Indie Anime Overview

Introduction

Animation, particularly anime, has traditionally been produced by large companies with large budgets and large staffs of professional animators. There have, however, always been independent productions--some people with a dream and the drive to create a finished animated story from it. Now, in the opening years of the 21st Century, a new breed of independent animation is just beginning to make its mark: Indie Anime.

This subsection is devoted to showcasing independent anime productions. At this point, due to the vast amount of Flash animation floating around, the focus is on finished videos that are available for purchase, but any production that fits somewhere into the anime style and isn't produced by an established professional studio belongs here. Below are short overviews of some of the indie studios that have produced commercially available videos.

For those of you who are already asking the question "If it's not Japanese, is it really anime?", the answer as far as this site is concerned is yes, so long as the style feels true to the genre. See our what is anime essay if you want a detailed explanation.

Studio Summary, and AAW Reviews

Budget Monks

Website: budgetmonks.com

Budget Monks works entirely in Flash, with a sort of "animated manga" style of pans over largely static hand-drawings set to a soundtrack; the style isn't quite anime in some ways, but is close enough to fall into the category. They are one of the big success stories of web anime-gone-mainstream; their several-year free online project, Broken Saints, was recently completed, and picked up for distribution on DVD by Fox.

• Broken Saints OAV Series; DVD

Dementia7 Studios

Website: dementia7studios.com

Works with Flash-style stillframe animation, and after their initial DVD OAV release, they've expanded into a variety of larger-scale projects involving more motion, including some commercial work for television advertisements. A new D7 Peacemaker video has been released for viewing (free), purchase (higher-resolution download), and eventually DVD, in addition to the original DVD-only production.

• D7 Peacemaker: Stage 1 OAV; DVD
• D7 Peacemaker: Revelation OAV

Pseudomé Studio

Website: pseudome.net

3D CG animation, as well as digital cel animation and hand-drawn manga. They completed one finished episode sold on VHS, but have since abandoned that project and moved into more comic-oriented productions and paid commercial work.

• II: Prologue OAV series; VHS

Studio ArtFX

Website: studioartfx.com

This essentially one-man operation exclusively focuses on 3D CG animation; they finished and sold 2 DVDs, and the website is a sort of blog-style commentary on tips relating to animation using 3D tools. They have also done paid commercial work.

• Shadowskin OAV; DVD
• Understanding Chaos Short; DVD

White Radish

Website: whiteradish.com

This one-man operation exclusively does computerized cel animation using (and sometimes distributed in) Flash, but the animation is drawn traditional style, frame-by-frame. He finished several shorts, available on the DVD compilation reviewed below (it has since been re-released with some changes), as well as several web shorts. Their works are humorous and most have an H overtone.

• White Radish Perfect Collection Shorts; DVD/VHS

Makoto Shinkai

Website: Other Voices website (Japanese)

Computerized cel animation; several shorts finished (She and Her Cat the most prominent), plus the widely acclaimed short film Voices of a Distant Star, distributed in English by ADV (the ADV DVD also includes She and Her Cat). Shinkai has since moved on to "The Place Promised in Our Early Days," a full-budget theatrical film also available from ADV.

• Voices of a Distant Star; Short film; DVD
• The Place Promised in Our Early Days; Theatrical film; DVD