About the studio
Shaft was founded September 1, 1975 by Hiroshi Wakao, a former Mushi Production employee, and it spent its first decade as a subcontracting and cel-painting house before releasing its first original production in 1987. Based in Suginami, Tokyo, Shaft didn't really become Shaft, the studio with the unmistakable visual style, until director Akiyuki Shinbo joined in 2004 and started reshaping its identity around bold typography, tilted camera angles, and surreal abstract backgrounds. *You either love that style instantly or you need a minute to adjust, there's rarely an in-between.* That partnership produced Puella Magi Madoka Magica, the Monogatari series, and March Comes In Like a Lion. Fifty years after its founding, and roughly two decades into its Shinbo era, Shaft remains one of the most visually distinctive studios working today, the kind whose frames you can usually identify before the opening credits even finish.