Following the same route taken by Namco Bandai with their Pac-Man series, Sony Computer Entertainment have teamed up with BRB International to produce a kids “early morning” cartoon series based on their Invizimals franchise which started on the Playstation Portable and has since expanded to the Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita consoles. In this series, kids get to watch scientist Kenichi “Keni” Nakamura and his alliance of Invizimal Hunters as they embark on a quest to unravel the mysteries of The Invizimals world.

In Australia the television series debut on the 15th December 2013 with a 90 minute episode at 6AM on Channel Eleven (You will be forgiven if you didn’t watch it… I woke up three hours after it had aired). A second 90 minute episode will be aired at the same time next Sunday. Replays of these episodes will begin airing in January 2014 with the rest of the 26-episode series set to hit television screens from July 2014.

Following the trend set by the portable game, kids are encouraged to keep their Playstation Vita and other mobile devices nearby, as the series will incorporate augmented-reality techniques to provide additional unlockable content.

In the new animated series Keni is a young, super-gifted scientific researcher that discovers the Invizimals during a routine experiment. Together with his friend Jazmin, they are able to collaborate with the Invizimals and start developing some completely new and pioneering technology by using the Invizimals’ infinite and non-polluting source of energy. Just when everything is running smoothly, Keni’s laboratory is hacked by the X-Tractors, whose sole objective seems to be taking over their source of energy!

Keni needs help against this unknown enemy and enlists Hiro, a video game fanatic from Kyoto, Lima, a girl prodigy from Sao Paolo who’s already studying at the university at the age of 13 and Sam, a gadget geek from London. This group of unlikely heroes from different corners of the earth form the elite Z-1 Unit of the Alliance whose mission is to explore the mysterious world of the Invizimals!