About the studio
TV Asahi began broadcasting November 1, 1957 as Nippon Educational Television, a network legally required to devote most of its airtime to educational programming. That requirement eased over the 1960s, and in 1977 it took the name TV Asahi, backed by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper group. *From mandatory education TV to Doraemon and Crayon Shin-chan, that's a glow up nobody saw coming.* Based in Roppongi, Tokyo, TV Asahi now owns two anime studios outright, Shin-Ei Animation and TMS Entertainment, and its programming lineup includes Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Detective Conan, and the long-running Pretty Cure franchise. Owning your own studios rather than just licensing content is a fairly rare move among Japanese broadcasters, and it's given TV Asahi unusually direct control over some of anime's most enduring franchises. Almost 70 years after starting as an educational broadcaster, it's become one of the most anime-embedded networks in the country.