After a new controversy regarding the giant studio behind Dragon Ball and One Piece came about, the studio released a new statement that clears up a misunderstanding, as well as promising to correct the source of this controversy. While this does indeed solve a few issues, the root of the problem still persists, and it seems the studio has yet to address the main concern of fans, which is the fact that there are still plans to incorporate artificial intelligence in the creation of anime.
As confirmed by ITmedia, Toei Animation has released a new statement that reveals the studio has never used AI in any of their series, including the magical girl Wonderful Pretty Cure!, which people assumed AI was used due to the misleading financial report they released. However, the fact still remains that the studio released a financial statement where they revealed plans to incorporate AI in very important processes, such as making in-between frames, coloring, storyboard creation, and making backgrounds, all very important stages of production that require a lot of human expertise and labor.
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Fans Are Unhappy With Toei’s Future Plans
For those unaware, a few days ago, a new financial statement for the fiscal year ending in March 2025 revealed that Toei Animation was planning to integrate AI in collaboration with Preferred Networks (PFN), a company they invested in alongside Kodansha and TBS. This move was to “seek to co-develop new business opportunities and improve the efficiency and quality of our production, capitalizing on synergies between AI and animation production technologies.” This made fans very unhappy about this, as Toei was one of Japan’s biggest and oldest anime studios, and this might lead to a chain as well as the fact that it could lead to the loss of jobs for animators and staff.
Fortunately, one of One Piece‘s most integral animators, Vincent Chansard, came out on X (formerly Twitter) and weighed his opinion on the matter, saying that this might just be a PR statement to make the company look more innovative and that there might not be any real changes to the production system. While this opinion might not be factual, it still gave fans hope as it came from someone who is exposed to the system and how it works. Furthermore, the fact that Toei has yet to implement it and even came out denying that fact supports his theory.
What makes this situation even more disappointing is the fact that, at least by industry standards, Toei’s working conditions and how it treats its staff are good. Between the higher pay, training programs for young animators, and better schedule, many Toei staff have praised the studio’s working conditions. The fact that the studio is planning to use AI for aspects that are done by humans makes it disheartening and does not solve the issue of low labour in the anime industry at all.
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