Ask John: What Is Akihabara Cyber Team?

Question:
How much Akihabara Dennougumi/Cyber Team in Akihabara is there? Has it been picked up here? If not is there a chance?

Answer:
Akihabara Dennougumi was a very popular 26 episode TV series in 1998 and theatrical film in the summer of 1999. Created by Tsukasa Kotobuki, character designer for Saber Marionette J, Akihabara Cyber Team/Cyber Team in Akihabara was a variation on the typical magical girls team show. The series involved a gang of five junior-high age girls living in the Akihabara district of Tokyo in 2011. They all discover that they are part of a group known as the “Anima Mundi,” and their electronic pets, called pa-ta-pi, have the ability to transform into “diva,” essentially super-powered, armor-clad adult versions of the girls. The pa-ta-pi were popular enough to get their own pa-ta-pi raising and mini-games collection Dreamcast game, and the show itself was very solid in the ratings, largely due to its good production values, likeable characterizations and absolutely bizarre, self-referential, anime-reference filled humor. The series was originally created for a pre-adolescent female audience, but its Japanese commercial sponsors were upset that by the end of the series, when the tone of the show had gotten darker and more complex, the majority audience of the show was teen-age boys. My understanding is that the series has come across the desks of some of the American anime translating companies, but currently there is no American translation or distribution license for the series.