Gotta shine that spotlight on lesser-known studios every once in a while…
C-Station is one of those studios that doesn’t really hold that many credits to its name – its most popular show ever is this season’s YuruCamp (Seasonal Prattle 2018), and that goes for me as well because StarMyu is still on my plan to watch list as this post goes out. However, that doesn’t mean C-Station’s ever churned out bad work, or else you wouldn’t even be seeing YuruCamp in the first place…
C-Station is a fairly young studio in the scheme of things, since it was founded in 2009 from former staff of another studio called Bee Train. (Bee Train was quite infamous for series involving girls with guns and its very liberal adaption of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle…both of which are things I haven’t seen yet.) In fact, C-Station used to be a subsidiary of Bee Train until they split up (‘Bee Train’ 2017). This cross-pollination in the industry is obviously not a new thing, if the previous post on Sunrise was any indication. In fact, it seems to be the norm for studios more often than not (Clements 2013).
Back to the topic at hand though. If one were to take a magnifying glass to C-Station’s individual efforts (prior to YuruCamp since that was brought up already), you’d see nothing but what is considered by the Western community to be “mediocre”. After all, no one gives a hoot about Dragonar Academy these days, OVAs don’t get too much press (although Crunchyroll and HiDive are working harder to get OVAs associated with series these days) and while StarMyu seems to have done alright, you’d probably think of A-1’s UtaPri first when thinking about school/idol boys. Or even worse, you’d think of Dance with Devils, by Brain’s Base, for the random musical interludes…
C-Station doesn’t seem to have a distinct style aside from “generic style of 2010s anime that’s a little too much on the shiny side”, but an easily forgettable style is still enough to imprint on a show’s overall visuals – observe how the boys of StarMyu kind of look like the girls from Dragonar in eye style when put side by side on C-Station’s website. Even still, it’s easy to attribute to these guys the background art of YuruCamp and with C-Station having a photography department known as “C-Station Digital”, you wouldn’t be wrong in a sense. However, background art is attributed to Production AI so let’s give some credit there too (Anime News Network n.d., C-Station n.d.).
Since I keep referencing it in this post, it’s pretty obvious what my favourite show from them is, but I can’t really talk about it since I already did that in another post…so there goes incorporating the feedback from last time into the article. There’s always next time, though.
So what C-Station shows do you like? For those of you who were following Hakyu Hoshin Engi and/or YuruCamp, does C-Station stuff up manga adaptions like Bee Train was apparently known to do?
Bibliography
Anime News Network n.d. C-Station. Available from: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/company.php?id=8331 [15th March 2018.]
Anime News Network n.d. Laid-Back Camp. Available from: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=20010 [15th March 2018.]
Bee Train n.d., TV Tropes, wiki, 16th July 2016. Available from: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/BeeTrain [15th March 2018.]
C-Station n.d.Pick-Up Works. Available from: http://cstation.jp/?page_id=723 [15th March 2018.]
C-Station n.d. Works. Available from: http://cstation.jp/?page_id=15 [15th March 2018.]
Clements, J 2013. Anime: A History. London, England.
Seasonal Prattle 2018. Seasonal Prattle – Winter Week 10 [Report]. Available from: http://seasonalprattle.com/seasonal-prattle-winter-week-10-report/ [15th March 2018.]