Anime News Network·Japan·Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 02:00 PM

This Week in Anime - Made in Japan

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Just because it was animated in Japan, does that automatically make it anime?

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Tubi streams Transformers and Jem.
Amazon Prime streams Tiny Toon Adventures and Batman: The Animated Series.
Netflix streams Avatar: The Last Airbender and Transformers: War for Cybertron.
Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer is available for rent on Fandango.
Everything else is way harder to watch than old cartoons ought to be these days.

Coop "Tokyo Movie Shinsa", eh? Let me do a quick search...

Well, damn.

Seems that whenever they weren't busy with the latest Lupin the 3rd caper, TMS provided the animation manpower behind many cartoons of the 80s and 90s. They weren't alone at this either. For instance, Toei Animation was busy in the trenches of THE toy commercial shows—Transformers and G.I. Joe. In fact, Toei was the main muscle behind Transformers: The Movie, which just celebrated its 40th anniversary.

While we're here, pour one out for Peter Cullen.

Thanks for everything, sir. The history of animated series like this pointedly comes up a fair amount over in discussions along my Transformers fandom fronts. I've heard it parroted in conversations and even at panels (not mine) that "The original Transformers cartoon is anime!"

But if you know me, you know I don't...necessarily agree with that. So in the interest of compelling column discussion, I think it makes sense to revisit our mate Lucas' irregular refrain: "Is it anime?" Who knows how opinions might...transform along the way? Never mind Netflix's own inconsistent invocation of the term, which we can absolutely round back to before the end of this.

But in the case of the earlier examples, it's notable because a lot of these co-conspirators are shows the broader audience wouldn't normally think of as anime. Transformers was produced by Hasbro, Sunbow, and Marvel Productions, by and for a Western audience, and the animation was simply outsourced to Toei, among multiple other studios from multiple other countries. As you mentioned, several other shows were made this way, though for some reason I see a lot fewer people trying to argue that G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero is actually a Japanese cartoon.

Jem at least has a magical girl and idol show thing going on, but then not nearly as many people talk about poor Jem these days. Jem has a rad theme song, but that live-action flick did her no favors.

Recent Transformers toys have done better than the languishing songstress.

It's cool, but it also lays bare some of the other problems that can arise out of this practice. There are persistent rumors, based on style alone, that the third-season episode "Call of the Primitives" was directed by Obari...though it was directed by Eiji Suganuma. Meanwhile, the episode "Microbots" features some of the nicest animation in the whole, often otherwise uneven series, but who at Toei was specifically behind much of it is obscured by the crediting practice toward outsource-ers at the time.

Given the sheer number of shows that were made with said outsourcing, it can create issues with that aforementioned historical component. The fact we even have specific names to juggle around speaks to how rarely (if ever) individual talents were credited. Most of the time, only the studios were credited, be it a TMS or Toei. This has gotten a little better over the years, but it's still a crapshoot on whether someone actually gets their name on the tin.

Then there are projects that have truly unmistakable talents, like Mighty Orbots. While this series was conceived stateside, TMS took the ball and tossed it into the hands of the one and only Osamu Dezaki. However, he wasn't the only star player on this team; Akio Sugino provided the character designs and Yuji Ohno popped in to score it. So, if you think this looks like "Cobra for kids," your thoughts aren't all that off the money. While the trio's involvement might not have been a big deal when Orbots' aired, the currently in-print DVDs make a point of it.

Mighty Orbots is only 13 episodes, but it's punching way above its 80s toy cartoon weight. Yes, the show is generally always this gorgeous.

Sunbow to Toei when they noticed what Dezaki and TMS were up to.

"DEZAKI WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE, WITH BOX SCRAPS!" Matt Damon, but make it anime.

While I do love me some Orbots, it's hard to compete with TMS' greatest contribution to Western animation, Batman: The Animated Series. Over the course of its run, the series had its fair share of Japanese and Korean studios working away on the production end. A few years back, there was a particular commotion when it was discovered that a handful of Studio Ghibli staffers worked on the series. However, this excitement was quickly tamed by social media drama and classic fanboy arguing...which made it hard to nail down the exact details here.

If we were living in Japan, I could understand the "it's anime" argument. However, that's because "anime" is shorthand for animation in general over there, according to my colleagues who've lived in the country for a good while. Heck, Disney movies are described as "anime." But when Japanese animation goes to the global stage, it's important to be clear with this distinction. Because when you start seeing headlines about every piece of adult or general-audience animation being referred to as "anime," the term loses all its meaning.

My gut tells me that we started having the "is it anime?" conversation a lot more once anime-inspired series like Avatar hit the airwaves. Honestly, I'd bet general audiences are more tuned into the aesthetics of anime, rather than whether actual Japanese creatives worked on it. Hence the baffling talk of Variety as anime.

Siege Optimus Prime is an all-timer though...

The wrath of Lynzee Loveridge for invoking Transformers too much aside, I'm glad we've been able to discuss anime-adjacent topics. We've made it clear that Baby Assassins, K-Dramas, and Metal Cardbots are not anime, but they're all part of the larger anime conversation. Oh yeah, to be sure, this is not the Transformers column. Even as I point out that other shows like Transformers Prime also got animated by Polygon, those just didn't get marketed as anime; I'm not marketing this as the Transformers column.

Once again, I'm thanking Kurt! Rainbow Brite is an example of the anime heritage compelling a visit to a movie that would certainly be...interesting to visit on its own. A lot is going on here, from dialogue to a robot horse who feels like a decades-early Aqua Teen Hunger Force bit, to an evil Princess who styles on every other character in this movie, to another reason to pour one out for Peter Cullen. And it also demonstrates how deep the rabbit hole can go when you get to investigate cross-cultural contributions in these kinds of productions. Holy crap, is that Dōga Kōbō in the credits?

Hot damn...

It's also worth noting that Ozamu Dezaki directed the Rainbow Brite TV series over at TMS. Even if the movie was made elsewhere, we can't escape TMS.

But of course, if you know your history, you know that the partnership wasn't totally fruitless, and instead of Lupin, DIC went on to work with TMS to produce a cartoony icon all their own!

Sorry, I've gotten to deploy a lot of my favorite trivia pieces here, and "Inspector Gadget is descended from Lupin the 3rd" is another one of them.

The progenitor of so many anime and cartoons. But not straight through any Ghibli connections, as we've discussed.

All that said, yeah, I think this helps show why following up on different productions outside of Japanese anime can be illuminating and valuable to the anime-fan experience. And sometimes you just get to watch some cool and interesting cartoons in general! It's why having a balanced media diet is important alongside knowing how your favorite material gets made, as opposed to searching for avenues to appreciate something simply because you can say it's "technically" anime. discuss this in the forum |

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