games and a spiritual successor to Sign. Bee Train's first independent project was Noir. Aired in 2001, the series was produced at the same time as Sign and became the first installment of Bee Train's "girls with guns" trilogy. went on air in April 2007. Although the "girls with guns" series are considered Bee Train's and, particularly, Mashimo's signature works, the original idea belonged to their common executive producer Shigeru Kitayama. From 1997 on, the studio's headquarters were located in Kokubunji, Tokyo, although in 2001, it moved to another part of the city. Two more studio locations were acquired in 2004 (in Karuizawa, Nagano) and 2006 (Kichijōji, Musashino, Tokyo). The company has been dormant since 2012 due to Kōichi Mashimo's retirement from the anime industry.

One frequent technique that Mashimo uses as part of his studio as hospital strategy is brainstorming new anime concepts with his colleagues in the state of alcohol intoxication. For example, according to him, that is how the idea of the supernatural connection between the two female leads of Madlax was born. Another typical Bee Train gesture is to invite Japanese voice actors who have already worked on some of their projects to voice the characters similar to the ones they voiced before. For example, this list includes Hōko Kuwashima (Kirika Yuumura in Noir, Margaret Burton in Madlax), Aya Hisakawa (Chloe, Limelda Jorg, Jodie Hayward in El Cazador de la Bruja), and Kaori Nazuka (Subaru in hack//Sign, Shino in hack//Roots). The famous Japanese composer and music producer Yuki Kajiura has created musical scores for multiple projects by Bee Train since Noir (whose appeal lay to a large degree in its soundtrack). Kajiura has provided music for Sign, Liminality, Madlax (as part of FictionJunction Yuuka), Tsubasa Chronicle, and recently El Cazador de la Bruja. When explaining his preference for Kajiura's work, Mashimo once commented that "she's a storyteller who just happens to know how to write music". Another frequent collaboration is that between Bee Train and the musical duo Ali Project (Noir, Avenger, hack//Roots). Generally, the music plays a just as important role in Bee Train's works as visuals and dialogue do, sometimes even drowning the latter (heard, for example, in hack//Sign, Avenger, and Madlax).

Year Title Type Eps Director Writer Composer 1999 Popolocrois Monogatari TV 25 Kōichi Mashimo Aya Matsui Kow Otani 1999 Arc the Lad TV 26 Itsuro Kawasaki Akemi Omode Michiru Oshima 1999 Wild Arms: Twilight Venom TV 22 Itsuro Kawasaki Hideki MitsuiItsuro Kawasaki Aya Matsui Akemi Omode Chinatsu Houjou Hideki Mitsui Kenji Kamiyama Kow Otani 1999 Medabots (first season) TV 52 Tensai Okamura Ryōta Yamaguchi Osamu Tezuka 2001 Noir TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Ryoe Tsukimura Yuki Kajiura 2001 Captain Kuppa Desert Pirate TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Kōichi Mashimo Hayato Matsuo 2002 hack//Sign TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Kazunori ItoHiroaki JinnoKōichi MashimoKirin MoriAkemi OmodeMitsuhiko SawamuraMichiko Yokote Yuki Kajiura 2002 hack//Liminality OVA 4 Kōichi Mashimo Kazunori Ito Yuki Kajiura 2002 hack//Gift OVA 1 Kōichi Mashimo Kazunori Ito Yuki Kajiura 2003 Avenger TV 13 Kōichi Mashimo Hidefumi Kimura Ali Project 2003 hack//Legend of the Twilight TV 12 Kōichi MashimoKoji Sawai Akatsuki YamatoyaSatoru Nishizono Yuji YoshinoYoko Ueno 2003 Immortal Grand Prix TV 5 Kōichi Mashimo Kōichi MashimoYuki Arie Fat Jon 2004 Madlax TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Yōsuke Kuroda Yuki Kajiura 2004 Meine Liebe TV 13 Kōichi Mashimo Akemi Omode Yoshihisa Hirano 2005 Tsubasa Chronicle (first season) TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Hiroyuki Kawasaki Yuki Kajiura 2006 Meine Liebe wieder TV 13 Shinya Kawamo Akemi Omode Yutaka Minobe 2006 hack//Roots TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Kazunori ItoMiu Kawasaki Ali Project 2006 Spider Riders TV 52 Kōichi MashimoTakaaki Ishiyama Yōsuke Kuroda Fumitaka AnzaiNobuhiko Nakayama 2006 Tsubasa Chronicle (second season) TV 26 Kōichi MashimoHiroshi Morioka Hiroyuki Kawasaki Yuki Kajiura 2007 Murder Princess OVA 6 Tomoyuki Kurokawa Tatsuhiko Urahata Yasufumi Fukuda 2007 El Cazador de la Bruja TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Kenichi Kanemaki Yuki Kajiura 2007 Spider Riders: Yomigaeru Taiyou TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Yōsuke Kuroda Fumitaka AnzaiNobuhiko Nakayama 2008 Blade of the Immortal TV 13 Kōichi Mashimo Hiroyuki Kawasaki Kow Otani 2008 Batman Gotham Knight: Field Test Video 1 Hiroshi Morioka Jordan Goldberg Christopher Drake 2009 Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ TV 26 Kōichi Mashimo Gen UrobuchiYōsuke KurodaHideki ShiraneNoboru KimuraTatsuya TakahashiYukihito Nonaka Hikaru Nanase 2010 Halo Legends: Homecoming OVA/ONA 1 Koji Sawai Hiroyuki Kawasaki Martin O'Donnell 2010 Psychic Detective Yakumo TV 13 Tomoyuki Kurokawa Hiroyuki Kawasaki R・O・N 2011 Hyouge Mono TV 39 Koichi Mashimo Hiroyuki Kawasaki Kow Otani

Bee Train Digital was Bee Train's small special effects and other works area that has mostly provided additional production support to projects such as effects, finishing and photography work for hack//SIGN, hack//Liminality, Avenger, and Murder Princess. It also created the special effects for Toaru Majutsu no Index and 2D works in ending theme of Canaan. Studio Road, which resides within the studio's offices, provides animation finishing services for Bee Train and several other studios. Through the 2009 2010 year, two new divisions were added. C Station Department, which served as its animation design department and D Station Department, which was reorganized from Bee Train Digital, is the digital production and digital photography works. In 2012, C Station broke away from Bee Train becoming independent and D Station has since been delisted by the company.