Overview Indie Anime
An overview of some independent anime studios and productions.
Anime is almost by nature an affair best suited for substantial budgets and large groups of animators, but that hasn't stopped a few groups from defying odds and common sense to create something of their own. Technology has helped immensely, both in easing the creation of animation through various computer techniques, and the ability to distribute the work to a worldwide audience with minimal effort.
Certainly it has permanently changed the face of comics--it's safe to say that 95% of the manga produced in the world today is an amateur production on the web, and in all likelihood over half of the professional-quality ongoing stories are in the same category. Anime has not, thus far, seen quite the same serious-amateur explosion, however--clips and shorts are everywhere, but anime-style productions of more than a minute or two are rare.
And while the face of anime and the way it's distributed have changed drastically, there is a difference between a two-minute web short and a production one could call commercial, and that's the line that the studios here have crossed--they have not only produced something, but sold it as a finished product in one form or another.
The level of polish and commitment necessary to ask for money is the threshold we're using, for the time being, for our indie section. We're always on the lookout for new indie productions, so if you have one or known of one that we haven't covered, please tell us about it--word-of-mouth is the lifeblood of indie producers everywhere.
We have some background information about each of the studios listed below, as well as reviews of most of their commercial productions.