Remember Your Roots! Gainax and the Daicon Opening Animation

Writing last week’s post about Gainax’s sad but expected bankruptcy got me thinking about the early days of the influential anime studio. Today, let’s look at the Daicon III and Daicon IV Opening Animation shorts. They helped shape the anime we know today!

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Before Gainax Was Gainax

Sometimes the life of an anime blogger can be sad, requiring that I drop whatever I’m doing and bang out an obituary for some great anime creator who has passed away suddenly. One day I might be called on to write about a legendary animator like Space Battleship Yamato creator Leiji Matsumoto. Another day, I have to write about a famous composer like Ryuichi Sakamoto. Last week we got bad news about Gainax, creator of shows like Aim for the Top: Gunbuster and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The company had officially entered bankruptcy after many years of mismanagement.

Writing the post made me quite natsukashii (nostalgic) about all the joy the company brought to fans over the years, and what it was like, going to early anime conventions and experiencing the latest Gainax works.

Before Gainax Was Gainax

Gainax got its start as a “circle” (university club) known as Daicon Film. It was started by a group of university students who wanted to make animation together. The founders included genius animators Hideaki Anno and Hiroyuki Yamaga, character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, and producer Toshio Okada.

By chance, all the founders attended the Osaka University of Arts in the same year. Bokutachi no Remake! — an anime about a man who time-travels into the past to try to become part of a genius team of creators known as Platinum Generation — is a reference to the founders of Gainax.

The group’s first project was 1981’s Daicon III Opening Animation, a short work shot on 8 mm film commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Japan National SF Convention. The dai in Daicon is Osaka, and con is convention. It was the third time the convention was held in Osaka, hence the III. The clip was filled with pop culture references and featured a cute girl whose pantsu were frequently visible.

The group had planned on disbanding after making the short film, but they had so much fun they started planning future projects together. Toshio Okada set up a catalog shop called General Projects — the great senpai of J-List — to sell otaku goods to fans, which helped secure funding for future animation projects.

Daicon IV Opening Animation

in 1983, the Japan Science Fiction Convention was to be held in Osaka again. So the group got together to plan a sequel work. The first Daicon film brought enough attention to Hideaki Anno that he was invited to work on parts of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross (Robotech in English). Through Anno, professional studios Studio Nue and Joyland got involved in the second work.

The Daicon IV Opening Animation really ratcheted up the quality, as well as the references to beloved pop culture. Pretty much every anime of the era got parodied in the film. But Western works were included, too, with everything from D.C. comics to Star Trek and Star Wars getting screentime. The film was set to the song “Twilight” by Electric Light Orchestra. Consequently, their album Time became the official soundtrack for early otakus.

The popularity of the two Daicon short films, which got bootlegged all over the world, opened the door for the Daicon Film creators to form a proper animation studio, which they named Gainax. And the rest is history…

Thanks for reading this blog post about the classic Daicon Opening Animation films and their influence on otaku culture. What’s the first Gainax anime you watched?