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Takara Tomy's Pretty Rhythm Shōjo Game Gets TV Anime (Updated)

By Egan Loo
A television anime adaptation of Takara Tomy's Pretty Rhythm Mini-Skirt arcade game for girls will air in Japan this April. In the game, a girl named Rizumu Amamiya aspires to compete in Prism Show, a new sport that combines skating and dancing. Players can collect heart-shaped Prism Stones by winning in the game.

Mari Asabuki has already adapted the dancing/fashion game into a manga that launched in Shueisha's Ribon magazine last year. "Mini-Skirt," a unit within the larger all-female AKB48 idol group, promotes the game with in-game characters and special Prism Stone campaigns.

The Japanese entertainment conglomerate Takara Tomy is collaborating with Korea's largest toy maker, Sonokong of Seoul, to produce up to five animated programs is as many years, starting with Pretty Rhythm. Takara collaborated with Sonokong on its Transformers toy line before and after it merged with Tomy to form Takara Tomy. About 40 different toys will tie into the Pretty Rhythm television anime in Japan and Korea. In the fiscal year ending in March of 2012, Takara Tomy projects 5.5 billion yen (about US$66 million) in sales.

While Takara Tomy and Sonokong will foot most of the 7 to 8 billion yen (US$85-96 million) in production costs, Shueisha and seven other companies are bearing some of the costs as well. At 200 billion yen (US$2.4 billion), Korea's toy market is second in Asia only to Japan's 650-billion-yen (US$7.9 billion) toy market.

Source: Nikkei

Update: More background information added.

Image © Tomy/syn Sophia

Update 2: Nikkei published an image from the Pretty Rhythm anime.