TMS Music  

TMS Entertainment Co., Ltd. (株式会社トムス・エンタテインメント, Kabushiki-gaisha Tomusu Entateinmento), formerly known as the Kyokuichi Tokyo Movie division or TMS-Kyokuichi is a Japanese animation studio. TMS is one of the oldest and most renowned animation studios in Japan, known for its numerous anime franchises such as Detective Conan, Lupin the Third, and Anpanman. TMS Entertainment is the animation business company of the Sega Group and a well-established animation studio with its origins in Tokyo Movie. It was formed when Kyokuichi Co., Ltd., which was originally a knitting and textile manufacturing company, merged with animation studio Tokyo Movie Shinsha to start an animation business and changed its name. Tokyo Movie Shinsha was one of the five major studios in the early days of Japanese animation, producing and/or animating a string of popular works from the 1960s to the 1970s, including Obake no Q-Tarō, Star of the Giants, Moomin, Attack No. 1, Tensai Bakabon, Lupin the 3rd Part I, Aim for the Ace!, and Gamba no Bouken. TMS has studios 1 through 7 under its production headquarters, each with a nickname for the work they are involved in, such as V1 Studio, 3xCube, Trois Studios, Rogue Studio, and Double Eagle. Each studio has its own production and management staff, including producers and production assistants. As for animators, each studio contracts them on a work-by-work basis. However, head creators sometimes have exclusive contracts and are given their own desks within the company to work on. In addition to its own studios, TMS has group production companies such as Telecom Animation Film and TMS Jinni's. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, TMS and its subsidiaries, Telecom Animation Film and South Korea-based Seoul Movie, animated for various companies, including DiC, Walt Disney Television Animation, Warner Bros. Animation, Marvel Films Animation, Studio Ghibli, Madhouse, Production I.G, Sunrise, Bones, ShoPro, Shogakukan Music & Digital Entertainment among others, Since the early 2000s, TMS itself has no longer supplied animation services to western studios due to increasingly demanding costs, although there have been a few exceptions such as Green Lantern: First Flight (2009) and Superman vs. The Elite (2012). While it still produces feature films, these films are primarily spinoffs from existing anime properties, which include the likes of Anpanman and Detective Conan.