Knack Productions was founded on September 25, 1967, by a group of former employees of
Toei Animation and
Osamu Tezuka's
Mushi Production, including illustrator
Seiichi Hayashi, animator/director
Sadao Tsukioka, former Mushi producer
Sakuro Koyanagi, and
Seiichi Nishino, who would become the principal planner of most of the studio's works. From its early days the studio concentrated on TV production. The studio's first work, the TV series
Granny Mischief (
Ijiwaru Baasan), based on a manga by
Sazae-san creator
Machiko Hasegawa), premiered in 1970. In the late 1980s the company moved away from TV production and into
OVA, finding success in the growing market for soft-core direct-to-video
pornography anime. Since the late 1990s, Knack (renamed
ICHI Corporation in August 2008) has focused chiefly on live-action production. The company's most recent animation work, in 1997, was on the adult anime OVA
Slight Fever Syndrome and with production assistance on
Gainax's
The End of Evangelion. Despite the number of anime-industry notables who worked with Knack over the years (including
Go Nagai,
Ken Ishikawa, Kazuyuki Okasako,
Masayuki Kojima,
Tetsuro Amino,
Shun'ichi Yukimuro, Yoshikata Nitta, and Fumio Ikeno), the studio developed a dubious reputation for the low quality of its productions, particularly in regard to animation quality and to copying the premises of other, more popular shows, even when compared to their contemporaries in both Japan and America. Nevertheless, a number of the studio's productions did become internationally successful, including the children's anthropomorphic cartoon series
Don Chuck Monogatari;
The Adventures of the Little Prince; and
Attacker You!, a volleyball drama which achieved a staggering level of popularity when exported to Italy and France. The studio's children's comedies
Manga Sarutobi Sasuke and
Cybot Robotchi were also released in the U.S. as direct-to-video feature-length edits titled
Ninja the Wonder Boy and
Robby the Rascal, respectively. In more recent years, the studio's 1974 series
Chargeman Ken! has become an online sensation, due to mockery of its limited production values. ==Animated works==