Nippol

Nippol (a portmanteau of "Nippon" and "Poland" - also known by its full name as Polish-Japanese Animation and Film Export Group) is a Polish licensing and distribution company.

History
Nippol started life in 1967 as an animation licensing company called Polmacja Export Group (portmanteau of Poland and "animacja") based in Warsaw. At first, the local government only permitted the company to license animations from neighboring Socialist countries Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and the Soviet Union among other Socialist countries. In 1973, the company switched its focus to dubbing anime and Japanese films into Polish, citing Poland's good relations with Japan and the government had finally permitted imports of Japanese cartoons.

In 1975, the company had its big success marketing anime with Polish dubs of Go Nagai's Dororon Enma-kun (1973) and Osamu Tezuka's Wansa-kun. Both cartoons became popular in Poland, with re-runs frequently occurring on TVP, Poland's national TV network, since then. Traditionally, a Nippol dub would keep the show's background music but translate the dialogue and replace the opening and ending theme songs, with the newer songs usually becoming hit singles.

Sometime in 1980, many of Japan's famous anime and manga artists heard about the success Nippol was having in Poland and requested producing co-productions (by which an animation studio in Japan would produce a TV series and Nippol would co-produce it and dub the series for the Polish market). Nippol's founder, Jacek Kowalski, agreed to this idea and the government permitted this provided that none of the shows imported have any negative portrayal of the Socialist system and that the dubs were not heavily merchandised. Merchandise was usually no more than postage stamps, plush dolls and a record of the show's soundtrack. Toei Animation and Nippon Animation were initially the animation studios agreeing to this deal, but then TMS and Tezuka Productions, among other animation studios in Japan, agreed.

Among other imports, Nippol helped the magical girl anime Magical Princess Minky Momo gain popularity in Poland. During the same decade, Nippol collaborated with Toei and TMS to make numerous cartoons that became very popular in Poland and Japan during this time, such as Little Longtail and Sofia and Sebastian. Since its inception, numerous famed Polish musicians were involved in the newly recorded themes for these shows, including Seweryn Krajewski, Jacek Cygan and Papa Dance (real musicians).

From 1989 to early 1991, however, Nippol began to enter bankruptcy after Poland abandoned Socialism; but in 1991, TMS gave Nippol the rights to dub the immensely popular anime ''Soreike! Anpanman'' into Polish (known as Herochleb, lit. Hero Bread), which eventually drove Nippol out of bankruptcy and encouraged the company to continue licensing anime. The company still exists and has not shown any sign of bankruptcy since then.