The Glorious Return of Studio Madhouse

Aaaaaah Madhouse. My favorite anime studio of all time. Finally I have an excuse to talk about the GOAT. The amount of high quality anime these legends have made dwarfs any other studio by a long shot.

To put how much I love these guys' work into perspective, out of the 637 anime I've currently completed according to MyAnimeList, I've only given 6 of them a 10/10 rating. To put it into an even wider perspective, 3 out of those 6 are Yugioh entries where I'm not ashamed to admit how growing up with them inevitably means nostalgia starts playing a factor in my enjoyment. The other 3 however... are ALL Madhouse anime.

 

Redline is my favorite movie of all time, animated or not. To this day, I'm convinced if you watch it in Full HD 1080p its animation is still the greatest you'll ever see even 15 years after its release. It famously took 7 years to make and almost bankrupt the entire studio, which makes it a damn shame it was so severely underappreciated in the box office. This was one of those unfortunate moments in history where creative genius and masterful execution is widely recognized much too late for it to benefit its creators. It feels like this was the last real time Madhouse tried to experiment with something so original which wasn't based on an already successful IP and understandably so, considering it nearly made them go under.

Source: Madhouse, Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, Anchor Bay Films

Buuuuuut, that doesn't mean they stopped producing masterpieces. The 2nd 10/10 of theirs came 2 years later when the madlads decided to remake Hunter X Hunter. I've said this before, but if you ask me which anime series is OBJECTIVELY the best, excluding any nostalgia glasses and personal attachments, I gotta give it to HxH 2011. I suppose there can never truly be such a thing as a "perfect adaptation" but this comes extremely close. Almost every single aspect you could imagine has been updated, improved and optimized to make for the definitive way to experience the story. The only exceptions are not including Kite in the very beginning like in the manga and Killua not crushing Jones' heart like in the 1999 adaptation, but compared to all the improvements, these are barely worth mentioning.

Source: Madhouse,VAP, Nippon Television Network, Shueisha, VIZ Media

Finally, the 3rd 10/10 for me is One Punch Man season 1. For my money, the greatest 12 consecutive episodes in all of anime. One thing I'd like to address here is something strange I keep noticing. It seems like nowadays, every time someone talks about OPM and Madhouse in the same sentence, they're oddly quick to dismiss and discredit Madhouse as being the reason it turned out so incredible. Now of course, the director and his major connections in the industry, which enabled him to gather some of the best animators from all kinds of places to work on the project was pretty much the main reason for its masterpiece status, but mfs these days talk about it like Madhouse had nothing to do with it. A large portion of what ultimately decides if an anime turns out a banger instead of dogwater is the studio's management of the entire process. From pre and post production to making sure the best people are working on it and Madhouse did an absolutely STELLAR job at all of it. As far as I'm concerned their logo needs to be proudly displayed next to the OPM logo, cuz we all saw what happened when J. C. Staff took over...

Source: Madhouse, TV Tokyo, Bandai Visual, Lantis, Asatsu DK, Banpresto, Good Smile Company, Shueisha, JR East Marketing & Communications, VIZ Media

But these ain't even scratching the surface. They were also responsible for pretty much all of Hajime No Ippo, aka the greatest sports anime of all time. Death Note, which held the title of the most popular anime on MyAnimeList for the longest time before Attack on Titan overtook it. You wanna talk about OGs? Not a lot of people know that, but they were the ones who did season 1 of Beyblade, which is easily the greatest toy franchise as far as I'm concerned.

 

Black Lagoon had Roberta who's my favorite female character ever. High School of the Dead had the best jiggle scene in any media including anything on 🌽 Hub. Hellsing Ultimate had the greatest depiction of the concept of "war" in all of anime. The Girl who Leapt Through Time is the best time travelling anime and leagues above Steins;Gate. Similarly, Kaiji is the best gambling anime and leagues above Kakegurui. Rainbow had the greatest depiction of male friendship. Death Parade's opening is on everyone's top 10 list. Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust had arguably the greatest animation for their time. Even more obscure anime like Petshop of Horrors and Bio Hunter are total hidden gems, but if I start listing all of those we'd be here all day.

 

These guys not only had the entire anime industry in the palm of their hand, they WERE the anime industry.

 

Until... they weren't.

 

But why? What happened? Well... I kid you not...Marvel. I've seen NOBODY else talk about this, but I found a clear correlation between the studio's downfall and its increased output of garbage Marvel anime.

 

This all started with 2010's Iron Man series. You know what the real kick in the balls was though? This was actually supposed to be amazing. Not only was Marvel midway through the first MCU phase (2 years after Iron Man and 2 years before Avengers), the trailer for it was animated by Takeshi Koike! The same legend who did Redline! Check it out here. Everything from the character design and that unmistakable shading to the smoothest mechanical movement and most dynamic car angles SCREAMS Redline. I still get goosebumps right at the end.

Source: Madhouse, Marvel Entertainment

Yeeeeeah about that... basically none of that was in the actual series. If there was ever an award for the most misleading trailer and downright false marketing in anime, we got the champ right here. To add insult to injury, that beautifully animated Iron Man suit is nowhere to be found. The entire thing is done in CG, which looks incredibly underwhelming.  Easily one of the biggest fumbles in anime history and potentially the greatest anime that never was.

 

From then on, I don't know if Robert Downey Jr was holding a gun to head of Madhouse employees in-between his Iron Man shoots, but the Marvel anime kept on coming. Wolverine, X-Men, Blade, Black Widow and the Punisher, all ranging from mid to steaming trash piles. I'm not kidding when I say Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is the worst anime I've ever seen. What makes it especially bad is it's not even a series, but a movie and I STILL fell asleep TWICE trying to finish it. Bigger struggle than anything Guts went through 💀

 

Ever since then, the only huge banger they had is One Punch Man, which is perhaps why a lot of people tend to not credit Madhouse too much for its success. The latter half of the 2010s and early 2020s were a total drought. This is what I call Madhouse's dark age. There were a few nicher shows which were good and managed to connect with their audiences like All Out!!, A Place Further Than The Universe, Sonny Boy as well as sequel seasons to Diamond no Ace, Chihayafuru and Overlord, but no genre defining, industry staples like in their glory days. It felt like Madhouse had lost its spark. Surprise surprise, it also turns out the 2010s were a period where much of its talent moved over to different studios and even one of its original founders left to create a little teeny tiny obscure studio which would have no impact in the future whatsoever. I think he called it something like Mappa...

 

By 2023, it seems like Madhouse was all but forgotten. A titan of a bygone era, only mentioned in a past tense.

 

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Why do I hear boss music?

 

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Source: Madhouse, Aniplex, Dentsu, Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions, Nippon Television Network, TOHO animation, Shogakukan

Enter Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. The current number 1, highly rated anime of all time. Now reaching number 1 on MAL and temporarily surpassing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a feat multiple anime have done in the past, but keeping the number 1 spot away from FMAB for any significant amount of time is a feat no anime has done. This is largely due to FMAB's insane fandom who collectively downvote and reviewbomb any series that surpasses FMAB in order to keep it at the top, which is something they've been doing for many years. However, the unbelievable finally happened. The FMAB fans... lost. These guys have finally been beaten. Frieren has been the number 1 anime for almost half a year now and the gap between it and FMAB is currently 0.29 which in anime ranking terms is HUGE! Frieren 9.38/10 is completely unheard of considering how long it has been maintained for.

Even thought I though the series was super enjoyable and can definitely see the massive appeal, I wouldn't say it's anywhere near the best anime of all time. What I will say though, is that I'm glad this was the series that put studio Madhouse back on the map and for that, it earned my respect. When noone thought it was possible, Madhouse proved they're STILL the best 😎

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