E&G Films

イージーフィルム

E&G Films, occasionally misidentified as Easy Film, was initially founded as E&G World in 1971. It became incorporated in July 1988 following a merger with another small animation production studio, Lucky More, and was subsequently renamed E&G Films. At that time, its headquarters were situated in Musashino, Tokyo, with Hagiwara Kouji serving as the studio's representative director.
Nevertheless, the media mix projects they collaborated on and developed alongside Kadokawa Shoten and King Records were low-budget and unprofitable. The studio was compelled to outsource a significant portion of its work to foreign subcontracting studios to complete it, which frequently resulted in schedule difficulties. The lowest point occurred during the production of the Slayers spin-off Lost Universe, which was not ready by its scheduled air date, necessitating the replacement of missing content with apology screens. Moreover, the fourth episode, Yashigani Hofuru (ヤシガニ屠る), literally meaning 'feasting on Coconut crab,' which aired on April 24, 1998, was initially handled by a South Korean animation company, San Ho Studio. They were provided only with basic character manuals. The resulting quality was so poor that the episode was later reworked for LaserDisc releases. Consequently, an anime with extremely poor animation came to be referred to as a Yashigani.
This incident caused management issues and eroded trust from TV stations. The studio was forced to focus on subcontracting work for other productions and to reschedule its own productions for the upcoming AT-X and the small anime-only satellite channel CS. However, these measures failed to resolve the studio's financial problems by that time. Its final original project was Muteki Ou Tri-Zenon, a series that was largely overlooked by the audience. After several other low-budget adaptations, the studio ultimately had to shut down due to bankruptcy. This marked the end of a half-decade-long period of low-budget, quality-lacking shows that contributed to the studio's demise.