6 Best Anime Studios That Specialize In Action

For those who are new to the term, an anime studio specifically refers to an animation production company based in Japan. Given the history of the medium and the number of anime studios that currently exist — and there are an impressive number of them — they can be organized using the genre in which they specialize.

There aren’t any official classifications for what kind of anime a studio makes, but it’s easy to see that some use action more than others. Action movies can overlap with science fiction, dark fantasy, historical fiction, or comedy, so there’s something for everyone depending on the anime studio they choose.

6 Madhouse

Library Includes: Redline, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Hunter x Hunter, Ninja Scroll, Trigun, One Punch Man

• Location: Honchō, Nakano, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: October 17, 1972

Madhouse is known for its artwork as much as its vast library of action-focused anime, and anything this company produces seems to retain the same beauty and quality even decades into its existence. Their signature genre trends towards action, including examples like Trigun and Hunter x Hunter as some of their famous offerings. Other works, like Death Note, only had a few action scenes as the plot required, but are equally famous.

The studio was founded in 1972 and its first production was a year later. It was a collaboration with Tokyo Movie to adapt a manga called Aim for the Ace!, a sports drama about tennis, and it was very much an action anime.

5 Toei

Works Include: Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, The Transformers, One Piece

• Location: Nakano City, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: January 23, 1948

The name in anime for superheroes, Toei is a studio that was giving us magical girls and big giant robots as far back as the 1980s, and is responsible for some of the most popular IPs in anime history. Even though some of the bigger franchises, like Transformers, have moved on to different studios, Toei was the first to produce the famous series in 1984.

Virtually everything Toei produces falls into the action category somehow, and unlike some other studios that branch out, the folks at Toei seem to know they have a good thing going and don’t wander from the wheelhouse very often. The studio has also produced a whole library of media that was only released in Japan.

4 Sunrise

Works Include: Mobile Suit Gundam, Patlabor, Vision Of Escalflowne, Tiger & Bunny, Cowboy BeBop, Inuyasha

• Location: Ogikubo, Suginami, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: September 1972

The modern name of this company might sound more familiar. Since 2022, Sunrise has been known as Bandai Namco Filmworks, finally taking the name of the parent company that acquired them in 1994. It’s the same company that’s been producing some of the best and most popular action anime for more than 50 years and has collaborated with other big studios like Toei to make even more.

The modern structure of Bandai Namco Filmworks includes a number of studios, each one working on different projects, and each one has plenty to do. Their first project was called Hazedon, and it was an adventure anime made for Fuji TV, which immediately preceded the iconic Mobile Suit Gundam.

3 Production IG

Works Include: Ghost In The Shell, Psycho-Pass, Eden Of The East, Ultraman, Blood: The Last Vampire

• Location: Musashino, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: December 15, 1987

Production IG is the studio that gave the world cyberpunk with one of their most successful IPs, Ghost In the Shell, in 1995. That franchise is one of the most expansive in anime history, but the only direct sequel to this movie was Ghost In The Shell: Innocence, which was the first animated film from Japan to be nominated for competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and other works from this studio have received similar critical acclaim.

With less quantity but more quality than other studios, Production IG leans more towards the full-length movie format, or cutting-edge animation for special projects. This is also the studio that made the notorious short animated sequence in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and worked with Gainax to complete the Evangelion films in the 1990s.

2 Bones

Works Include: Wolf’s Rain, Full Metal Alchemist, Soul Eater, Space Dandy, My Hero Academia, Bungo Stray Dogs

• Location: Suginami, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: October 1998

Bones was founded by former employees of Sunrise, and continued to collaborate with their former employer on several projects. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, a full-length animated movie based on the popular series, is one example. They broke out on their own with shows like Wolf’s Rain and Full Metal Alchemist, both examples of action anime that overlap with science fiction and dark fantasy.

Experimental anime and the occult are just some of many settings and plotlines created by Bones. Their best-known titles feature chilling themes like devils, black magic, and body horror, which might explain why they broke off to do something different than the more mainstream Sunrise.

1 Gainax

Library Includes: Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise

• Location: Musashino, Tokyo, Japan
• Founded: December 24, 1984

Gainax has some unique and memorable titles from the 20th Century that helped define later genres, with The Wings of Honnêamise being an early example of a mecha anime that made it over to North America. The studio took that genre to another level with the anti-mecha cult hit Neon Genesis Evangelion a few years later, which set the bar for serialized anime for the next generation.

The only studio here that’s no longer in operation, Gainax was one of anime’s biggest names before it declared bankruptcy on May 29, 2024, and shut down permanently less than two weeks later. Their long history of producing exciting action-themed anime also included several counts of tax evasion and unpaid copyright claims, most notably one from Studio Kahara, which now owns most of Gainax’s properties and continues to work on some of the most popular, such as Evangelion.