Kids drive transforming car robots to save lives in Saturday morning show

Takara Tomy's long-running Tomica line of miniature toy cars is inspiring its first television anime, Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidō Kyūkyū Keisatsu (Mobile Emergency Police), this April. According to Monday's announcement, TBS is producing and broadcasting the series on 28 stations nationwide on Saturdays at 7:00 a.m., and OLM (Pokémon, Yo-kai Watch) is animating.

The story is set in "the future, just a little after the present day…. To respond to disasters beyond human comprehension and the increasing complexity of crime and mishaps, the mobile emergency police Hyper Rescue (an organization newly formed by the government primarily for life-saving) developed 'Drive Heads' that are specialized with police, fire-fighting, and rescue capabilities.

"'Drive Heads' are special vehicles that change from car forms to humanoid walker vehicles. The grade schooler Gō Kurumada and other children found to be suitable become drivers and join forces with the mobile emergency police and other adults. Even now, they race to the scene to protect the peace and security of all humanity. Go Rescue!"

Go drives the police-specialized Drive Head 01 Sonic Interceptor Taiga Yagura drives the fire-fighting-specialized Drive Head 02 Rescue Back Draft The twins Jin and Mikoto Ishino drive the rescue-specialized Drive Head 03 White Hope

Toys of the anime's Drive Heads and characters will go on sale in April. The Tomy half of the merged Takara Tomy company had launched Tomica as Japan's first palm-sized die-cast toy car line, similar to America's Hot Wheels and Matchbox, in 1970. Since then, Takara Tomy has sold over 600 million toys in over 880 different styles in three generations of the line. The Tomica Hyper brand launched in 2006 as a combination of the traditional Tomica die-cast cars with Plakids figures.

The Takara half of Takara Tomy created many of the transforming toys that its American partner Hasbro turned into the Transformers franchise in the 1980s. Takara Tomy is also heavily involved in the Zoids, Pretty Rhythm, PriPara, Selector Infected Wixoss, Battle B-Daman, and Kamiwaza Wanda anime.

The JNN television stations TBS and MBS announced in December that they are both ending their "Nichigo" Sunday evening anime timeslot in April, and launching a new one-hour anime timeslot named "Anisata" (Japanese abbreviation for "Anime Saturday") on Saturday mornings at 7:00 a.m. No JNN channel has had a one-hour timeslot for anime since the 1983 airing of The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Ai no Senshi Rainbowman.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web