This month TOEI Animation began a major expansion of its video-on-demand service, announcing plans to have over 1,200 anime downloads available by March of 2007.

The newly expanded service is called TOEI Anime BB Premium, and is said to be a more robust version of the TOEI Anime BB and TOEI Tokusatsu Anime Archives services launched four years ago. TOEI Animation has signed contracts with a total of 15 companies, including SoftBank Group's BBTV, NTT Group's OCN Theater, KDDI's MOVIE SPLASH, and Rakuten's Rakuten Download, and it plans to use these partner's CATV, ADSL, and optic fiber networks for the service.

Early additions to the service include Fist of the North Star, Slam Dunk, Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Herlock, and Ojamajo Doremi. Including TV anime and theatrical features, the service is set to host 40 titles and a combined total of 1,200 episodes. More series will be announced in the future, and advanced online release of new anime projects is also planned.

Single episodes are available at a price of 100 yen per episode, with value pack and other alternate pricing schemes available. TOEI hopes to bring in an estimated 600 million yen via this service during 2007, with that figure rising to one billion yen in 2008.

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