About the studio
Bandai was founded July 5, 1950 as Bandai-Ya, renamed simply Bandai in 1961, by WWII veteran Naoharu Yamashina as a spin-off of a textile wholesaler. Based in Taito, Tokyo, Bandai isn't an animation studio, it's a toy manufacturer, and its role in anime has always been about merchandise: toys and figures tied to Astro Boy in its early years, then Ultraman, and most famously the entire Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. *A textile spin-off ending up as the company behind Gunpla is a wild business trajectory.* Since the 2005 merger with Namco, Bandai has operated as the toy production division of Bandai Namco Holdings. Seventy five years since its founding, Bandai's relationship with anime remains one of the clearest examples of how tightly merchandising and storytelling are linked in this industry, a toy company that has, at times, quite literally funded the shows selling its own products.