Why is Toei Animation so cheap?

[JEFFMAN219]

I want to know why Toei Animation is so cheap with their shows. I mean they should be rich with all the money they've made from Dragon Ball Z and One Piece.

[samuraix123]

Are you speaking in terms of Animation?

[VegettoEX]

Please review your posts before making them. While I'm sure many people at Toei are cheap with their shoes, I don't think that's relevant to anything.

Toei is a business. They are a public company. They are accountable to their shareholders. Their entire goal is to make the most money possible while simultaneously spending the least amount of money possible. They have to also both look for short-timeframe profits while setting up a long-tail business model in an ever-changing world.

Basically, here's Kai.

[sintzu]

If you had a big company would you bother to put more time and money into your products knowing you will get the same or close to the same results in sales as if you haden't ?

[XanatosVanBadass]

Please review your posts before making them. While I'm sure many people at Toei are cheap with their shoes, I don't think that's relevant to anything.

Hey, now! Cheap, shoddy foot ware is nothing to sneeze at!

[dan2026]

Toei are a really, really shitty animation company.

Woe betide you if your series gets a Toei animation adaption.
Just look at One Piece and Toriko.

[sintzu]

Just look at One Piece and Toriko.

What's wrong with them ?

[JulieYBM]

How Much Does One Episode of Anime Cost To Make?

The Average Number of Drawings/Cels in a Toei Animation Television Episode: 3,000-4,000, fixed mostly at 3,000 in-between drawings.
Key Animation: $40 US per cut, 300 cuts per episode.
In-between Animation: $2 USD per drawing on average.

Toei Animation produces multiple films, multiple specials, multiple commercials, multiple video game cut scenes, and multiple weekly television series per year. Toei Animation is also the only animation studio to actually have a union for its animators. That's more money that has to be spent.

Dragon Ball is a long-running series. Nobody really likes to buy long-running series. They'll buy figures and games, but they won't really by the home videos, especially of a series that airs at 9AM on Sundays. The only members of the Production Committee for Dragon Ball Kai are Fuji Televi and Toei Animation. This means they are the only two production companies putting down the money for this series and they simply choose to spend as little as necessary, especially as it's unlikely a series over one hundred episodes would ever make back much of its money via home video. The first three Dragon Ball series had nostalgia going for them and were released under better economic conditions.

They're cheap because there is little reason to believe spending any more money and using any better talent will make them any more money than they are now.

[dan2026]

Just look at One Piece and Toriko.

What's wrong with them ?

Well lets take Toriko.

- Inconsistent animation.
- They removed pretty much all of the blood and gore. And a lot of the violence in general.
- They added in their own characters, annoying ones at that.
- They skipped and added content seemingly at random.
- I also hear they slapped on their own ending before cancelling the series.

They're cheap because there is little reason to believe spending any more money and using any better talent will make them any more money than they are now.

This is basically the rub. In my opinion they are possibly the worst of all the Japanese animation companies.

[B]

For as much (deserved)crap Toei is given, I think it's fair to acknowledged Dragon Ball had more of a budget than most of these long running shows; most likely due to the clout of the series. The difference is night-and-day if you compared it to things like Digimon, a pseudo-original creation that didn't/doesn't have the buzz of pre-existing source material, or Konjiki no Gash Bell!, another series based off a manga, but one with much, much less star power than DB.

[TheBlackPaladin]

How Much Does One Episode of Anime Cost To Make?

That was an interesting article, thanks. Is paying the voice actors included in that figure? I can't see a specific figure for it (unless they included it in the "Sound" or "Production" sections). I've always been curious as to what voice actors get paid in Japan.

Thus far, I only have two clues. The first is a VO-centric publication called Voice-Over Xtra which published this article, but this article mostly talks about how non-Japanese voice actors get paid in Japan. The second is that apparently Japan does have an actor's union, the JAU, but I can't find their rates for animation VO--if they even have them--and I don't know if Dragon Ball uses union actors or not.

[kei17]

Because Toei are the oldest animation company in Japan. They're just too old-school.

[JulieYBM]

How Much Does One Episode of Anime Cost To Make?

That was an interesting article, thanks. Is paying the voice actors included in that figure? I can't see a specific figure for it (unless they included it in the "Sound" or "Production" sections). I've always been curious as to what voice actors get paid in Japan.

Thus far, I only have two clues. The first is a VO-centric publication called Voice-Over Xtra which published this article, but this article mostly talks about how non-Japanese voice actors get paid in Japan. The second is that apparently Japan does have an actor's union, the JAU, but I can't find their rates for animation VO--if they even have them--and I don't know if Dragon Ball uses union actors or not.

I don't think so. A Sound Director (like Nagasaki Yukio of Dragon Ball fame) makes about $2,000 per episode and can usually handle three episodes a week.

[Vijay]

We (DragonBall fans) ought to thank TOEI for what they've done.

If the outdated, poor animation is the only reason behind TOEI being labelled as "cheap", I must say there are countless classic 90's Anime which came along DBZ (still hailed by fans) had animation quality along the standard of Uchiyama Masayuki.

No offence, but talented guys as Tadayoshi, Maeda, Keisugi Masunaga, Shimanuki, HizadaKazuya etc contributed to DB's appeal which simply cannot be over-looked. Be gratefu with what we have...

[Hellspawn28]

Toei is just cheap in general. If you look at their live action shows like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai and compare the CG work in those shows to the recent Ultraman shows. The special effects in Ginga look better then they did in Wizard in my opinion.

Having brand new animation for Kai would be nice, but I guess Toei didn't want to risk on something that might bomb. Kai is the DB TV show since GT ended back in 1997. It been a long time and they must have felt like that they rather play safe then sorry. I think if we get another new original show then we might see brand new animation.

[JEFFMAN219]

Are you speaking in terms of Animation?

Ya just look how bad the one piece anime looks now compared to the older episodes of one piece

[JEFFMAN219]

Please review your posts before making them.

My bad I was typing on my phone.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

Just look at One Piece and Toriko.

What's wrong with them ?

Toriko is heavily censored and barely has any blood, while the manga has a lot of blood, and made it very childish while the manga isn't that childish, and One Piece is too fucking slow (1 episode = 1 chapter)...

[ABED]

Toei is a business. They are a public company. They are accountable to their shareholders. Their entire goal is to make the most money possible while simultaneously spending the least amount of money possible.

That's not specific to public companies, they are all trying to make as much money as possible by increasing revenues and decreasing costs. The issue is at what point the cost cutting starts hurting revenues.

If you had a big company would you bother to put more time and money into your products knowing you will get the same or close to the same results in sales as if you hadn't?

in other words, there's the point of diminishing marginal returns.

[Hellspawn28]

I want to know why Toei Animation is so cheap with their shows. I mean they should be rich with all the money they've made from Dragon Ball Z and One Piece.

Toei is one of the biggest film and TV companies in Japan and have been for nearly 65 years. I would say that they are pretty damn rich. As I mention before, I guess Kai was done cheap to play safe at the time. Besides, Toei tends to care more about merchandise sales then how good the show is. The show can suck ass, but can a ton of money from toys, t-shirts and many more.