Fall shorts about 5 grade schoolers who solve cases

The anime studio Signal.MD announced in July that it is producing a television anime of Hitomi Fujimoto and Ryō Sumitaki's Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note (Detective Team Kazs' Case Notes) novel series. The anime will premiere on October 7 and run on the public broadcaster NHK's E-Tele channel from 6:45 p.m. to 6:54 p.m. as part of Tensai TV-kun program.

The stories center around Aya Tachibana (pictured center in the image below), a sixth-grader who frets and obssesses over friends, family, grades, and more. One day, she joins the "Tantei Team KZ" (Detective Team Kazs) with four very idiosyncratic boys she met at cram school.

There is the glib and attention-grabbing leader Kazuomi Wakatake (far right), the mysterious "expert of personal relationships" Takakazu Kuroki (far left), the smart and stoic math genius Kazunori Uesugi (top left), and the sweethearted Kazuhiko Kozuka (top right) who is good at social matters and science. Aya finds her place among them as the "language expert." "Tantei Team KZ" gets involved in modern-day cases, and even if they bicker from time to time, they collaborate by pooling each of their talents and skills to solve these cases.

The voice cast stars:

Yuiko Tatsumi as Aya Tachibana

Sōma Saitō as Kazuomi Wakatake

Takuma Terashima as Takakazu Kuroki

Kōtarō Nishiyama as Kazunori Uesugi

Mitsuhiro Ichiki as Kazuhiko Kozuka



Kazuya Ichikawa (Monster Strike, Shadow Skill 3) is directing the anime at Signal.MD, which IG Port (the parent company of Production I.G, Xebec, Mag Garden, and Wit Studio) had just established last October. Yuka Yamada (Sengoku Musou, Neo Angelique Abyss, Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~) is in charge of the series scripts, and she is co-writing the scripts with Kazuyuki Fudeyasu (Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, Hetalia The Beautiful World, Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life).

Fujimoto and Sumitaki launched the novel series in 2011 with art by Komagata, and Kodansha has since published 20 volumes.

Thanks to Rachel S. for the news tip