Sav! The World Productions is a French production company, mainly active in the field of animation, formed in 1998 by writer-director

Savin Yeatman-Eiffel Savin may refer to: * Savin (name) * ''Juniperus sabina'', or savin, a shrubby juniper plant * Savin (photocopiers), a photocopier company acquired by Ricoh * Savin, Bulgaria, a village in Kubrat Municipality, Razgrad Province * SAVIN, Statewide ...

. STW is one of the rare Western companies to have successfully co-produced animation with Japan.

Oban Star-Racers

STW is mainly known to the general public for its award-winning hit series

Ōban Star-Racers is a French-Japanese anime television series created by Savin Yeatman-Eiffel of Sav! The World Productions in association with multiple international companies. Originally produced as a short movie titled ''Molly Star Racer'', a television serie ...

(26 half-hours), created, written and produced by STW founder

and codirected by Yeatman-Eiffel and OSR art director

Thomas Romain Thomas Romain (; born 1977 or 1978) is a French animator who is responsible for creating ''Code Lyoko'' alongside Tania Palumbo. He is also responsible for designing and co-directing the Franco-Japanese animated series ''Ōban Star-Racers'', whi ...

. The series was coproduced with

Bandai Visual was a Japanese anime, film production, and distribution enterprise, established by Bandai and a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings. They focused mainly in international distribution of anime properties in North America. Most of the anime and ...

and

Jetix Europe Jetix Europe N.V. (formerly known as Fox Kids Europe N.V.) was a European television broadcasting company that owned children's television channels and programming blocks across the Europe and Middle East, such as Jetix and Jetix Play. History F ...

. It aired in more than 100 countries worldwide including

ABC Family The American cable television, cable and satellite television network that is now known as Freeform (TV channel), Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through several different owners (and s ...

Toon Disney Toon Disney was an American multinational pay television channel owned by Disney Channels Worldwide, a subsidiary of Disney-ABC Television Group. The channel's target audience was children ages 2–11, and children ages 6–13 during the Jetix ...

(US),

NHK BS1 , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

Disney Channel Disney Channel, sometimes known as simply Disney, is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Compan ...

(Japan),

France 3 France 3 () is a French free-to-air public television channel and part of the France Télévisions group, which also includes France 2, France 4, France 5 and France Info. It is made up of a network of regional television services providing ...

(Fr.),

ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

and

Super RTL Super RTL is a German free-to-air television network owned by the RTL Group. The channel originally launched in 1995 as a joint venture between RTL Group predecessor company CLT-UFA and Disney's Buena Vista International Television Investments ...

(Germany),

GMTV GMTV (an acronym for Good Morning Television), now legally known as ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Limited, was the name of the national Channel 3 breakfast television contractor/licensee, broadcasting in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1993 ...

(UK),

RAI2 Retinoic acid-induced protein 2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''RAI2'' gene. Retinoic acid plays a critical role in development, cellular growth, and cell differentiation, differentiation. The specific function of this intronless ...

(Italy) and

Jetix Jetix (stylized as JETIX) was a children's entertainment brand owned by The Walt Disney Company. The brand was for a slate of action/adventure-related programming blocks and television channels. Jetix programming mainly originated from the S ...

Disney XD Disney XD is an American pay television channel owned by the Disney Branded Television and Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution units of The Walt Disney Company. The channel is aimed primarily at older children ages six to eleven years ...

. Nominated at the

Bafta Awards The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cere ...

, it also won an Anime Land Award and a Grand Entertainment Prize at Polymanga.

Taku Iwasaki is a Japanese composer and arranger. His hometown is Tokyo, Japan. He is a graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Works Anime *''The Irresponsible Captain Tylor'' (OVA series (theme songs composition, etc.); 1995, 1996 ...

and

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime series, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has wri ...

composed respectively the BGM and the credit songs. With its strong visuals, story and themes, OSR has enjoyed a cult following since its release.

OSR Blu-ray release

Thanks to the support of more than 4000 backers on

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

in 2022, and of a long restoration process by STW on the original HD video masters and on 11 different original dubs that the company reacquired for the occasion, a 15th anniversary Blu-ray was released in 2023. The 1 hour making of the series, directed by Alex Pilot, was also remastered and remixed, and more than 1.5 hours of new extra featurettes, also directed by Alex Pilot, were added.

New OSR developments

In 2017, Savin Yeatman-Eiffel and Thomas Romain announced they had started developing a potential sequel to

The path explored are described in the featurette "Imagining the Future of Oban" included in the Blu-ray release. Savin Yeatman-Eiffel has since confirmed more work was on the way.

Exhibition "Eiffel, Toujours plus haut"

In 2023, for the centenary of

Gustave Eiffel Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (born Bonickhausen dit Eiffel; ; ; 15 December 1832 – 27 December 1923) was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway ...

’s death, STW developed and produced the exhibition "Eiffel, Toujours plus haut" (Eiffel, higher and higher), curated by STW founder and Gustave Eiffel's great-great-great-grand-son Savin Yeatman-Eiffel. The designs were created by STW's artists under the art direction of Yukiko Yeatman-Eiffel. The exhibition started on 11 July on the esplanade of the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

in Paris, were it will stay until the end of 2023. STW hopes to take the exhibition to other locations as well.

Other works

STW has been working regularly on two long term projects : the

historical epic Epic films are a style of filmmaking with large-scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply synonymous with big-budget filmmaking. Like epics in ...

The 2 Queens ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

, developed under the helm of animation master

Toshiyuki Inoue is a Japanese animator and character designer. He was the representative director of Japanese Animation Creators Association from 2014 to 2016. He is known as the "Perfect Animator", a title given to him by Mamoru Oshii. He is known for influe ...

( Akira, Blood: The Last Vampire,

Paprika Paprika ( US , ; UK , ) is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers. It is traditionally made from ''Capsicum annuum'' varietals in the Longum group, which also includes chili peppers, but the peppers used for paprika tend to be milder an ...

Giovanni's Island is a 2014 Japanese animated historical drama film directed by Mizuho Nishikubo and produced by Production I.G and co-produced and presented by the Japan Association of Music Enterprises. The film was released on February 22, 2014, in Japan and ...

); and a live-action adaptation of

Gen Urobuchi is a Japanese novelist, visual novel writer and anime screenwriter. He is known for being the co-creator of the highly acclaimed and commercially successful anime series '' Puella Magi Madoka Magica'', which earned him the Tokyo Anime Award for ...

's cult visual novel

Saya no Uta ''The Song of Saya'' is a horror eroge lolicon visual novel by Nitroplus. The original plot was written by Gen Urobuchi, who took inspiration from reading Lovecraft novels during a lonely time in his life. In 2009, an English fan translatio ...

. STW also produces TV commercials and short films, exceptionally working on artistic development for third party companies (

Zone of the Enders is a video game franchise created by Hideo Kojima and Konami that focused around combat in space with mecha called Orbital Frames. The original ''Zone of the Enders'' was released for the PlayStation 2 in March 2001. A sequel, '' Zone of the E ...

of Japanese studio

Sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon and its accompanying atmospheric effects. Terminology Al ...

)

Products

* ''

'' (2006 TV series) * ''

'' (2023 Blu-ray release)

References

External links

*
Oban Star-Racers official website "Eiffel, higher and higher" exhibition official website
French companies established in 1998 Anime companies French animation studios Mass media companies established in 1998 1998 establishments in France {{animation-studio-stub