Studios on Waifora capture the organisations involved in producing a work. Distinguishing production from licensing is the single most common mistake — get this right and most studio submissions sail through.
Production vs licensing vs distribution
Production studio — actually made the work. For anime, the studio whose name appears on the title card. For manga, the publisher who serialised it.
Co-production studio — a second (or third) studio that meaningfully contributed to making the work (animation outsourcing, joint development).
Licensor / distributor / streaming partner — the company that bought the rights to distribute it in a region (Crunchyroll, Netflix, Funimation legacy). These do not belong in the studio field. They live as External Links instead.
Sponsor / production committee member — companies that funded the production (often listed in the credits as a long string). These can be added as producers rather than studios.
Main studio
A work has one main studio. Pick the studio most prominently credited — the title-card studio for anime, the magazine's parent publisher for manga. Co-production studios go in the secondary slot.
Studio name
Use the studio's canonical English name when one exists ("MAPPA" not "MAPPA Co., Ltd.").
For studios that publish only in their native script, use the romanised name as the primary and the native as an alt.
No legal-entity suffixes ("Inc.", "Co., Ltd.", "K.K.") in the display name unless they're genuinely part of the brand.
Founded date
The year the studio was founded as a producing entity. If it was a subsidiary that spun out, use the spin-out date.
Leave blank rather than guess.
Image
A clean logo on a transparent background where possible, otherwise a clean studio photo. See Images.