Toei Animation Production - Dragon Ball

The Toei Company (formerly Tokyo Film Distribution Company) is a Japanese media company. They produce and publish film, television, and video games. Toei owns a range of facilities across Japan, including 34 theaters in Tokyo, studios in Tokyo and Kyoto, and even has shares in various television companies. Toei is perhaps most famous for their incredible volume of popular anime productions and, perhaps less so, for their historical dramas. Toei belongs to The Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan as one of Japan's big four studios (Shochiku, TOHO, Toei, and Kadokawa Pictures).

Toei Animation

Founded in 1948 as Japan Animated Films by Kenzo Masaoka and Zenjiro Yamamoto, the studio was then bought by Toei in 1956 and renamed Toei Doga (Toei Animation) before again changing names officially to Toei Animation in 1998. Some famous names that have worked with Toei Animation include Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata (of Studio Ghibli), their senior Yasuji Mori, Leiji Matsumoto (of Space Battleship Yamato), and Yoichi Kotabe (Nintendo character designer and animation supervisor for the famous Pokemon movies). Toei Animation’s mascot became Pero the cat, a character from their 1969 animated film adaptation of Puss in Boots, and has remained so ever since.

Toei Animation is best known for their animated adaptations of popular manga series. Some of these include One Piece (Eichiro Oda), Toriko (Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro), Slam Dunk (Takehiko Inoue), Saint Seiya (Masami Kurumada), Sailor Moon (Naoko Takeuchi), and Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump (Akira Toriyama). Toei Animation has won the Animage Grand Prix award a number of times. The nominated and winning works were Galaxy Express 999 in 1981, Saint Seiya in 1987 and Sailor Moon in 1992.

Some of the most famous television titles produced by Toei Animation include:

Fist of the North Star (TV 1984)
Dragon Ball (TV 1986)
Dragon Ball Z (TV 1989)
Galaxy Express 999 (TV 1978)
Captain Harlock (TV 1978)
Slam Dunk (TV 1993)
Sailor Moon (TV 1994)
One Piece (TV 1999)
Mononoke (TV 2007)
Toriko (TV 2011)

Funimation Productions

Toei Animation works closely with Funimation Productions, an American dubbing and distribution company that is famous for specializing in anime. Founded in 1994 by Gen Fukunaga, Funimation initially operated in a shared office space with EchoLight Studios, a Christian television production company. Initially unable to obtain the rights to the Dragon Ball series from Toei Animation, Gen’s uncle Nagafumi Hori, a producer at Toei Animation, managed to persuade the board into giving the rights to Funimation. Gen then convinced a coworker whose family owned a feed mill in Decatur, Texas to sell the mill and invest in the company. From this, Funimation Productions was born.

The company was founded on May 9, 1994 by Fukunaga and his wife Cindy as FUNimation Productions, with funding by Daniel Cocanougher and his family, who became investors. Funimation was acquired by Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005 and renamed to FUNimation Entertainment until it was sold yet again in 2011 to a group of investors, including Gen himself, and the company was once more renamed Funimation. Funimation now had deals with companies such as Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Crunchyroll before Sony Pictures Television acquired a 95% stake in Funimation in 2017. Manga Entertainment UK was then acquired and merged into Funimation UK.

Toei and Funimation: Dragon Ball

Toei produced the original Dragon Ball series with Funimation, working with a number of different studios to provide the English dub. First, Funimation worked with Ocean Dub to produce the first iteration of the English dub version of Dragon Ball Z for the first 53 episodes (originally 67 but due to editing and cuts, became 53). Saban Entertainment provided the background music and score with an almost rock style guitar and synth soundtrack, replacing the original orchestral score by Shunsuke Kikuchi. In 1998, Dragon Ball Z became popular on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block and Funimation decided to continue dubbing the series. From 1999, the decision was made to do all of the music and dubbing in-house due to lack of financial support. The earlier episodes were then redubbed in 2004 and released with the Funimation Remastered Box Set. The redubbed version began airing on Cartoon Network for the first time in 2005. There are a number of differences between the original Japanese version and the English dubs, resulting in censoring or making the story more appropriate or accessible for Western audiences. Examples are Goku’s speech upon turning Super Saiyan being overly heroic and somewhat uncharacteristic of Goku, Android 17 and Android 18 being explained as Androids based on human twins, whereas in the original they are modified humans.

Toei Animation Production - Dragon Ball

Toei Animation

Funimation Productions

Toei and Funimation: Dragon Ball

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Dragon Ball