If you watch anime, especially The Young Breed, you might know about Toei animation. The studio is known for its adaptation of popular comics Dragon Pearl and Sailor Moon, And there is a lot of work to be done. When these series and movies were released, some might have been made through artificial intelligence.
In TOEI’s recent financial briefing for fiscal 2024-2025, One Slide revealed that the studio put undisclosed funds into Preferred Networks, a Japanese company with “cutting-edge AI technology.” The two hope to “jointly develop new business opportunities and improve the efficiency and quality of our production, leveraging the synergy between AI and animation production technologies.”
TOEI is specifically targeted at plot boards in production, as well as coloring (and color specifications), backgrounds and betwes. Quoted use cases include enabling techniques to automatically correct between or specify and pick the correct colors and generate backgrounds from referenced photos. At the time, the slideshow only talked about future prospects and did not mention the technology in the studio’s current work piece Or the upcoming Digimon Beatbreak and gosu.
In the larger entertainment industry, AI has been controversial. Although often considered a means of efficiency and helps reduce trivial work, workers in different creative fields, such as voice performance and art, believe that their livelihoods are threatened by the adoption of the studio and its incorporation of technology into the project without the artist’s consent. Others think it is a form of theft or digital necrosis that can add additional steps to the production process or lead to unexpected errors at release. Toei is a big company and how it will affect everyone from other studios to fans who watch the work.
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