Film editing company Tokyo Laboratory is facing a crisis: when it closes in November, many unclaimed anime masters will be destroyed, leading to thousands of people going missing. Classic cartoons lost forever. With the shutters securely installed, the only question remaining is how to preserve its extensive anime library. More than just footage, the archive is also a tangible record of the history of production: losing it all would be a great loss, historically and culturally.
Tokyo Laboratory is a subsidiary of TOHO. While not an animation studio, it has handled anime video editing, development and archiving since its founding in 1955. But after 67 years of service, it announced in November 2022 that the airline will eventually close amid TOHO’s restructuring. However, an unforeseen accident was the large trove of unclaimed key footage for all the anime it worked on. In a Tweet from the animation news site Catsuka, they laid out the situation: “Sad news: The Japanese company Tokyo Lab, which has archived many old anime since 1955, will close in November and they will have to spend Destroy all originals.” not required by the right holder.”
Closing the Tokyo lab could cause 20,000 anime to be lost forever
According to reports from sites like AnimeNewsNetwork, there are about 20,000 masters who were not nominated. Because Tokyo Lab has a long history of covering all genres of anime, this means that this inventory may include some very rare material that has yet to be remastered or re-released. The list of works the company has done is truly a veritable A-Z of anime history, starting from 07-Ghost to Zone of the Enders: Idolo. If they are no longer archived and marked for destruction, it means losing some of the highest quality renders of rare anime, regardless of whether their owners want them or not.
The closure of the Tokyo Laboratory comes in response to a shift in technology, with films shifting toward digital storage and distribution. TOHO’s restructuring split Tokyo Lab’s missions and transferred them to new divisions that will continue to focus on digital. The hosting mission will also continue under the umbrella of an entirely new company. This transition to digital storage may also be the reason why TOHO is no longer willing to handle 20,000 originals, not to mention the costs they incur: unclaimed documents cost $40,000 one year for storage. However, destroying too much anime can result in hidden gems being lost forever.
Fortunately, Japan is not blind to this problem; on his X account, politician Zenko Kurishita wrote about it. “Today, we talked to someone from the Tokyo Development Center. The company is aware of the historical value of the masters of cinema, which are the crystallization of 68 years of activity, and they do not want to throw them away…” the translation says. There is only two months left in the limited time to reach an agreement with TOHO on what to do with the documents. Hopefully the end of Tokyo Laboratory would not have the same significance for its production history archive for Classic cartoons.
