Littlest Pet Shop: Blythe X (series)

Littlest Pet Shop: Blythe X (LITTLEST PET SHOP: ブライズX, Ritoresuto Petto Shoppu Buraizu Ekksu) is an American-Japanese animated television series produced by Aniplex, Dentsu, Kadokawa Shoten, Ultra Super Pictures, Takara Tomy, TV Tokyo, AM-Networks Productions, Allspark Animation, DHX Media, Aniplex of America, Kinberg Genre and Goddard Textiles with animation provided by Titmouse, Ordet and Wit Studio.

It is part of the Hasbro/Hollowfox Humanoidverse. Despite not being part of the Harmony Unleashed franchise due to being different from My Little Pony, the series is a sister series of Harmony Unleashed: Anthro Bunraku and Harmony Unleashed: Equestria Campus Supremacy, as the show exists in the same universe and it's based on the Littlest Pet Shop TV Series and Toyline by Hasbro.

The series is developed by Aaron Montalvo and Adam Beechen and it started airing as a Toonami Atomix Original Series for AM-Atomix (and later on WonderHub, now Montalvo Allspark) in June 30, 2017 until November 13, 2020.

Like Equestria Campus Supremacy, it will have its worldwide television premiere with a TV Tokyo release in 2017 produced by Aniplex, Bandai Visual, Takara Tomy and Bushiroad as well as a North American simulcast release and a streaming exclusive english dub by Bang Zoom! Entertainment. The dub will also stream on Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and Crunchyroll as co-licensed by Aniplex of America, which it also involves in the English version with both the TV Voicebox dub and the Streaming Bang Zoom! Dub.

The series is rated TV-PG DLV as opposed to the ECS and AB series and later on rated TV-14.

About the Show
Aaron Montalvo wants to create a shared universe that won't have only My Little Pony but also other girl-oriented and boy-oriented franchises made by Hasbro. He thought about what would happen if Littlest Pet Shop and Equestria Girls share a universe with each other similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC/CW shows Arrow & The Flash due to Kora Kosicka becoming involved in character designs for both different franchises. Adam Beechen (Littlest Pet Shop, Transformers: Robots In Disguise) is set to develop the show alongside Montalvo and will be the story editor and executive producer.

Drew Goddard (Daredevil, Alias), Simon Kinberg (X-Men, CHAPPiE) and LPS alumni Supervising Director Dallas Parker and writer Roger Eschbacher will be the executive producers with Parker as supervising director alongside Yutaka Yamamoto (Senyuu, Wake Up Girls) and Ishi Rudell (Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks) as series director. Titmouse, Ordet, and Wit Studio will be the flagship animation production for the series.

Before season 1 ends production and development, Rudell leaves the show in order to work on Equestria Girls and the 2017 My Little Pony movie. The mid-season finale, which is a crossover episode with Equestria Campus Supremacy will be a backdoor pilot to the series. Aaron Ehasz is a supervising producer in the series.

At the verge of Season 1's end, the series has been renewed for a second season. Ehasz is expected to be promoted to executive producer alongside Beechen, Eschbacher, Parker, Kinberg, Montalvo, and Goddard, with his new production company Wonderstorm producing the series (as well as Ehasz's newest animated project for Netflix) and game director Justin Richmond joining the project as EP. Matthew Negrete, a writer for this series, will be the supervising producer.

In 2019, Yutaka Yamamoto leaves Blythe X, as well as Ordet due to health and stress problems after "far too unreasonable circumstances piling up" which caused him to be in poor health. Shinobu Yoshioka is set to replace Yamamoto as supervising director and Kotomi Deai joins the series as well. This was after the renewal of the series for a third season set for an April 2019 release.

Plot Summary
A meteorite strikes Downtown City as the Bizkit twins discover something that might dominate the pet shop sales, as well as pets in general. Blythe and her pets might go against the idea to avoid the overshadowing of the Littlest Pet Shop, but Blythe accidentally does something wrong that might affect the pets. After an accident, the pets are more than okay and safe and sound, they have superpowers that might turn the pets into humanoid human beings, that for Blythe and friends, it seems unbelievable. They transform into humanoids with natural skin tone, and they can transform into animals or humans any time they want to!. Even Blythe was affected by the fact that an accidental bite might have her transformed into a dog. Since the Bizkit Twins were aware of the powers both the twins, their father (as he got ridiculously stronger superpowers) and their enemies have, they might do what they can to bring the people to their knees and not only dominate the pet shop industry, but the world in general as they attempt to make a monopoly on the pet shop industry. As Ms. Twombly realized that, he asked Blythe, her pets, and her friends to assemble each other to prevent the Bizkits from bringing Downtown City into doom. Living daily lives or not, Pets transforming into humans and Humans transforming into pets are a big deal.

Episodes
There will be a total of 26 episodes per season. The show is planned to last for 3-4 seasons. The ECS/Blythe X crossover episode will be a backdoor pilot for the show with the full hour series premiere to be the prequel to the crossover.

International Airings:
AM-Networks International, with the distribution partnership of Entertainment One, airs the show in many countries with AM-Pony, AM-Atomix and AM-Bushidox in North America, AM-Bushidox in Japan, AM-Spark in North America, AM-Zone in South Asia, AM-97 in Australia, New Zealand, PonyCanal and AM-MAX in Latin America and AM-Atomix in all of Europe. In streaming services worldwide, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and AM-Stream simulcast the series, while Netflix releases all episodes per season. On 2018, due to a controversy regarding an anime-inspired cartoon named "High Guardian Spice", Crunchyroll and Hasbro decided to remove all of the Japanese and English dubs of ECS and Blythe X due to the art style not being anime. However, they made a deal to move the shows to VRV under VRV select, with both languages and both versions of the English Dub with the Aniplex airing. Past episodes will be free to watch, while simulcasts from new episodes will be Premium-exclusive until a month after the season finale.
 * Japan - TV Tokyo, AT-X, BS Japan, TV Aichi, Animax, NicoNico
 * United States - Adult Swim (Toonami), TBS, Crackle
 * Canada - Teletoon (Teletoon At Night), Telétoon (Telétoon la Nuit)
 * Europe - E4 (United Kingdom, Ireland), FOX Animation (Italy), Game One (France), ProSieben (Germany), Neox (Spain)
 * Latin America - MTV, Netflix
 * South Africa - e.tv
 * Asia - Animax (All Asia), Okto (Singapore), ABS-CBN (Phillipines), Tooniverse (Korea), TVB Jade (China)
 * Australia - ABC3
 * New Zealand - TV2

Ratings

 * Japan - PG
 * United States - TV-PG, TV-14
 * Canada - PG
 * Latin America - B
 * Australia - PG
 * United Kingdom/Ireland - 12

Comic Books and Manga
A comic book adaptation is announced during the show's development and will be published through Oni Press in co-operation with Hasbro and Hollowfox Literacy Stuffings, a book division of Hollowfox Entertainment. Kadokawa will also publish a manga from the show.

Atsuya Uki is confirmed to be the manga's illustrator while Yutaka Yamamoto will write for the manga.

Films
Hasbro announced that there will be a film series connected with the Humanoidverse with MGM, Annapurna and 20th Century Fox distributing it alongside Aniplex and Kadokawa. Talks have been made for the Blythe X films to be PG-13, as opposed to the Anthro Bunraku and Equestria Campus Supremacy films being rated R.

Hasbro announced that the film is set for a release around 2020 and 2021, now this time without Fox's involvement as a distributor. MGM and Annapurna Pictures will still be involved for the production with their joint venture United Artists Releasing (while they co-produce it individually) distributing it in North America with worldwide distribution by (now Hasbro subsidiary) Entertainment One. A release date was set for June 26, 2020.

The movie is directed by Norton Virgien with Shinobu Yoshioka and Dallas Parker involved as co-directors. Sarah Carbiener and Erica Rosbe will write the film.

In April 2019, due to the creator's mentality on 2D animation not being "hot" for theatrical releases (with My Little Pony: The Movie and Teen Titans Go! To The Movies) due to them not having successful runs at the box office (leading to the former not having a sequel and the latter having a crossover with Teen Titans instead of a sixth season of the aforementioned series) as well as the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic concerns, MGM, Hasbro, eOne and Hollowfox negotiated with Netflix in order to release not only this, but also future Humanoidverse feature films to the streaming service with some skipping theatrical releases, and Netflix seals the deal with the Humanoidverse Project team. Marking it a Netflix original film. UAR will co-distribute it with Netflix and eOne. The new release date for the series' first film is September 25th, 2020 (as a theatrical run) and October 23, 2020 (Netflix release)

Another set of films has been planned, with two direct-to-video films and a theatrical epilogue in development at eOne Animation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Hollowfox Toonimation Workshop. The direct-to-video films will be set to release in 2021.

The StarSpark Dimensional Crisis
The cast of Blythe X appeared in the crossover event as cameos, with Ashleigh Ball and Nicole Oliver reprising their roles as Blythe and Zoe.

Blythe X, Pines Y, Ninja Z: A Dimensional Caper
Months after the release of the ECS/CrossMore crossover special, it has been announced that a second one based on Blythe X and the CrossMore side of Gravity Falls and Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja is coming in December of 2020.

The cast of both shows (alongside Josh Keaton as Iron Man/Tony Stark and Zach Callison as Peter Parker/Spider-Man from Avengers: Hero Morphs) are set to reprise their roles with Leslie Odom Jr. set to voice a new character while Ellen Pompeo and Chandra Wilson is set to have a special live-action appearance. The special will be directed by Shaun Cashman and Yoshihiro Miyajima at Trigger and Titmouse with Ki-Hyun Ryu as directorial supervisor and writing by Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein, Kevin Burke, Chris Wyatt and Shannon Eric Denton.

Spin-off: Littlest Pet Shop: Strikers of Paw-Tucket
A spin-off of the series set in the Humanoidverse's Anthro parallel universe is in development since 2018, until it has been announced around July 2020 that a new series based on the "A World of Our Own" line is set for a 2021 release on Montalvo Allspark.

The developers are Aaron Montalvo, Jeffrey Bell (Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Robert Berens (Kappa Mikey, Supernatural) with Goddard Textiles' Drew Goddard, eOne's Olivier Dumont and Stephen Davis, I.G. USA's Maki Terashima-Furuta, Aniplex's Shu Nishimoto and Atsuhiro Iwakami, Kadokawa's Takeshi Kikuchi and Hollowfox's Montalvo and Brian Ash as executive producers with Adrian Ignat and Spencer Wan as series directors and Bell and Berens as showrunners.

The animation studio will be Boulder Media and Studio Grackle with co-operation with IG Zwei.

Music

 * Music Composed by: Tom "Junkie XL" Holkenborg
 * Music Arranged by: Matthew Margeson
 * Music Supervisor/Executive Producers: Steffan Andrews
 * Music Work: Aniplex, Soundwave Records (Season 1-2), eOne Music (Season 3+)
 * Music Co-operation: TV Tokyo Music