Has anyone noticed that phenomena where an anime studio still exists, but only exists in "name only"? Where any sort of "house style" a studio may have had is replaced with basically anonymous work for hire, ie manga adaptions, light novel adaptions, nothing original and nothing with a prevailing theme or vibe the studio may have once had.
Two studios that I feel this applies to is Gonzo and Gainax, both still exist, but they're not the "real" Gonzo and Gainax anymore.
If you remember Gonzo in the 2000s they really tried to be hot stuff, while their ambition often outstretched their actual talent and while they were inconsistent, I feel like they were always consistently interesting, a Gonzo anime had a certain je ne sais quoi to it, I think it's because oftentimes they were original animes instead of manga adaptions (though they did do a fair amount of manga adaptions), they were the first studio to really lean in hard on digital animation and the colors tended to pop more than most other animes at the time (even if the animation itself was often not great and off model) and they also frequently worked with character designer Range Murata.
I think my favorite of theirs' is the first season of Last Exile, but I'm also a fan of Burst Angel because it's Gonzo at their best and worst, it's not a great series but there's still something about it I find weirdly likable, I'm also a fan of the overlooked Speed Grapher because of it's unique, bonkers premise and the fact that it kind of predicted the Great Recession.
Meanwhile of course we all know Gainax, but what's funny is Gainax throughout it's history has 2, maybe even 3 incarnations, the original Gainax was the Hideaki Anno led one that I think started off wanting to sort of be another Ghibli (but a little more adult) with The Wings of Honnêamise and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water while also doing more otaku friendly stuff like Gunbuster and Otaku No Video, when the Ghibli side didn't pan out they then leaned really hard into the otaku side and created the otaku series to end all otaku series with Evangelion.
Then once the pre-Rebuild version of Evangelion ran it's course they then morphed into the FLCL era, which while the names of all the specific men behind this era I don't know off the top of my head save for Hiroyuki Imaishi, this era of Gainax I would say was defined by leaning more into humor and tongue in cheek, with series like FLCL, the very underrated Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi and culminating with Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt
Unfortunately it seems like P&S was their swansong because Anno had alreay gone off to play with his Eva toys with Studio Khara and the team behind P&S went off to form Trigger, leaving Gainax now to be nothing but an anonymous work for hire studio with no "Gainax" left in it which is really too bad, because they were one of my favorite studios (but at least we have Khara and Trigger, the actual talent is more important than the brand name)
What's sad is it even seems like it's happening to Ghibli, I watched Earwig and The Witch and it was fine, but the CG animation was a pretty huge downgrade over Ghibli's scarily detailed 2D animation of works past, it definitely seems like once Miyazaki retired Ghibli is probably going to be "Ghibli" in name only.
Has anyone noticed this with any other studios? Why are all the ones I've cited start with the letter G? That's funny.