The official website for anime studio Gaina (formerly Fukushima Gainax) announced on August 3 that it was holding voice auditions for its Flying Babies anime. The announcement revealed that the anime is slated to broadcast on television in January 2019 and Yoshinori Asao is directing the anime. The announcement also shared a visual.

Haruka Yoshimura, Rikako Yamaguchi, Suzuko Mimori, Sarah Emi Bridcutt, Mikoi Sasaki, Miku Itō, and Moe Toyota are starring in the anime. Their roles are not listed, but the website notes that the protagonist's name is Suzu. The auditions were casting voice actresses for two roles: Suzu's older sister Rin and a rival team's captain.

The anime will center on a group of young girls and their struggle as they aim to become Hula Girls. In Japanese, the characters for "hula" in the phonetic katakana alphabet and the first two katakana characters used in the word "flying" are the same.

Fukushima Gainax announced the anime in 2016 at the "Magical Hawaiians" event in Iwaki in Fukushima prefecture. The event was held at the Spa Resort Hawaiians, the same resort that inspired the 2006 Japanese film Hula Girls . At the time, Fukushima Gainax president Yoshinori Asao said the goal was to revitalize Iwaki and its surrounding areas with the anime.

Iwao also said at the time that he hoped the project would be completed in time for the following year's event. The 2017 "Magical Fukushima" event instead simply held a talkshow with the seven cast members.

Earlier character visuals featured a different art style. The first visual below is from the anime's announcement in 2016 and the second image is from the 2017 talk show.

Gainax opened Fukushima Gainax in 2015. Kinoshita Group Holdings acquired the studio in July and changed its name to Gaina.

Source: Gaina