The story
Founded by Mahiro Maeda on Sep 11, 1992.1
Founding
In 1992, Shouji Murahama, a producer who had left Gainax, together with director Mahiro Maeda, screenwriter Hiroshi Yamaguchi, and filmmaker Shinji Higuchi, started Gonzo as a creator's office in Shinjuku, Tokyo. On September 11 of that same year, Shouji Murahama would establish Gonzo Inc. The company's name was suggested by Shinji Higuchi taken from American journalist Hunter S. Thompson's nickname, "Gonzo". He later learned that it also meant "idiot" in Italian.
In 1994, with the release of the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, Gonzo began shifting its focus on digital animation. In 1996, the studio produced the animated sequences for the video game Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. Seeking to demonstrate its ability to produce complete, self-contained narrative works, Gonzo produced its first anime production, the OVA Blue Submarine No. 6 in 1998.
Formation of the GDH Group
In May 1999, Gonzo was reorganized as a joint-stock company and changed its name to Gonzo K.K.
In February 2000, Shinichiro Ishikawa, a former Boston Consulting Group employee and representative director of Digimation, joined the company, and the holding company Gonzo Digimation Holdings was established. Gonzo and Digimation became wholly owned subsidiaries of the holding company, establishing the group's management structure. This formed the GDH Group, with Gonzo serving not only as the name of the studio but also as the brand name of the group as a whole.
In April 2002, Gonzo and Digimation merged and changed the company name to Gonzo Digimation. In July 2004, the company was renamed GONZO K.K., while Gonzo Digimation Holdings was renamed GDH. In November of the same year, GDH was listed on the Mothers Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Since 2000, Gonzo ventured into television anime production, and the 2005 television anime Black Cat was their first work based on a manga serialized on Weekly Shonen Jump, a genre that had previously been associated with works aimed at niche audiences.
In 2006, Gonzo released its first theatrical film, Origin: Spirits of the Past. The year also marked the company's 15th anniversary, for which it planned several projects, including an anime adaptation of Tow Ubukata's Mardock Scramble. However, the project was canceled later that year amid production difficulties. Another 15th-anniversary project, Afro Samurai, was produced for the American market and premiered on Spike TV in 2007. The series sold approximately 400,000 copies in the United States and was followed by Afro Samurai: Resurrection and video game adaptations.
On April 2008, Gonzo becomes the first anime studio to simulcast anime internationally, licensing The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk and Blassreiter to Crunchyroll.
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Group restructuring
In the late 2000s, the company fell into financial difficulties due to the collapse of the DVD boom.
In September 2008, the company conducted a third-party allotment of new shares to Iwakaze Fund, an investment limited partnership managed and operated by Iwakaze Capital, making Iwakaze Fund the largest shareholder.
On April 1, 2009, as part of efforts to improve the financial condition of the GDH Group, Gonzo was absorbed into its parent company, GDH, which changed its corporate name to Gonzo K.K. As a result, Gonzo, the corporation originally established in 1992, ceased to exist. On June 3 of the same year, the company's accounting auditor, BA Tokyo Audit Corporation, issued a disclaimer of opinion on its financial statements for the fiscal year ended March 2009, citing the possibility of difficulties in securing funds to repay its debts and uncertainty over the achievement of its restructuring plan. On June 29, the decision was made to delist the company from the Mother's Toyko Stock Exchange and the company was delisted on July 30. Around the same time, the group's financial difficulties led to the reorganization and sale of its digital production divisions and group companies, as well as the separation of its production studios into independent companies.
Following Shangri-La and Saki in 2009, Gonzo primarily worked on promotional videos for video games and provided animation production services for other companies. In 2010, the company had no television anime or original video animation projects as the primary production studio. After the two aforementioned series ended, Gonzo went approximately one year and ten months without a production in which it served as the primary studio. In 2011, the company announced teo new productions, marking its return to producing anime, Nyanpire and Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing.
In July, 2016, ADK announced a tender offer for Gonzo shares with the aim of making it a consolidated subsidiary. As a result, ADK acquired 197,347 shares (ownership ratio of 84.01%). On December 27 of the same year, ADK announced that it had engaged in inappropriate accounting practices in previous fiscal years. An investigation report was published on January 10, 2017. In response, on February 6, of the same year, it submitted amended securities reports for the 13th to 17th fiscal years to the Kanto Local Finance Bureau.
In June, 2019, Gonzo announced that it would transfer parts of its animation production businesses, intellectual property rights to Studio KΑΙ. On October 31, of the same year, the studio dissolved its subsidiary Okinawa Gonzo. and defunct on April 8, 2020.
In March 2020, It was revealed that the company planned to execute a reverse stock split. If approved, it would reduce the number of issued shares from 934,972 down to 24, making the company a wholly owned subsidiary of ADK in the process. After making Gonzo into an wholly owned subsidiary of ADK, it will transfer all of its shares in the company to Shinichiro Ishikawa.
In 2021, the NFT anime project Samurai cryptos was announced. On October 15, 2024, a promotional video directed by Ai Yokoyama, Samurai Religion, on the official YouTube channel GONZODOGA. This marks the first anime project under the Gonzo name in four years, since 7SEEDS part 2 in 2020.
From Wikipedia’s article on Gonzo (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4