Shoeisha/Tohokushinsha era
According to an interview with Sunrise members, the studio was founded by former members of Mushi Production in September 1972 as Sunrise Studio. Rather than having anime production revolve around a single creator (like Mushi, headed by Osamu Tezuka), Sunrise decided that production should focus on the producers. The market for mainstream anime (such as manga adaptations, sports shows, and adaptations of popular children's stories) was already dominated by existing companies, so Sunrise decided to focus on robot (mecha) anime, known to be more difficult to animate but which could be used to sell toys.[3]
The founding members of Sunrise were seven people from Mushi Production's production and sales department: Yoshinori Kishimoto, Masanori Ito, Eiji Yamamoto, Yasuo Shibue, Masami Iwasaki, Kiyomi Numamoto, and Yasuhiko Yoneyama. However, when the anime production studio lacked funds for the new anime studio, Sunrise Studio sought investment from Japanese recording studio, film distributor & production company Tohokushinsha Film and planning and production company Shoeisha.[4]
Although the founding members left Mushi Productions before its terminal bankruptcy, they also had insider knowledge of Sunrise Studio's internal affairs and structural problems. This corporate culture has served as a major lesson for the then-new anime studio's management as of September 2025. Specifically, Sunrise established a management policy that "creators should not be in management positions". As a result, while the company has maintained its own studios following the establishment, almost all actual production work, other than production progress management, has been outsourced to other Japanese animation studios.
While the studio's initial management team emphasized the quality of its anime productions, they also prioritized maintaining overall profitability and sound management through cost reductions, such as outsourcing as necessary, and various copyright revenues. Sunrise's system of integrating toy product planning as the starting point and core of its anime projects is another key characteristic that has shaped the company to this day. This stems from financial issues in the early days, such as Sunrise's inability to cover labor costs due to its small size and limited resources, and the inability to secure budget to own the adaptation rights to manga.
Split from Shoeisha and Tohokushinsha, Nippon Sunrise era
By November 1976, Shoeisha and Tohokushinsha decided to exit the animation production business by selling Sunrise Studio to its members through a management buyout, reorganizing themselves as an independent studio known as Nippon Sunrise Inc. (株式会社日本サンライズ) and started outsourcing animation production for several animated series produced by Toei and Tsuburaya Productions. According to one of Sunrise's members Masao Iizuka, all of its profits of Sunrise's productions like Reideen the Brave went to Sunrise's former parent Tohokushinsha.
In 1981, Nippon Sunrise's first president Yoshinori Kishimoto suddenly died due to poor health. Following Kishimoto's death, Masanori Ito became Nippon Sunrise's second president.[5]
In 1985, Nippon Sunrise announced its entry into the Original video animation (OVA) operations. Although they were called OVAs, there were few completely original projects produced by the studio as they instead followed a basic policy of producing sequels to popular productions such as "Armored Trooper VOTOMS" or projects that were extensions like the OVA spin-off Armor "Hunter Mellowlink".
Sunrise era
In June 1987, the company changed its name by dropping the Nippon name from its branded and was renamed to simply "Sunrise" with the rebranded anime production studio appointing Eiji Yamaura as their new president. Following Nippon Sunrise's rebranding to Sunrise and the appointment of Yamaura as its new president, Sunrise started to shift away from its original focus on original projects and began to produce more animated programmes based on manga starting with the adaptations of Mister Ajikko and City Hunter.
During that time, mechanical designer Junya Ishigaki visited the studio and thought that the anime studio was a large company that had a building in front of Kami-Igusa Station only to find that it was a small building when it actually visited.[6]
Bandai ownership era
In February 1994, multinational toy manufacturer & distributor Bandai had acquired Sunrise and effectively became part of the Bandai Group as toy manufacturer Bandai entered the film & television animation production business and gained an official animation studio with Bandai's management including Satoru Matsumoto joining the studio.
Later that year, Sunrise established its own CG production division called Digital Creation Studio (Sunrise D.I.D.), with the new division focusing on CG production. Since then, digital coloring and CG processing have been introduced to Sunrise's works. In the early stages of adoption, 3D-oriented expressions were used in Sunrise's prior shows through its eternal Studio 7 unit such as The King of Braves GaoGaiGar and DinoZone while digital coloring was used in some programs such as the Universal Century Extra video bonus for Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team and Escaflowne. However it was not until 2003, nine years after the founding of Sunrise's CG production division, Sunrise started switching to full-scale digital ink-and-paint production for all of its future works, which was relatively late compared to other studios.
In October 1998, Sunrise announced the departure of the Studio 2 team led by Masahiko Minami to establish a new studio Bones whom Sunrise would later co-produced the feature movie Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Bandai Namco Holdings era, building consolidation and restructuring
In October 2005, Sunrise's parent company & toy manufacturer Bandai merged with multinational video game and entertainment company Namco to form Namco Bandai Holdings with Sunrise becoming Namco Bandai's animation production & entertainment company as they would expand its production activities with adaptations of several Bandai and Namco properties.
In February 2015, Sunrise's parent company Bandai Namco Holdings announced they were planning to spin-off some of Sunrise's production divisions including Sunrise's kids & family anime IP division and its interactive division alongside related program and character copyrights into a separate animation production company that would serve as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunrise called Bandai Namco Pictures which began its operations two months later in April of that year, as Sunrise will now specialize in the production of shows aimed at a high-quality audience and would focus on character licensing and IP businesses. The new Bandai Namco Pictures subsidiary was based in Nerima, Tokyo and will handle the intellectual property aimed at children and will plan to produce original IP with the company's representative director and president Yasuo Miyagawa overseeing the new production subsidiary under the same role.[8][9]
