Toei has moved from experimenting with generative AI to governing it. President and CEO Yoshimura Fumio told the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei that the studio behind “Kamen Rider” and “Super Sentai” has put formal rules in place and is already using the technology in film and video production.
Yoshimura said the company is testing AI for backgrounds and building a system to help less experienced producers estimate budgets. Back-office teams use it for routine tasks, data processing and internal queries; Toei is also looking at AI for creative supervision of IP merchandise.
“AI is not something that takes away jobs, but a tool that expands the possibilities of expression and business,” Yoshimura said.
He cited “Dreams of Violets,” a live-action feature made entirely with generative AI and selected for the Tribeca Festival in June; the 75-minute film was made by two creators for around $2,000.
The 2027 game slate and the IP pipeline
Toei Games, the label launched for the studio’s 75th anniversary, will release “Hino” in early 2027. “Killa” and “Debug Nephemmee” follow from spring 2027. All three are original titles from outside creators, not adaptations of Toei IP, and will launch on Steam before coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.
That is deliberate: Yoshimura said the company wants games to become a starting point for stories, replacing novels and comics as the first step in new IP creation, and to bring game creators’ talent on board long term.
Overseas: from 30% to 50% of sales
The wider strategy sits inside Toei New Wave 2033, which aims to raise the overseas share of sales from 30% to 50%, with Asia as the focus. Yoshimura said the global entertainment and media market is growing at an average of 3.4% a year, and streaming now lets K-pop, Japanese anime, Indian films and Chinese microdramas travel without being changed.
For the franchise business, the model is “evergreening”: Kamen Rider turned 55 this year, and the current series “Kamen Rider Zeztz” was rolled out almost simultaneously in Taiwan, the rest of Asia and North America. Toei is also pushing into India after a 2025 introduction at a Japanese IP event led to a deal with a local Disney-affiliated company. Yoshimura called India “extremely promising” in the medium to long term, though he expects it will take time to take root.
His localisation argument has a clear case study:
- Power Rangers: exporting Japanese series unchanged struggled; rebuilding the cast and drama in the U.S. while keeping the characters made the franchise run more than 30 years.
- Voltes V: Legacy: the Philippines remake peaked at a 58% rating in 2023 and reached Japanese cinemas the following year.
- New markets: Toei has a Thai co-production partnership with M Studio and is adapting Junji Ito’s “Long Hair in the Attic” with Showbox for Asian audiences.
Short-form and studio capacity
Toei is also testing vertical and micro formats: “Everyday Host Club” runs 24 episodes at about three minutes each, and “Meshimori Onna” is a vertical period drama with 30 one-to-two-minute episodes. Yoshimura suggested vertical formats could one day become the norm even in cinemas. The studio also operates two lots in Japan, including what it says is the country’s only permanent 270-degree LED volume stage in Tokyo.
The message for creators and distributors is fairly direct: rely on local partners, keep the characters and rebuild everything else for the market. For an Indian or Southeast Asian release, that means a long-building partnership may be more valuable than a fast content dump.
Source: Variety
