Obscurity, much?/Toei Animation

Despite being one of the oldest (post-WWII) animation studios in Japan, Toei Animation is also known for producing several obscure anime series.

A few restrictions for this page (and related subpages):

* Just because it was pulled from streaming (be it Amazon, Funimation, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc.) or isn't available via streaming doesn't make a show an automatic candidate for this trope. Nor is it obscure just because it initially failed in the ratings stateside (case in point: *One Piece*). There needs to be evidence that the series garnered low viewership during its time on the service, or low viewership no matter how many times a show's brought back (either in Japan or elsewhere).
* With the exception of legacy examples (documented before January 1st, 2023) and anime/manga that haven't been exported (in which they can be documented 3 months after their Japanese premieres), only ended/cancelled anime and manga can be documented.
	+ If an anime without much of an audience ends before the manga (or book series) it's based on, the example should almost exclusively be about the anime until the manga itself comes to an end (the books an anime would be based on are best documented in the literature sub-page).

Weekly Shonen Jump-adapted anime, Akira Toriyama-based anime and works that aired on TV Tokyo can be found on their own pages.

* Very little of Cutey Honey is known in the US, aside from the original (courtesy of Discotek Media), *New*, and the non-Toei-animated *Universe*.
* Digimon Frontier in the UK until British Digimon fans *bombarded Manga Entertainment with hundreds of requests to have the show released*. And boy, have they delivered. This is subverted in the rest of the West, though, thanks to Jetix. And this isn't the only Digimon example, as seen on TV Tokyo's own page.
* Maple Town is the one true obscure anime among otakus. It aired on Nickelodeon for a while, long before the sale of the English dub when Saban Entertainment was sold to Disney. As of 2016, Disney no longer owns the rights.
	+ Look at MyAnimeList.net. The main character has only 3 member favorites as of 2017. That's less than a seventh of Ruby's member favorites.
	+ Its sequel *Palm Town* has it a little worse, due to an English dub not existing.
* Only the first season of Ojamajo Doremi was translated into English (if you live in North America). Doesn't help that the only home media releases in America were packaged with Doremi toys (and out-of-print, to boot). This, combined with America wanting more shonen concerning anime releases (either that, or Sailor Moon/Cardcaptor Sakura), makes the series fairly obscure.
* *Any* *Pretty Cure* series in North America aside from the first one, *Smile*, and *Doki Doki* (the last two being rebranded under *Glitter Force*) due to America's stance on the magical girl market. Additionally, the first series is a Dubless Series in the US.
	+ In June 2020, *Healin' Good* went from this trope to Dubless Series as the series is to begin legal streaming on Crunchyroll- the first series of Cures to be simulcast, and the first on Crunchyroll since the original duo.
* Sailor Moon: The anime *just barely* averted this in North America, due to anime purists blasting ToonMakers' completely-American pilot into obscurity itself thanks to nothing more than no Japanese footage being used and said cartoon not being as faithful to the source material. The DiC dub is a little more well-known, but given that Viz Media re-dubbed the entire anime from scratch, get ready to shell out big bunches of cash to get whatever of the DiC dub was released to DVD. Some episodes from said dub can be found on the cheap, though.
* Season Zero of Yu-Gi-Oh! ended up being a rare example of an unlicensed anime that actually *inverted* this. Unfortunately, unless you count the "joke translation" of the movie and a couple of episodes, the series never got dubbed into English.