Toyoda moved to Tokyo as a teenager, taking with him only two guitars and 20,000 yen. He began working with producer
Genjirō Arato and director
Junji Sakamoto, assisting the latter on the shogi-related film
Ōte (1991), for which he helped pen the script. The 1990s marked a fascination with juvenile criminals and violence in Japan. Films such as 2000's
Battle Royale, 2001's
Ichi the Killer and
Suicide Club are examples of that and have been put into a bracket with
Pornostar. 2001 also saw the release of
Unchain (アンチェイン), a documentary following a failed professional boxer named Kaji and his friends. Kaji had to give up boxing because of nerve damage and struggles to hold a job. As of 2017, Toyoda is still in touch with Kaji and his friends. In 2003 Toyoda's third feature film
Nine Souls (ナイン・ソウルズ), the story of nine prison inmates breaking out of jail and searching for a hidden treasure, released to the public. Even after the group of men (including Ryuhei Matsuda,
Jun Kunimura and
Yoshio Harada among others) escape they are faced with a bleak reality: Being guilty in the eyes of society makes the whole world their prison. In a 2012 interview Toyoda has said that the movie was inspired by an American case of prison escape a few years prior to the film's release. He has since described his subsequent treatment as being
blacklisted from the Japanese film industry. Toyoda shared in a 2012 interview that his alienation from society even went so far that he moved to a cabin in the forest where he came up with the outline of
Monsters Club (モンスターズクラブ), his second feature after the arrest. The film is heavily inspired by the life of American terrorist
Ted Kaczynski and explores a man's (
Eita Nagayama) isolation, political thoughts (written down in a manifesto) and finally his supernatural encounter with a spiritual entity in the woods. While the film has been read as a critique of new religious movements, Toyoda later said in an interview that "faith has provided [him] with plentiful of insight regarding questions of [death]." He was later let go. In an interview several months after the incident Toyoda tells that the police raided his home for illegal drugs, and found an antique World War II gun from his grandparents which was no longer working. Seppuku Pistols later even toured the country on the occasion of ''Wolf's Calling'''s premiere. The film includes original music from Japanese bands Seppuku Pistols, GEZAN and Mars89. Toyoda described the casting process as "gathering a bunch of friends." Toyoda's eleventh feature film ''
Transcending Dimensions (次元を超える) released in 2025, and is, according to Toyoda, the seventh entry into the informal
Resurrection/
Wolf Mountain series. Multiple journalists have commented on the similarities and recurring imagery from the preceding
Wolf Mountain films. The movie's soundtrack is courtesy of British jazz band
Sons of Kemet. In a Q&A after a screening of
Transcending Dimensions Toyoda has expressed the possibility that this might be his last feature film.
Music videos Additionally to films, Toyoda has directed multiple
music videos over the span of his career. Comparing the two mediums he has said the following: "[Making music videos is] creating pictures for music. [...] When you create films you are adding music to a picture." ==Influences, style and themes==