TMS Entertainment

• 1. Introduction

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  TMS Entertainment traces its roots to 1946, when a textile manufacturer was founded in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, with no connection to cartoons whatsoever. Today the company's offices sit in Nakano, Tokyo, with its production studios based in nearby Chūō. The whole operation is wholly owned by Sega Corporation. Getting from one to the other took a merger with a struggling puppet-theater offshoot and a chain of corporate takeovers. It also took one American animated film that spent nearly a decade in production without ever recouping its cost. How did a textile company end up owning a studio built partly from animators pushed out of Toei Animation? And why did that studio's most ambitious project become the reason its founder left the industry for good?

• 2. Animators From A Puppet Studio

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  Covers Yutaka Fujioka founding Tokyo Movie in 1964 with TBS investment, the Big X financial crisis, the Kokusai Hōei capital rescue, the 1965 A Production alliance, the Toei Animation defectors (Miyazaki, Takahata, Ōtsuka, Kotabe), early hits, the 1971 independence, the 1972 Madhouse investment, the 1975 Telecom founding, and the 1976 split into Tokyo Movie Shinsha / Shin-Ei Animation.

• 3. The Little Nemo Gamble

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  The full Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland saga , rights acquisition in 1977, Telecom's amateur-animator training program, the Kineto TMS production company, Gary Kurtz, Ray Bradbury, Miyazaki and Takahata's resignations, the ballooning budget (3.6 to 5.5 billion yen), the 1989 Japan release and 1992 US release, and Fujioka's retirement and the film's legacy for Studio Ghibli.

• 4. Sherlock Hound And The Subcontract Years

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  The RAI co-production Sherlock Hound, the 1980s-90s subcontracting boom for DiC, Disney, Warner Bros., Marvel Films, Ghibli, Madhouse and others, the early-2000s exit from Western animation work (with Green Lantern: First Flight and Superman vs. The Elite as exceptions), and the closing Hana no Kakarichō / Toei anecdote.

• 5. From Mink Farms To Sega

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  Kyokuichi's path from mink farming and the Watchman Group textile-to-entertainment pivot, joining Sega in 1992, absorbing Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1995, renaming to TMS Entertainment in 2000, the Merrill Lynch stake, Sega Sammy's 50.2% acquisition, the 2010 delisting, and the 2015 Sega Holdings reorganization.

• 6. A Company Built From Studios

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  TMS's seven in-house studios, program sales/licensing business, wholly-owned subsidiaries (Telecom Animation Film, TMS Jinni's, Toon Additional Pictures, Seoul Movie), Marza Animation Planet's moves in and out of the company, the 2021 Unlimited Produce Project and Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, and the 2024 TMS Jinni's/Toms Photo business transfer.