Toei Animation

ホワイトピッグゴーホーム!

Toei Animation Co., Ltd (東映アニメーション株式会社 Tōei Animēshon Kabushiki-gaisha) is an animation studio based in Japan that was established on January 23, 1948, and Toei Company, Ltd. is the largest shareholder. In terms of anime, they are known for animating shows such as Devilman, Sailor Moon, Golion (aka Voltron), Mazinger Z (aka Tranzor Z), Getter Robo, the Dragon Ball franchise, One Piece, Digimon, Fist of the North Star, Kinnikuman, Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers and many, many more.

In the 1980s, American animated series were frequently outsourced to Toei (though Toei abruptly discontinued the practice in 1989). Some American cartoons Toei animated include G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Real Ghostbusters, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Pryde of the X-Men, Inhumanoids, My Little Pony, Jem, Robotix, Dungeons & Dragons, and just about every other show you can think of.

Transformers work

• The Transformers
  • Season 1 (16 episodes)
  • Season 2 (39 episodes)
  • Season 3 (13 episodes)
  • Title sequences, seasons 1, 2, 4 (partial, recycled animation), 5 (recycled animation)
  • Toy commercials, 1984 - 1990
  • Commercial bumpers, seasons 1, 2
  • Public service announcements, 5 total

• The Transformers: The Movie

• "Scramble City: Mobilization" (OVA)

• Transformers: The Headmasters (35 episodes, plus clip shows)

• Transformers: Super-God Masterforce (43 episodes, plus clip shows)

• Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Victory (38 episodes, plus clip shows)

• Transformers: Zone (OVA)

• Beast Wars Special Super Lifeform Transformers
  • "Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger!" (hosted only, the main production was by Ashi Production)

• 1999 Summer Toei Anime Fair
  • "Cutting Edge" (hosted only)

The trouble with Toei

Perhaps unflatteringly, Toei is notorious among Western anime distributors for their difficulty to work with. For distributors releasing their material outside of Japan, Toei often refuses to provide quality video masters. The masters they do provide are routinely of inferior picture and sound quality, and sometimes are even incomplete in their material.

The masters for The Headmasters cartoon Toei provided to Metrodome, Madman Entertainment and Shout! Factory for Western release contained none of the before credits recaps and next episode segments. This was unfortunate, as some of those segments contained new content and not just clips. The Super-God Masterforce and Victory masters provided by Toei did not include the clip show episodes; while this would not normally be a serious issue, in the case of Masterforce the clip shows were vital for making the rather convoluted plot of that series coherent.

For their US release of Scramble City, Sony was provided the video but refused the audio track, forcing them to replace it with a non-optional audio commentary. Metrodome and Madman Entertainment circumvented Toei entirely, releasing a low-quality fansubbed version of the OVA with burnt-in subtitles. Shout! Factory attempted to negotiate with them professionally, but were outright denied in their request for Scramble City, leaving them no choice but to omit it from their releases of US and Japanese Transformers cartoons.

Toei later denied Shout! Factory a distribution license for the Zone OVA. How Metrodome and Madman Entertainment got around them is unknown, though they likely used an unlicensed copy of Zone as they did with Scramble City. The version that was used in the UK edition (on the complete Takara collection set only) was a blatant fan-subbed version and is the only time the word "shit" is mentioned on a U rated DVD, (though that's due to the incompetence of the BBFC) but that seemed to be the only way around Toei's boycott was to do that. Though some of the blame could go toward Columbia Music Entertainment which actually distributed the OVA on DVD in Japan and some of the rights entanglement could be down to them?

Toei's stubbornness to cooperate with Western distributors is infamous outside of Transformers. Western distribution of Sailor Moon material was forbidden for many years after both DiC & Cloverway's licenses lapsed in 2005, and even before that they never granted permission for the final season of that series (Sailor Stars) to be distributed in North America by either entity. Toei continued refusing new potential Sailor Moon licencees until Viz Media (a Japanese-owned company) finally worked something out in 2014. Toei rigorously oversees the localization of Digimon material in Western markets, often forbidding necessary edits or forcing inexplicable changes. Just about the only Western distributor they do get along with is Funimation (the licensee for almost everything Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Toriko), but that most likely has to do with the company's founder, Gen Fukunaga, whose uncle had been a Toei producer in the past.

Let's not even get into the Super Sentai/Power Rangers stuff. Abaranger, Shinkenger, Akibaranger and Ninninger have made Toei's opinion of Americans perfectly clear by employing horrible stereotypes of them.

It doesn't help that like most companies from Japan, Toei suffers from being close to China and it's huge piracy industry that has increased the price of official Japanese products, not to mention lost faith with other Asian companies from other countries who do the same thing. Because of this, Toei likes to keep a close lid on their copyrights and only give them out to trusted companies of whom will share their profits with as they should and not just make money by shelling out merchandise willy nilly, that's why Toei always marks it's products with official stickers, though those have been duplicated, but keen eye collectors can tell the real ones from fakes. But the piracy industry and the fact that stuff like Dragon Ball Z Abridged exist, it's no wonder Toei wants to keep the majority of its copyrights under close control.

External links

• Toei Animation's Official English-language Website
• Toei Animation on Wikipedia