SF Animation

Not to be confused with SF Studios, a film studio based in Sweden.

SF Animation is a Japanese-South Korean animation studio founded in August 13th 1963 by Byung-Ho Jeong.

The studio mainly operates in Sapporo, Japan and has studios in Seoul and Tokyo. A Los Angeles studio will be also opening in 2024, making SF Animation's first studio outside Asia since 1961.

The company's well known shows are The Adventures of Lobri, Lara's Hotel of Space, Team One, Elementia, Bloxtoons, Notez!!, Sakura's Life in Honolulu/Magic Island, and more. They have worked with many TV stations, studios and companies at home and overseas, if not limited to Toho, eOne, The Walt Disney Company, Bandai, TV Tokyo, CBC, and many more.

History
SF Animation was founded in 1961 as Silver Films STAR Animation by Byung-Ho Jeong, a South-Korean animator and entrepreneur living in Japan, attempting to create an animation division for Silver Films. The studio animated 10 minute long short films until 1964, when they would create their first TV series, The Portal. The series was very successful in Japan, which motivated the company to make more shows.

In 1976, the company was renamed to "Silver Films Animation Group", since Silver Films and its associating divisions had rebranded, no longer using the "STAR" branding, as it was becoming outdated.

On September 18th 1983, a new studio opened in Seoul in South Korea, Byung-Ho's home, was established and the studio's first show was "COOL BUT WHY!?"

Around 1992, the South Korean studio had signed a contract with the Venezuelan studio Pitch!Animation and started to animate shows together, the first being "Zoe N' Friends", after SFAG had signed a deal with the Osaka based company Keypoint Enterprises to use their popstar character Zoe Sanika, which then Zoe N' Friends had became Zoe's first show starring her.

On July 6th 1997, SFAG received heavy amounts of backlash after the premiere of the Zoe N' Friends episode "Be Like ME!" which had a scene where Zira takes a skinny dip in a public pool, which resulted in backlash (despite no rude parts being shown) due to stories of children copying what Zira had done. The episode was eventually banned in South Korea and other countries, resulting in SFAG cutting ties with Pitch!Animation, due to some writers at Pitch being responsible for the damage, which those writers were fired in the aftermath. The show continued on after that, without Pitch being involved.

On February 1st 1999, SFAG reached its biggest milestone yet, after the premiere of the first episode of Team One Gen. 1 reached up to 9.4 million viewers on one day.

On October 7th 2004, SFAG released its first movie, Lolo's Life which both South Korean and Japanese studios worked on. It gained huge amounts of popularity at the time after a Flash animation was made after the movie was created by a user from the United Kingdom. This resulted in SFAG's work gaining even more recognition worldwide. This encouraged to SFAG making many films after.

In 2006, Manga producer Yui Ishida started to work at SFAG Japan, and became the most well-known producer of the company lifetime since Tia Maie Chan, a voice actress and singer who has worked on projects with the company before. She has produced many TV shows and movies of the company.

On March 9th 2008, SFAG signed a contract with Early View Records, agreeing that SFAG Japan can release it's songs under the Early View label. Many of their songs from their work are released and distributed by Early View.

In 2011, SFAG as a whole celebrated its 50th anniversary. To celebrate the anniversary, a 14,000 sq ft SFAG museum and art gallery was opened in Adachi City, Tokyo, Japan.

Also in 2011, the studio did its first production with the famous The Walt Disney Company and Kickstart Productions (now known as Kickstart Entertainment) to make Happy Monster Band: The Movie, providing animation for the movie.

In 2012, SFAG and Bandai have since collaborated with animation and have made numerous works together based around the Tamagotchi franchise.

On August 3rd 2016, 5 days before the premiere of Memetchi: The Movie, SFAG as a whole after many years was renamed to SF Animation, in attempt to shorten the name and make it easier to refer to. The company is still known as Silver Films Animation (with "Group" removed), but only used in formal cases.

In 2018, a one-time character from a SFA and Bandai collaboration show, Kamifuwa, surprisingly reached #2 amongst girls and #5 amongst boys who voted in the 22nd SF Animation Character Poll. She is now one of SF Animation's mascots due to this and has became a major character

In 2022, SF Animation's Tokyo studios announced a triquel to Memetchi: The Movie 1 and 2. It is set to release around 2023, the year the company will hit 60 years old. Around early June 2023 there was rumours that the movie will release on July 15th, the day the Tamagotchi Uni releases, however SF Animation has explained that it will be not releasing anywhere this summer, but the real date has not been yet confirmed.

On April 26th 2023, SF Animation made an announcement that the company prohibits use of their work, new or old, copyrighted or public domain, in any AI-related experiments due to problems with copyright, plagiarism and permission, and if any company is caught using their content for training purposes, the company will get into legal action against the company using their assets. The announcement recieved mixed reception. Some praised SF Animation for knowing the affects of being trained by AI, others (mainly AI enthusiasts) were not happy.

In May, the company sued the company Think AI for using it's character artworks in an AI image generator. Eventually SFA won and Think AI was found guilty and it's AI image generator Think-art officially shut down its servers, visiting the site will give a "Thank you!" screen like the Tamatown closed down screen.

In June of 2023, the company announced a Los Angeles studio was under construction, and is set to open in 2024.