Key people Tezuka Makoto Founder Osamu Tezuka Type of business Animation film studio | Headquarters Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan Founded 1968 Key person Macoto Tezuka | |
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Industry Media and Entertainment Number of locations Nobidome, Niiza City, Saitama, Japan Products Animated feature films (Anime) Website | ||
Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd. (株式会社手塚プロダクション, Kabushiki-gaisha Tezuka Purodakushon) is a Japanese animation studio founded by Tezuka Osamu in 1968. It is known for animating notable works such as Marvelous Melmo, the 1980 and 2003 Astro Boy series, and Black Jack. His son, Macoto Tezuka, currently aims to use Tezuka Productions to extend Tezuka's manga series with new issues and publish posthumous works such as Legend of the Forest.
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History
In 1961, Osamu Tezuka established Osamu Tezuka Mushi Production as an video and animation production unit. It was officially incorporated as Mushi Productions Co., Ltd., the following year. Tezuka served as acting director of the company until 1968, when he left to start another animation studio, Tezuka Productions Co., Ltd., as a spun-off division of Mushi Productions dedicated to manga production and copyright management.
In 1970, Tezuka moved the headquarters of Tezuka Productions to the second and third floors of a cafe business across from Fujimidai Station in Nerima. The second floor was reserved for employee offices and production assistants, while the third floor was Tezuka's own workspace and office. For the first few years, the studio took sub-contracted animation work from Mushi Productions, which included a variety of animated shorts and a full television series, Fushigi na Merumo (Marvelous Melmo), which was broadcast by TBS for 26 episodes from October 1971 to March 1972. After Mushi Productions filed for bankruptcy in 1973, Tezuka Productions took on animation production full-time along with its manga and copyright businesses and began growing rapidly as an animation studio. In 1976, Tezuka Productions relocated itself again to the Takadanobaba Seven Building (高田馬場のセブンビル, Takadanobaba no Sebun Biru) in Takadanobaba, Shinjuku.
From 1980 to 1981, Tezuka Productions produced a remake for Astro Boy that ran for 52 episodes on Nippon TV. Tezuka had been dissatisfied with the first Astro Boy film produced at Mushi Productions, and had wanted to create a remake for the series since 1974.
In 2007, Tezuka Productions began a multi-year project to digitize and color all of his published manga series, comprising over 150,000 pages. Tezuka's former personal assistants reproduced the color charts that they originally used for all-color pieces while Tezuka was still producing series, in order to ensure that the new coloring process remained faithful to the colors used in Tezuka's time.
In 2008, Tezuka's son Macoto Tezka announced that he would complete Legend of the Forest, his father's final unfinished work, at Tezuka Productions. The film was completed in 2014, premiering at the 2014 Hiroshima International Animation Festival in August, and in North America at the Japan Society in New York City on February 21, 2015.