Anime Studios

[Archangel]

Which is your favorite and why?

A-1 Pictures • Anime International Company • Artland • Bee Train • Bones • Brain's Base • Gainax • Gallop • Gonzo • J.C.Staff • Kyoto Animation • Madhouse • Manglobe • Nippon Animation • OLM • P.A. Works • Pierrot • Production I.G • Satelight • Shaft • Shin-Ei Animation • Studio 4°C • Studio Deen • Studio Ghibli • Sunrise • SynergySP • Tatsunoko Production • TMS Entertainment • Toei Animation • ufotable • Xebec

I think I'll have to go with Bones, their series have the best visual quality overall and they come up with some interesting stuff.

[shinta|hikari]

Shaft, because my favorite shows are done by them.

[Ryllharu]

Three-way tie:

Shaft, Production I.G., and Hal Film Maker.

- Shaft because...they're Shaft. They try out a lot of different techniques and play with the medium. There was the "sound stage" style of Tsukiyomi Moonphase and Pani Poni Dash!, the surreal stylistic approach with ef - A Fairy Tale of the Two and more recently Madoka, slideshow style with Maria+Holic, Dance in the Vampire Bund, and Bakemonogatari, and now a more reserved yet still distinct style with Denpa Onna. Sometimes they miss, they almost always run out of money, are lazy, but they make a lot of definitive hits too.

- Production I.G. because they have nearly perfected the art of the adaptation. They were so well known for adapting Masamune Shirow's series that they've really surprised me in recent years with the other styles that they've started to get into...but perform equally as well if not better. Kimi ni Todoke caught the feeling of the manga flawlessly (giving me high hopes for Usagi Drop's unique style as well). They can switch from seinen series to josei without missing a beat. They're doing amazing work on Break Blade with Xebec, and have many strong entries of original work as well.

- Hal Film Maker because they play around with a lot of different styles. On one hand you have ARIA, and on the other you've got Kemeko Deluxe. They really stand out with unconventional series. Dokuro-chan, Kaleido Star (assistance), Skip Beat!, B Gata H Kei, The Good Witch Of The West, Uta~Kata. You wouldn't think the premise of the series they work on would be successful, but they create this air within the series that just really works.

[Xelbair]

I don't have favourite one, but i like some of them more than the rest:
- Production I.G.
- Bones - their shows are always high quality
- Shaft, unless they decide to get too shafty and artsy with the show.

Honorary mention
-Artland - for mushishi.
-Bee Train is part of I.G. plus they made few great shows(.hack//sign for example, one of first anime i downloaded and i still love it)
- Brain's Base, it has few shows that i loved
- gainax for Evangelion and TTGL only - i disliked rest of their shows.
- Madhouse

Additional Notes:
- J.C. staff for first season only.
- KyoAni before they started doing moeblobs.

From the rest - i just liked few shows or haven't seen/liked more that 2-3 of their works.

EDIT
Ryll - i also agree about Hal Film Maker.

[darkshadow]

Sunrise
Studio 4°C
Production I.G.
Tatsunoko

actually most of those listed in arch's post have produced shit I really like...so I dunno.

[MFauli]

Well, from the number of series I watched of a single studio, I guess Madhouse would be my favorite. Really a lot of fantastic anime they made. Even though it´s a much smaller number, I have to mention Bones, just because of Eureka Seven and Scrapped Princess. And I´ll always look at Gainax as the number 1 at producing highest quality animation and story. Evangelion and Nadia have such great stories, hell, even FLCL has a neat story if you bother thinking about it, and Tengen Toppa is interesting as well. And at the very last with the current remaking of the NGE-series, they´re also showing how capable they are of creating high quality-animation (not that the original NGE wasn´t well animated).

Btw. wasnt there a Studio C5 or such? Maybe Im mis-remembering, though.