Tiger & Bunny 18 – Tiger Returns, Bunny Falls

Mind = blown.

In this episode, Tiger returns to Sternbild and he is ready to tell Bunny that he now plans to retire for the sake of her daughter, but it seems that he is on a wrong timing since Kriem wakes up and tells Bunny the truth about what happened during Christmas.

I just loved that they gave Kriem’s back story first before deciding to kill her off in the series. Well that explains why she is siding with Ouroboros! One of the biggest surprises in this episode is her revelation that Ouroboros is a much bigger organization than we thought it was and Jake didn’t kill Barnaby’s parents and that their group is just one tiny fraction of the entire organization. The part about Jake not the killer is predictable, while as for their group being a small fraction of Ouroboros is quite a surprise. If you look at it this way, Jake and co. made quite level of damage back then, considering that they are just a fraction of the organization, it means that Ouroboros is one threat that our heroes shouldn’t take lightly.

As for Barnaby’s reaction, it was obvious but the fact that the faces change while thinking of the possible killer is quite surprising. And thus, he doesn’t have the proper state of mind in becoming a hero. Meanwhile, back at the Kaburagi residence, we learned that Kaede’s NEXT powers is that she can copy the powers of the NEXT that she touches. So that means, after she touched his dad, she now has his Hundred Power and after she touch some random NEXT, she now has his magnet powers. The question is, will those powers stay permanently?

Trollin'

Overall, the episode is one of the strongest episodes plot wise and continues the tone that the series had in the past few episodes. Is it me, or I have this feeling that this series will have a tragic ending?

Tiger & Bunny Otakon Panel Rundown

I can now imagine a different sponsor in that object...

Sunrise producer and Tiger & Bunny co-creator, Masayuki Ozaki revealed on the Tiger & Bunny panel hosted by Anime News Network's CEO and Publisher Christopher Macdonald at Otakon 2011 that Namco Bandai Games is currently developing a video game based on the popular anime series!

And I quote:

Of course. Actually Namco Bandai games is now developing a video game. And we are getting offers to do stuffed dolls of the characters.

Other things that were revealed in the panel includes that the producer wants to have a live-action version of the show which caused to crowd to erupt for excitement. "Sunrise alone can't make a live action version. We need your support to get Hollywood to license it." Ozaki said, before proceeding with the Question and Answer portion of the panel. He later revealed on the Q & A portion that he has actors and actresses on his mind regarding the live-action but he will not say it!

Other things that were discussed in the panel include the popularity with some characters as well as the popularity of the show outside its target market, the producer wanting to have a second season, the chemistry between Kotetsu and Barnaby, how they conceptualized the series and most especially how they got the sponsors for each Hero and maintaining the proper relationship with the said sponsors. Speaking of sponsors, it was also mentioned at the panel that once the series will be localized, they want to have global sponsors. Google sponsoring Origami Cyclone, anyone?

Read the full Masayuki Ozaki interview at the Tiger & Bunny panel here.

Tiger & Bunny 17 – Blood is Thicker than Water

I didn't expect to see this drawing till the series finale.

In this episode, Kotetsu returns to his hometown, Oriental Town that looks like some random Japanese province in my opinion to relax and to think about the future regarding him losing his powers. Also, after so many years, he finally meets his daughter, Kaede and boy, she is such a Barnaby fangirl that she keeps pictures of him in her desk!

The episode was about the fatherly bond between these two Kaburagis. In Kaede’s case, she hates his father because he didn’t visit them for quite a long time now, which is understandable in my opinion on why she is distant with his father. I mean, she doesn’t have a mother plus her guardian is her grandmother and if God wills it, He will take her away from Kaede since it is her time. Kaede lacks the proper guidance coming from an actual parent, which Kotetsu abandoned for years because of his job as a superhero.

This episode also explores more on what Kotetsu will do once his powers will completely vanish. Sure, they never what are Kotetsu’s options after he will completely lose his powers but based on his actions, it seems that he is fine with Barnaby doing all the work and at seen in the last scene in the episode, he is now planning to resign at his job just to be with Kaede. Another thing that I liked in this episode is Kotetsu’s flashback, it was simple and emotional and it really shows what he sacrificed for the sake of his dream of becoming one great hero.

The episode also features Kotetsu’s dedication as a father that he does his best to bond with his only daughter and never fails to do his responsibilities as a parent even if it will cause some of his limit in using his powers. And for the biggest surprise in this episode, Kaede. Yes, I am not surprised with her Barnaby fangirlism but what surprised me in this episode is that they revealed that she is a NEXT! Based on that short scene of her jumping around, it seems her powers involves floating and able to do incredible leaps. And for the clincher in this episode, that was so touching that I want to cry when I first watched that episode.

Overall, it was yet another good episode and it seems that the series is getting more dramatic as the weeks go by. Hopefully, the series will continue with this pace because based on the episode title alone, it seems that they will go much deeper with the Ouroboros organization since the title has the word, “ignorance” in it. Seriously, most fans, including me had a feeling that Jake is not involved with the deaths of the Brooks since we weren’t able to see the tattoo in his hand.

Tiger & Bunny Anime Gets New Manga Series!

This year's 35th issue Weekly Young Jump magazine is announcing that Hiroshi Ueda (Full Metal Panic! Sigma, The Story of Beijing Opera) will illustrate a manga based on the Tiger & Bunny anime starting in this year's 4th issue of the bi-monthly Miracle Jump magazine, to be released on August 11.

Weekly Young Jump announced earlier this month that Masakazu Katsura will be drawing a special 39-page one-shot Tiger & Bunny manga. Katsura is the original character designer of Tiger & Bunny, and he is also the creator of such manga as DNA² , I''s, Video Girl Ai, and Zetman.

Source: Yaraon! via Anime News Network

Tiger & Bunny 14-16 – 10 Months Later…

10 months after the death of Jake Martinez, Tiger and Bunny started to act like a real tag team with Barnaby earning the title of King of Heroes after the end of the season. With their newfound fame as a tag team, how will Tiger face his newfound fame now that he discovered something new about his powers? Also, now that Sky High is not anymore the King of Heroes, how is he right now? Lastly, we learn Lunatic’s origins.

So three episodes in one post, what’s with this new review pattern? To be honest, I am quite busy lately that I can’t do weekly reviews. Also, the fact that I am online during Saturday makes it harder since I am busy browsing online that I couldn’t find the proper time to watch my anime. Heck, once I am done doing two more (!) reviews, I will start watching my Spring anime line-up, namely: Blood-C, Usagi Drop, Marvel Anime: Blade and Sacred Seven. This makes six anime titles that I am watching right now. End of ranting, here’s the review.

To start this of, I love that Tiger’s current boss is now supportive towards him not unlike before in which he only cares about Barnaby and Barnaby alone. Oh, and I love the idea of the Second League! Too bad that the new guys only appeared for one episode, I love to see more of Kamen Rider V3, I mean, that guy who looks like V3 that I assume has V3’s awesome trolling abilities! The plot for the first two episodes are basically, Blue Rose falling in love with Tiger and Sky High falling in love with the girl sitting in a park bench… which turned out to be android with Terminator tendencies!

As for the two love stories, I prefer Sky High’s love story because I am a sucker for tragic love stories. I mean, he killed his own love without knowing it when she was rampaging and at the end of the episode, he bought flowers and went to the same park bench to visit the chick and waited for her! Him not knowing that he killed her love makes it more tragic. As for the Blue Rose love story, we all know that she has this crush on Tiger since episode 4 (and that baby episode) but she is not honest about it, the episode only made her interest for Tiger clear.

Now to the actual plot of the three episodes, Tiger is losing his powers. Which later leads us to learn about Mr. Legend and his son, Yuri aka Lunatic. I am dead serious. It was first hinted on the 14th episode in which he noticed that he grows stronger with the toll of losing a couple of seconds in his time limit which he first thought that his powers are evolving. It was later clarified at the end of episode 15 when his old boss told him that he is losing his powers and in the following episode, we learn that even the great Legend himself also experienced it! In which in one point, all records that made him look bad are deleted and that, some episodes of Hero TV are staged just to make him look good!

What will happen to the world after Tiger completely loses his powers and what will happen to Tiger after he completely lose his powers? Will the world just forget about him and focus on Barnaby or will he retire without making her daughter proud? The current plot makes the series really interesting since it felt like a superhero’s mid life crisis. To make it much more interesting is that Bunny is now really close to Tiger. How can Bunny cope up with Tiger’s losing powers once Tiger tells him about it? It’s one of the new factors in the series that keeps me really interested right now.

As for Lunatic’s back story, it was tragic. His father raised him to fight evil when he sees it and he killed his father with his own hands when he is seen physically abusing his wife since he can’t cope up with the fact that he doesn’t have superpowers and now, he is just a fat old man who has alcohol problems. It is also quite ironic in my opinion, he instill in his son’s mind that once he saw evil, he must strike them down, look what happened to him after he killed his father, he became a vigilante… and Legend is haunting him if his actions are the right thing to do. Because of that, I am starting to like Lunatic more as a person. Can’t believe that the guy has quite a tragic story which prior to that episode, I thought he is just some lunatic with a broken sense of justice with no proper reason at all.

Overall, the three episodes are quite good, the slow development of Tiger’s losing powers in the first two episodes makes the later episode really entertaining and dramatic at the same time due to the proper development it had for the past two weeks. Tiger’s character development in the newer episodes is also interesting since asides that it felt like a superhero mid-life crisis, it also felt like they were trying to make Tiger more human as he slowly loses his powers. Tiger’s own character development also balances out with the overall character development that Barnaby had in the previous 13 episodes.

As for the change of mood in the second half of the series, from the sorta campy superhero show in the previous episode (Yes, I find the first half campy… less the Jake Martinez arc.), into the deconstruction of superheroes in the second half. They did a proper transition into that phase by slowly developing the plot of Tiger losing his powers and making the big reveal about Lunatic’s back story and that Tiger is not alone with his struggle. Oh, and I love that Barnaby is now enjoying his life unlike before, well that’s good for him.

Tiger & Bunny

Tiger & Bunny is a new anime series from the people at Sunrise (Gundam, Code Geass). It takes place in a fictional world where superheroes are sponsored and fight crimes for points on a reality competition called "Hero TV."  The main characters are the world's first superhero team:  the veteran hero Wild Tiger and the rookie Barnaby Brooks Jr., the only hero who doesn't keep his identity secret.  Both of them have the same power:  100X enhanced strength for a five-minute period.

Since it's a show about superheroes, there's a nice variety of guys to be found.  They include "King of Heroes" Sky High, the super-strong Rock Bison, the teenaged Origami Cyclone, and the flamboyant, openly gay Fire Emblem.  The original character designs were done by Masakazu Katsura, the creator of Zetman.

Even though this show is quite awesome, there really isn't a lot of official art out for it yet.  I've compiled most of the art I could find with some screencaps.  Some of the caps come from the great fan site This is Sternbild.

You can watch Tiger & Bunny online at VizAnime or Hulu.

 

 

 

Tiger & Bunny 10-13 – Ouroboros & Bunny

The longest story arc in the series, the arc finally wraps up everything about the organization known as Ouroboros, as we finally meet the mysterious naked man in prison doing some random lines who turned out to be Jake Martinez, a notorious NEXT and murdered Barnaby’s parents! What’s more is that the arc started like it’s just a regular non-working day for our heroes with Tiger given a short vacation before Jake’s comrade showed up!

To the specifics in each episode, episode 10 like I said was just an ordinary non-working day for our heroes, kinda like those filler episodes in which at the middle of each episode an enemy will appear. That is the case with this one except that Barnaby knows who killed his parents and two; the one who is attacking the city is related to the man who killed his parents. This is when the episode get’s interesting, in which Barnaby must choose between saving the world or meeting the man who killed his parents.

This part of the episode shows the trust between the two heroes in which for the first time, Barnaby trust the robot kicking to Tiger instead of him interfering and hogging the points. Sure, at the near end of the episode, Barnaby arrived to save a falling Tiger but I have this feeling that he did it because he felt that Tiger can’t handle this alone now and needs someone to watch his back. To end up the episode, the chick tells her demands to release her boss, Jake Martinez, the next who killed Barnaby’s parents as the city is now in her hands thanks to her teddy bear operated mecha. In the next episode, Barnaby starts to fall slowly as he tries to keep his composure.

I will go straight with my thoughts for episode 11 it was a good peanut butter to stick with the three breads in this arc. In short, it was an interlude on things to come in the last two parts of the arc. To start with, Barnaby has mixed emotions towards what happened earlier and what makes it cool is that he retains his cool no matter what happens… well, depending on which person he will show his calm side in this episode! The episode also proves that the major is the most useless political figure in Sternbild and that the president of Apollon Media is the most competent non-superhero character in Sternbild. No seriously, he planned EVERYTHING on what they will do after they release Jake and use Barnaby as a heroic figure to inspire everyone regarding the Ouroboros incident. Oh, and he use Origami Cyclone as a spy.

First impression on Jake Martinez, he felt like a Joker with a proper goal and Barnaby’s Joe Chill. If you don’t read or watch Batman, I will explain it a bit further, compared to the Clown Prince, Jake has this proper goal, to have the NEXT rule to world since he thinks that they are the “chosen race” by God and therefore, should rule among the mortals. More on the Joker side, like Mr. J, he has his own Harley Quinn and doesn’t care about the humans since hey, they are just trash in his eyes. Also, there is that psychotic look in his eyes. As for the Joe Chill part, for starters, Joe Chill is the one responsible with the deaths of the Bruce Wayne’s parents and if you watch Tim Burton’s Batman movie, Joe was replaced by Jack Napier who will later become the Joker. Oh my, what have I figured out?!

The last two episodes are probably what I can say is Tiger & Bunny’s finest moments for a few simple reasons. First, during the events of the 11th episode, Tiger breaks the trust that Barnaby gave to him and their relationship is now back to what Barnaby was to Tiger back in the first episode. Also, Origami’s reconnaissance failed because Jake figured out that he is a spy which causes me to think on how he figured it out and at the end, Jake just played him like a doll. The 11th episode shows us Jake’s power which Tiger first though as lasers which later turned out to be energy barriers being used for offense.

And for the highlight of the 11th episode, Jake owning everyone even Sky High. No seriously, the King of Heroes was defeated by Jake, same goes for Rock Bison but who cares about Rock Bison?! Sky High was defeated! Another hero who participated in this one is Wild Tiger that in my opinion, his fight with Jake is one of his finer moments asides from his fight with Lunatic in episode 9. Why is it is one of his fine moments? Even with zero chances of winning, Tiger did his best to fight Jake even if it ended up in failure. But all his efforts are not wasted as he was able to flesh more on Jake’s abilities as seen in a couple of scenes in this episode!

At the end of the episode, Barnaby’s fight with him was moved on the next day thanks to Agnes by convincing Jake to stop it for now for the sake of ratings… and it is a good business move in my opinion. I mean, who would like to watch a couple of heroes being beaten up by the villain? No one, especially the kids, ESPECIALLY the kids. Another reason why Agnes decided to convince Jake to move the fight is because of the plan made by the Apollon Media President involving the teddy bear operated mecha since Origami was able to find the weakness of the bears.

And on the next day, the climax of this arc, Barnaby now faces the man who killed his parents! This episode is also one of Tiger’s finer moments as he use his powers to rapidly heal himself to help his partner since he was able to figure out Jake’s other power! Another thing that I would praise in the episode is Tiger’s intelligence. Seriously, he was able to fool Jake and to those who are wondering how he fooled Jake, just watch the episode. Another thing that this episode did is fixed the trust issue that the two had and how the resolved it is probably one of the series’ most heartwarming moments.

As for Jake’s last moments, it kinda reminded me a bit of Batman Forever in which Robin at first wanted to kill Two-Face for killing his parents and at the end of the movie, he just wants him to be in jail and died the PG way. Same thing applies for Jake in which Jake died with a helicopter ramming his body along with his girlfriend. The episode also gives us more proof that the major is indeed the most useless character in the series as he just took the glory away from the Apollon Media President, from Saito, Origami Cyclone and the rest of the heroes who contributed in the cause.

Overall, this arc basically defeated the previous arc in terms of story and characterization as they properly closed one storyline with a bang. They were able to ascend the tension in the arc and slowly descend it giving a proper balance of emotions in the arc. Seriously, I was stunned when Sky High and Wild Tiger was defeated and went emotional when Tiger catch a falling Barnaby and when Barnaby called Tiger in his real name. In short, the arc was good rollercoaster ride of emotions, fun and at the same time exciting.

Action wise, it was really good and the Good Luck Mode still didn’t lose its charm even after it was revealed episodes ago that it was just placed in their armor for the sake of Tiger and Bunny to look good once they do their finisher. As for the animation, same quality with the previous episodes except that they finally figured out the proper ratio between traditional and CGI.