Mushi Production was the anime studio founded by Osamu Tezuka in 1961 (initially as Tezuka Osamu Production Animation Department). Its 1963 production Astro Boy was the first weekly half-hour TV anime, and its production economics — limited animation, drastically lower budgets than Disney comparisons — set the template that the rest of the Japanese industry adopted. Mushi declared bankruptcy in 1973.
Founding and Astro Boy
Tezuka founded Mushi to animate his own manga properties for television. Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), broadcast from January 1963, was financed at a level so low that Mushi effectively subsidised the production from Tezuka's manga income. The studio's cost-control choices — three frames per second for many sequences, repeated cycle animation, stock backgrounds — became standard industry practice.
The Animerama features and bankruptcy
Mushi's late-1960s 'Animerama' theatrical features (One Thousand and One Nights in 1969, Cleopatra in 1970, Belladonna of Sadness in 1973) targeted adult audiences and were ambitious in technique but commercial disappointments. The studio's financial position never recovered and it declared bankruptcy in November 1973. A new entity, also called Mushi Production, was incorporated in 1977 by former staff and continues to operate.