Animation Studios

Being the total nerds they are, /a/ssholes have come to recognize certain animation studios. Studios tend to produce shows of a specific genre, creating niche fan bases. Like most anime fans, studiofags house an unfathomable amount of nerdrage and will unleash it at the slightest provocation. Studiofags also like to believe that they're better than other fans thanks to their "wealth" of knowledge. Of course, trolls, elitism, and nerdrage are common facets of /a/, and most anonymous have become immune to such things.

GAINAX

Gainax is a famous animation studio, well known for high framerates, gratuitous use of fanservice and stealing ideas from other writers. An unintentional running gag amongst fans and trolls of Gainax is to call any bad idea a homage, implying that Gainax is not at fault, but the people they copied the idea from are. Their most famous work is Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is widely hated on /a/ because of the faggotry roused by its fanbase.

The studio itself is universally considered to have the worst track record for endings their TV anime, a consensus that evolved into the meme "LOL GAINAX", referring to any show (usually GAINAX in origin) that starts off with a great premise and does well for most of its run, but abruptly degrades into shit toward the last few episodes, finishing off with a "subjective" surrealistic or ambiguous ending that leaves the viewers going "lol wut". Contrary to popular belief, a GAINAX ending is not overtly tragic, they are "happy" endings achieved through bullshit means, though many point out the surreal nature of these endings mask a tragic reality. After several years of quite behaviour, Gainax curried the favor of /a/ with its new Gunbuster inspired mecha anime, Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, which became quite popular and the center of many memes proper.

GONZO

Another of the more prominent Japanese anime studios, Gonzo has a rather poor reputation on /a/ for wasting oceans of money on animating terrible story premises, like with Afro Samurai at a million dollars an episode. This leaves their other not necessarily better titles to suffer from shitty Korean animation outsourcing. If that wasn't enough, even the simplest adaptions by Gonzo end up fucked, marred by a ridiculous obsession with "updating" classics to stay in tune with the youth of today. Permanently married to the meme QUALITY because of these failings.

Typically, comparing anything to GONZO (in capitals) implies a show begins well, but almost immediately crashes because of Gonzo's fail. Often called many things, like "LOL GONZO" (based off of the LOL GAINAX meme) or "Gonzofied".

Kyoto Animation

Known to weeaboo as "KyoAni". A formerly obscure animation studio that baked its bread animating the hentai visual novels of KEY, but was the center of an explosion of interest with its heavily otaku-centric anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Although Kyoto Animation was held in high regard for its adaptions of Kanon, Air, and reanimating of Full Metal Panic (which suffered under the QUALITY brush of GONZO), Haruhi's presence split /a/ down the middle for a good part of 2006. Most of the squabbles regarding Haruhi between fans and trolls were forgotten when Kyoto Animation aired Lucky Star, which has been a source of many /b/ level shitstorms on /a/. This continues throughout their next production, CLANNAD.

Sunrise

Another anime studio and widely known for animating classic anime like Cowboy Bebop, Mobile Suit Gundam, Outlaw Star and The Big O. Widely seen as a shadow of its former self, putting forward shitty to mediocre anime ever since the formation of BONES, which was created from former Sunrise staff members. Although still a popular studio in Japan, outside of the Gundam fandom few /a/ssoles really cared about Sunrise prior to its newest title, Code Geass.