AIC

アニメインターナショナルカンパニー

AIC (Anime International Company, Inc.) is a Japanese animation studio located in Nerima, Tokyo, Japan. Kazushi Nomura and Toru Miura founded AIC on July 15, 1982, with Nomura acting as the studio's president until he departed to establish Another Push Pin Planning (APPP) on June 22, 1984. After Nomura left, Miura took over as the studio's president. Consequently, the studio started producing works as a prime contractor, capitalizing on the OVA boom of the late 1980s. The studio subsequently branched out into game production (AIC Spirits) and publishing (AIC Club). In 2003, the studio closed down AIC Spirits and AIC Club and restructured itself into three sub-studios: AIC A.S.T.A. (now AIC ASTA), AIC Digital, and AIC Spirits. In February 2008, the ACA-managed investment fund MCP Synergy bought a 95% stake in the studio, and a new Anime International Company, Inc. was formed via an incorporation-type demerger in May of that year. In September 2010, Oizumi Corporation made AIC a wholly-owned subsidiary. In March of the next year, the studio became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aplix Corporation. In January 2014, Aplix IP Holdings (now Aplix Corporation) announced it was exiting its multimedia entertainment business and transferred all its shares in the studio to Toru Miura. In August 2015, the studio's animation production department was dissolved. That same year, in December, Miura named Yasutaka Omura as the company's new representative director and also moved its classic IPs to AIC RIGHTS (AIC RIGHTS Co., Ltd.) through a corporation-separation procedure. In January 2020, Miura took back the representative director position from Omura.
The studio contained several sub-studios; in 2013, these included: AIC ASTA, AIC Build, AIC Classic, AIC Digital, AIC PLUS+, and AIC Frontier. Additionally, the studio featured departments for background art, CG, photography, finishing, and editing, along with a recording and editing facility known as AIC Eastside Studio.