Sign in

Private company

Toei Animation Inc.

American entertainment company

Toei Animation Inc. (abbreviated as TAI, or sometimes just Toei Animation USA or Toei Animation LATAM depending on the territory) is an American licensing and distribution company that operates as an international distribution arm of the Japanese animation studio Toei Animation. Originally founded in 2004 and based in Los Angeles, the company is responsible for licensing the studio's library across North America, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It holds partnerships with TV channels, DVD distributors, and streaming websites.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2004Founded1

See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards

Toei Animation Inc. (abbreviated as TAI, or sometimes just Toei Animation USA or Toei Animation LATAM depending on the territory) is an American licensing and distribution company that operates as an international distribution arm of the Japanese animation studio Toei Animation. Originally founded in 2004 and based in Los Angeles, the company is responsible for licensing the studio's library across North America, South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It holds partnerships with TV channels, DVD distributors, and streaming websites.2

The story

History

Due to Toei Animation's decision to start distributing the series directly since 2003 with the establishment of Toei Animation Europe based in Paris, Toei Animation Inc. based in Los Angeles was founded in 2004.

In November 2004, Toei had signed a deal with Geneon USA to distribute three titles, Air Master, Interlude and Slam Dunk on DVD in North America. However, due to low sales, the DVD's went out-of-print and the deal was terminated within a year and a half.

In 2005, the Toei Animation licenses that were distributed by Cloverway Inc. were transferred to Toei Animation Inc. for requirement, leaving Cloverway alone with the licenses of the other Japanese producers with which it intermediated until August 2007 (due to economic problems). As a consequence of this, there has been a chain of irregularities, such as the loss of master tapes of many series, with the Latin American versions being the most affected for this change in distribution.

Original productions

Knights of the Zodiac: Saint Seiya (2019–2024)

From Wikipedia’s article on Toei Animation Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 2004Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3