Toei Animation

Based on Wikipedia: Toei Animation

The Factory That Built Dreams

If you grew up watching Sailor Moon transform, witnessed Goku push beyond his limits, or followed Luffy's endless quest for the One Piece, you've experienced the work of Toei Animation. This single studio has shaped the visual language of Japanese animation for over seven decades, producing some of the most recognizable characters in global pop culture. But the story of how a small postwar animation company became an empire—and the complicated legacy it carries—is far more interesting than any corporate history would suggest.

Toei Animation began in the ashes of World War Two.

In 1948, two animators named Kenzō Masaoka and Sanae Yamamoto founded a company called Japan Animated Films, known by its abbreviated Japanese name Nichidō Eiga. Japan was still rebuilding, still occupied by American forces, still figuring out what its culture would become in this strange new postwar world. Animation seemed like a small thing to focus on. But Masaoka and Yamamoto understood something important: stories told through moving pictures had a power that transcended language and borders.

Eight years later, the Toei Company—a major film studio—purchased the fledgling animation house and renamed it Toei Dōga. The word "dōga" is Japanese for video or animation, though the company would eventually adopt the English name Toei Animation in 1998 to match its international branding. What matters is what happened in between: the transformation of a modest studio into the most prolific anime factory in history.

The Names That Passed Through

Here's something remarkable about Toei Animation. Walk through the history of Japanese animation, and you'll find that an astonishing number of the medium's greatest talents learned their craft within its walls.

Hayao Miyazaki worked there. So did Isao Takahata. These two would later leave to form Studio Ghibli, creating films like Spirited Away and Grave of the Fireflies that would win Academy Awards and define what anime could achieve as an art form. But they cut their teeth at Toei, learning the fundamentals of the craft in its studios.

Leiji Matsumoto, the visionary behind Galaxy Express 999 and Space Battleship Yamato, collaborated with Toei. Yasuji Mori and Yōichi Kotabe, master animators whose influence shaped generations of artists, worked there too. The studio functioned as something like a university of animation—young artists entered, learned their craft, and often left to start their own studios. Topcraft, Mushi Production, Shin-Ei Animation, Doga Kobo, and even Yamamura Animation all trace their lineages back to former Toei employees who struck out on their own.

This pattern tells us something essential about Toei's nature. It was never precious about its talent. It was a production house first and foremost, churning out content at a pace that made it both invaluable to the industry and, perhaps, difficult to stay at forever for those with grander artistic ambitions.

The Mascot in Boots

Every studio needs a symbol. Disney has Mickey Mouse. Warner Brothers has Bugs Bunny.

Toei Animation has a cat in boots named Pero.

In 1969, Toei produced an animated adaptation of the European fairy tale Puss in Boots—the story of a clever cat who uses trickery and bravado to elevate his impoverished master to nobility. Pero, the studio's version of this character, became so beloved that he was adopted as the official mascot. There's something fitting about this choice. A scrappy, clever character who uses wit and resourcefulness to punch above his weight class—not a bad representation for an animation studio from a country that had to rebuild itself from rubble.

An Empire of Series

The list of properties Toei has produced reads like a catalog of cultural touchstones.

Sally the Witch, which debuted in 1966, is considered the first magical girl anime—launching an entire genre that would eventually give us Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, and countless imitators. GeGeGe no Kitarō, based on a manga about a boy born in a graveyard who becomes a bridge between humans and yokai spirits, has been adapted so many times across the decades that it's become a permanent fixture of Japanese popular culture.

Then there's Dragon Ball. Akira Toriyama's manga about a monkey-tailed boy who grows into the universe's mightiest warrior has been adapted by Toei into multiple series spanning four decades. Dragon Ball Z alone ran for nearly three hundred episodes and essentially defined what action anime looked like for an entire generation of viewers worldwide.

One Piece, still running after over a thousand episodes, has become the best-selling manga series in history. Sailor Moon reinvented both the magical girl and superhero genres simultaneously, creating templates that anime is still drawing from today. Slam Dunk sparked a basketball boom in Japan and across Asia. Digimon provided a generation of children with their first virtual pets and an unexpectedly emotional story about growing up.

The studio also produced Mazinger Z, which pioneered the "super robot" genre—the idea of a human pilot controlling a giant mechanical warrior. Without Mazinger Z, there would be no Voltron, no Power Rangers (which uses Japanese footage), arguably no Pacific Rim. This single show established conventions that would ripple through global entertainment for fifty years.

Where the Magic Happens

Toei Animation maintains its headquarters in Nakano, a ward in western Tokyo known for its vibrant otaku culture. But the actual animation work happens in Nerima, another Tokyo ward, in a studio complex at Higashiōizumi. This facility is significant enough that it houses the Toei Animation Museum, where fans can explore the history of the studio's productions.

But Tokyo isn't the only production center anymore. Toei has long operated an overseas studio in the Philippines—Toei Animation Phils—taking advantage of lower labor costs and a talented workforce. This kind of international production arrangement is common in the animation industry, where the sheer volume of drawings required for traditional animation makes cost control essential.

In 2025, Toei announced something significant: a new domestic studio in Osaka. This wasn't just expansion for expansion's sake. According to Kiichiro Yamada, a board member and head of production, the Japanese animation industry faces a serious labor shortage. For decades, the industry has been concentrated in Tokyo, requiring aspiring animators to move to the capital if they wanted careers in anime. The Osaka studio represents a strategic shift—recruiting from the Kansai region, building local talent pipelines, and reducing the bottleneck that Tokyo concentration creates.

The labor shortage Yamada mentioned is one of animation's open secrets. The industry produces more content than ever before, but the working conditions have historically been brutal: long hours, low pay for entry-level positions, and demanding production schedules. Studios are beginning to grapple with the reality that they cannot sustain current output without changing how they treat and recruit workers.

The American Connection

Here's something that might surprise you: Toei Animation has deep roots in American entertainment.

Starting in the 1960s and exploding in the 1980s, Toei provided animation services for American productions. They worked with Sunbow Entertainment and Marvel Productions on shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers. They collaborated with Hanna-Barbera, the studio behind The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. They partnered with Rankin/Bass, famous for stop-motion holiday specials, to produce traditionally animated content. DIC Entertainment, World Events Productions—the list goes on.

This wasn't charity work. American studios discovered that Japanese animators could produce high-quality work at competitive prices, and Toei was happy to take the contracts. The result was a strange cultural exchange: American children in the 1980s watched cartoons animated by the same studio producing Dragon Ball, often without any idea of the connection.

But this outsourcing relationship faded. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, Toei pulled back from American contract work. The studio had become successful enough with its own properties that taking on overseas commissions made less strategic sense. Today, it only rarely works with companies outside Japan.

The Relationship with Toei Company

Understanding Toei Animation requires understanding its relationship with the Toei Company, the larger film studio that owns it.

Toei Company is a major player in Japanese entertainment, producing live-action films, managing talent, and running theme parks. When they need animation, they usually turn to their subsidiary—but not always. The Robot Romance Trilogy, for instance, was produced by Toei Company but animated by a studio called Sunrise (which would later become famous for Gundam). Space Emperor God Sigma was handed off to Academy Productions.

This flexibility points to something important about how Japanese entertainment conglomerates operate. Ownership doesn't mandate exclusivity. Toei Company uses Toei Animation when it makes sense and goes elsewhere when it doesn't. Meanwhile, Toei Animation has operated independently since 1962, maintaining its own production offices rather than functioning as a department within Toei's television division.

Toei Animation also held stakes in broader industry infrastructure. The studio was a shareholder in Animax, a satellite television network dedicated to anime, alongside other studios like Sunrise, TMS Entertainment, and Nihon Ad Systems. These cross-industry connections helped ensure distribution channels for anime content and represented the kind of strategic positioning that allowed Toei to remain influential even as competition increased.

Recognition and Awards

The Animage Anime Grand Prix was, for decades, one of the most prestigious popularity awards in anime, voted on by readers of the influential Animage magazine. Toei Animation productions won this prize three times in its early years: Galaxy Express 999 in 1981, Saint Seiya in 1987, and Sailor Moon in 1992.

These wins represent different aspects of Toei's output. Galaxy Express 999 was a romantic science fiction epic about a boy traveling through space on a train, seeking immortality. Saint Seiya featured warriors in mystic armor battling in the name of the goddess Athena. Sailor Moon told stories of teenage girls who transformed into superheroines to fight evil. Each property demonstrated Toei's ability to capture the zeitgeist of its moment.

The Copyright Wars

Toei Animation's aggressive approach to copyright enforcement has made it one of the most controversial studios in the age of internet fan culture.

Between 2008 and 2018, Toei repeatedly filed copyright claims against TeamFourStar's Dragon Ball Z Abridged, a parody series that re-edited and re-dubbed episodes of Dragon Ball Z with comedic dialogue. TeamFourStar argued their work was protected under fair use, the legal doctrine that allows limited use of copyrighted material for purposes like parody, commentary, and criticism.

But the most explosive incident came in December 2021.

A YouTuber named Mark Fitzpatrick, known online as Totally Not Mark, woke up to find that Toei had copyright claimed over 150 of his videos. Fitzpatrick made analytical content about anime, discussing themes, animation quality, and storytelling techniques. In his response video, he pointed out that nine of the claimed videos contained no Toei footage whatsoever. He walked viewers through YouTube's appeal process and calculated, grimly, that getting all his videos reinstated through official channels could take over thirty-seven years.

Fitzpatrick called for a boycott of the upcoming Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero film. Other YouTubers rallied to his cause. PewDiePie, one of the platform's biggest creators, spoke out about the situation. The Anime Man, himself a Japan-based content creator, discussed the fundamental clash between American fair use doctrine and Japanese copyright law, which provides much weaker protections for transformative works.

The situation resolved in January 2022, when negotiations with YouTube resulted in Fitzpatrick's videos being reinstated. But the incident highlighted ongoing tensions between traditional media companies and the creator economy that has grown up around their content. Toei clearly views its intellectual property as something to be guarded jealously; creators argue that commentary, analysis, and even parody increase engagement with the original works.

Security Breach

On March 6, 2022, Toei Animation announced that unauthorized third parties had attempted to hack their network. The consequences rippled through the anime world immediately.

The company's online store went offline. Internal systems were suspended. Most visibly for fans, broadcast schedules for multiple anime series were disrupted—including One Piece, which at that point had been running continuously for over two decades. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which had been scheduled for theatrical release, was pushed back to June 11, 2022.

A month later, Japan's public broadcaster NHK revealed the nature of the attack: targeted ransomware. This is a type of cyberattack where malicious software encrypts a victim's files and demands payment for the decryption key. That a major animation studio would be targeted for ransomware demonstrates how valuable media production infrastructure has become—and how vulnerable.

By April 2022, Toei had recovered enough to resume broadcasting, but the incident served as a wake-up call for an industry that had perhaps not taken digital security as seriously as it should have.

Workplace Controversies

In January 2021, two employees publicly accused Toei Animation of workplace problems that extended beyond the industry's general issues with overwork.

The accusations included overworking employees—not unusual for an industry notorious for demanding schedules—but also discrimination against sexual minorities. Specifically, the company had allegedly made inappropriate references to employees who identify as X-gender, a non-binary identity recognized in Japan.

These accusations arrived at a moment when Japanese companies were beginning to face more scrutiny over workplace culture and diversity issues. The animation industry, with its young workforce and creative culture, has seen particularly vocal pushback against traditional corporate practices. Whether Toei has made meaningful changes in response remains unclear.

New Directions

In October 2021, Toei Animation announced a strategic partnership with CJ ENM, a South Korean entertainment conglomerate. South Korea has become a powerhouse in global entertainment—K-pop, Korean dramas, and Korean films have achieved international success that Japanese media companies have watched with interest and perhaps some envy. The partnership with CJ ENM signals Toei's interest in tapping into Korean expertise in international marketing and distribution.

More recently, in June 2025, Toei announced the creation of Eterna Animation, a new production label focused on original works rather than adaptations of existing manga or light novels. The label's first announced project is a short film called Foxing, scheduled for release in 2026. This represents a potential shift in strategy—historically, Toei has primarily adapted existing properties, which come with built-in audiences. Creating a label for original content suggests confidence in their ability to develop intellectual property from scratch.

The Legacy Machine

What does Toei Animation mean for the history of animation?

At one level, it's simply a company—a very successful company that has produced enormous amounts of content over three-quarters of a century. But at another level, it's something more: a factory that manufactured the dreams of multiple generations, a training ground that produced many of animation's greatest talents, and an institution that has weathered technological changes, economic shifts, and cultural transformations while continuing to pump out stories.

The studio trained the founders of Studio Ghibli. It pioneered genres that define anime today. It brought Japanese animation to American television screens and American animation to Japanese production facilities. It has fought bitterly to protect its copyrights while its characters became global icons who inspire countless fan works.

Toei Animation isn't perfect. Its labor practices have been criticized. Its copyright enforcement has been called heavy-handed. Its relationship with the fan communities that sustain interest in its properties remains fraught. But it continues, like the cat in boots who serves as its mascot, to find ways to punch above its weight and remain central to the stories we tell ourselves about animation.

Somewhere in Nerima, animators are drawing frames that will become the next episode of One Piece, or the next magical girl transformation, or the next super robot battle. The factory keeps running. The dreams keep coming.