TRIGGER was founded in 2011, before 2011, the center members of TRIGGER were working for GAINAX. In 2004, they made their first original animation: dead leaves, in 2007, they made Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagan, in 2010, they made Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. But when they were making Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, the situation was different with in 2007, the center members were working hard in this animation but the other staffs were not. In 2007, when they were making Tengen Toppa, everyone were working hard and focus on the animation. Then, after they finished Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, there were some contradiction between them, so some center members were left GAINAX and founded TRIGGER. Why they named their new studio “TRIGGER”? The dream of TRIGGER is: If we compare our works to bullets, we would like to be a trigger which will shoot the bullet out of the bore of a gun. In 2012, they made their first animation called Inferno Cop, in 2013 they made Kill La Kill, in 2015 they made Little Witch Academia Ainmation Film; Sex & Violence With Machspeed and NINJA SLAYER from animation, in 2016, they made Kiznaiver and Uchuu Patrol Luluco,in 2017, they made Little Witch Academia TV and in 2019, they made PROMARE.
Generally, most of Japanese animations’ style are quite single and similar, only a few of them are different from others, and I think, TRIGGER is one of them. Let us back to 2004, their first animation: Dead leaves. As their first animation, they were completely not considered about the market and audience, they just followed their imagination, made what they thought and crazy things. Generally as an audience, I would like to see some beautiful or cool or cute characters in the animation, but look at those characters in the middle of those left pictures, those character designs are so crazy, just like they were designed by a drunkard.
On the other hand, the story is also crazy. But this kind of crazy animation laying the groundwork of TRIGGER’s style.
In 2010, they made Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. Generally a animation has a unified style, but this animation has not only one style, as you can see form these pictures, and the main style in the first picture is quite similar with American animation style. As a Japanese animation I think it is quite special.
In 2012, as a new studio, TRIGGER was lack of a lot of things to make a animation, they were lack of money; technology and staffs. So they just made a experimental animation called Inferno Cop, and a lot of fans of them called this animation was “PowerPoint” animation, let me show you why.
As you can see, these characters don’t have any movements, they just panning in the animation, and that is why the fans called it “PowerPoint” animation.
In 2013, TRIGGER made their first animation called Kill La Kill, in this animation they use this kind of contrast: much bigger character and much smaller character to express a sense of oppression. Let me show you.
Since this animation, TRIGGER ensured their main style of their works.
Similar with other Japanese animation studios, they also use 2D hand-drawing as main and 3D as support. For example they used 3D technology at this part only because their 2D hand- drawing animators cannot draw this run down stairs movement. And generally, 3D animation is much smoother than 2D, so they reduced some unnecessary frames to make the 3D part not very smooth and connect with 2D part better. Let me show you the last effect.
This character drop down out of the window to catch up with him and laugh chipper, it is really funny
At last, in 2D part, they will use some kind of method to express character’s emotion. For example at this part, the animator added some coarse black line to make the image dirtier to express character’s anger. And these coarse black lines can move in the animation, the first picture is cleaner than second one, but it cannot express the character’s anger as better as second one.