Musashino Animation (Japanese: 武む蔵さし野のアニメーション, Hepburn: Musashino Animēshon), often abbreviated as Musani (Japanese: ムサニ, Hepburn: Musani) is Japan’s state-owned animation studio under the Ministry of Culture, Athletics, Science and Education. It is a parent organization to Musashino Litera, a publishing house for manga and light novels; Musashino Animation and Musashino Litera in fact share the same offices, with headquarters in Musashino, Tokyo, and regional offices in Uji and various locations across Tokyo.

Musashino Animation was formally established on April 1, 2035, in the wake of the Japanese Revolution which conclusively ended the War of 101.5 Islands and established socialism in Japan. The studio was created through the revolutionary government’s forced acquisitions of a number of prominent animation studios and production companies in the country, including Toei, Kyoto Animation, Studio Ghibli, Deen, Pierrot, MAPPA, MADHOUSE, Satelight, OLM, Nippon Animation, Bandai Namco Filmworks, Twin Engine, Bones, Tezuka Productions, Triangle Staff, Khara, BENTEN Film, J.C.Staff, Shaft, WIT STUDIO, Bee Train, Production I.G, Silver Citrus, Tatsunoko Productions, Artland, Studio Ponoc, and P.A.WORKS.

It was in fact from a 2014 original animated series created by the last of these studios that Musashino Animation got its name: a defictionalization of Musashino Animation from Shirobako by P.A.WORKS. In Shirobako, the name “Musashino Animation” was chosen as a reference to Kyoto Animation, also referencing the Musashino area of Tokyo as a historic center of Japanese animation.

The creation of a state animation studio, following a precedent set by previous socialist states such as Korean April 26 Animation Studio in Korea and Soyuzmultfilm in the Soviet Union, was seen as a particularly weighty decision in Japan: the country had by the time of the socialist revolution come to create a majority of the world’s annual output of televised animation, with Japan’s animation industry being a major entry-level employer for young adults. The Japanese animation industry was in pre-revolutionary times infamous for its widespread labor rights issues including sexism, as well as for the often highly reactionary content of its output, and for the pre-revolutionary government’s financial support for the industry as a tool of soft power in bourgeois interests as part of the “Cool Japan” project. For these reasons, the revolutionary government found it worthwhile to “seize the anime national asset and utilize it in the interest of the global proletariat”.

Musashino Animation today primarily makes animation for public broadcasters such as Japan’s own Shin-NHK. Musashino Animation’s works are often international co-productions with animation studios in other countries, such as Studio Mensôre in the Ryukyu Islands. Musashino Animation announced the Open Sign Language Animation Project — an official partnership with Locoti’s public broadcaster PDS — on March 1, 2061; this partnership pioneered the practices of slubbing, which have profoundly improved media accessibility for Deaf people, promoted sign language proficiency among the general public, and aided in the revitalization of once-endangered sign languages such as Hand Talk.

Musashino Animation was recognized as a world leader of the open culture movement prior to the Coordinating Body’s Resolution to Abolish Intellectual Property in 2067. Musashino Animation holds frequent writing contests and training programs and encourages fan labor. Musashino Animation also maintains LibreToonz, the most popular fork of the now-discontinued 2D animation software OpenToonz.

It is important to note that although Musashino Animation is by far the largest and most prolific animation studio in Japan today, it is certainly not the only animation studio in the country. Some Japanese animation studios which survived the Japanese Revolution and continue to operate today include A-1 Pictures, David Production, PINE JAM, Science SARU, and Fanworks, among a number of others; all of these studios are today worker-owned. Many other animation studios in Japan, however, ended up shutting down in the period immediately preceding and following the Japanese Revolution. Contrarily, post-revolutionary Japan has over the course of the past few decades seen the growth of a number of new regional animation studios such as Mosir Doga, reversing the historical trend of agglomeration.