Sunrise

formerly known as, name changed in early 2022, is a famous Japanese animation studio founded by ex-Mushi Production members.

Sunrise
Formerly known as Nippon Sunrise and Sunrise Studio before that. They are notable for their renowned and original mecha series including Gundam, the Brave Series, The Vision of Escaflowne and many others, which have won many Animage Awards. Sunrise also adapt popular manga such as Gintama and City Hunter from Weekly Shōnen Jump and InuYasha from Weekly Shōnen Sunday and light novels such as Accel World and Dirty Pair. Studio Deen, Bones, Manglobe and A-1 Pictures were all founded by Sunrise members. As of 2022, Sunrise will just be a brand of Bandai Namco Filmworks.

Many of Sunrise's original anime have other such as masked identities, all accompanied by fluid animation and created in-house by their staff under the pseudonym of the studio founder, Hajime Yatate. When most of Sunrise titles began international distribution, most were licensed were licensed by Japan's Bandai Visual, Europe's Beez Entertainment, and America's Bandai Entertainment until both western companies were shut down in 2012 after Bandai Entertainment's restructuring. Currently, Funimation, Viz Media, Sentai Filmworks, Aniplex of America, Madman Entertainment, etc. are the main distributors with Sunrise confirming future co-operation regarding DVD and Blu-ray merchandise.

Along with Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, Sunrise was one of the co-founding and shareholding studios for the TV network Animax along with co-founders and shareholders including and the noted animation studios Toei Animation, TMS Entertainment, and NAS.

Sunrise Beyond
In 2018, Sunrise announced it would take over the video production business excluding the post-production department of XEBEC and was established as a subsidiary on March 1, 2019. It started work at the beginning of April 2019.

Sun sets to a new Sunrise
After 50 years with the name Sunrise somewhere in its name, its parent company Bandai Namco Holdings decided to rename the studio in early 2022 to Bandai Namco Filmworks. Two other entities will be merged into the studio: Bandai Namco Core Arts and Bandai Namco Core Arts Marketing. The CEO of Sunrise at the time, Makoto Asanuma, will remain the leader of the newly named studio. One upside is that the Sunrise name and logo will continue to be used for branding purposes on anime.

The Emotion label from Bandai Visual and the new brand Bandai Namco Next (though maybe not for all products with that brand) will also be moving under the Bandai Namco Filmworks umbrella.

Bandai Namco Music Live
At the same time as the Sunrise animation studio was folded into Bandai Namco Filmworks, its related music arm, Sunrise Music, was folded into a new sister company, Bandai Namco Music Live. Bandai Namco Music Live is centered around the main label, Lantis.

As Sunrise Beyond

 * Kyoukai Senki (October 2021– )