Tatsunoko Production, founded in 1962 by manga artist Tatsuo Yoshida and his brothers, is a Tokyo studio whose 1960s and 1970s television work — Speed Racer (1967), Gatchaman (1972), Yatterman (1977), Time Bokan (1975) — established many of the conventions of action-comedy TV anime and trained a generation of animators including Mamoru Oshii, Yoshitaka Amano, and Hideaki Anno.
Founding and house identity
Tatsuo Yoshida had been working as a manga artist before incorporating Tatsunoko in 1962 with his brothers Kenji Yoshida and Ippei Yoshida. The studio's early output — under Tatsuo Yoshida's direction — emphasised character design distinctive enough to support merchandise lines: Mach GoGoGo, broadcast internationally as Speed Racer, was the first major example.
Tatsunoko has historically functioned as an unusually permeable training ground; many of its alumni left to start successful studios of their own (Production I.G being one example).