About the studio
Pony Canyon has one of the more tangled origin stories on this list, and it's worth telling. It started October 1, 1966 as a record division of Nippon Broadcasting System, became Pony, Inc. in 1970, and then merged with the separately founded Canyon Records to become Pony Canyon. Somewhere in there, the name stuck, and honestly, it's a great one. Today, owned by Fuji Media Holdings and based in Tokyo, Pony Canyon produces and distributes anime music and home video, and regularly joins production committees to help finance shows like K-On! and Cardcaptor Sakura. *Six decades and one very memorable rebrand later,* it expanded internationally in the 1980s with offices in New York and London, licensing deals with the likes of Disney and MGM. It's not the studio drawing the frames, but if you've ever bought an anime soundtrack or Blu-ray in Japan, Pony Canyon probably put it on the shelf.