Tiger & Bunny
Ah, Sunrise, Sunrise, what would we do without you?
Between enjoying the return of Gintama from hiatus and being gobsmacked by the news that a new Geass-universe series is in the works, I am presently enjoying and being gobsmacked by "Tiger & Bunny," which I'm watching on Hulu (near-synchronous Japan-US release, w00t!). It's a Spring 2011 original Sunrise series, which means gorgeous backgrounds and fluid fight scenes to die for, even in the opening sequences. The series is a mix of both traditional cel animation and CGI - while the CGI tends to stick out a bit, it's not so bad that it's distracting.
"Tiger & Bunny"'s real strength is that it's an elegantly balanced genre-crosser, featuring a buddy-cop, odd-couple dynamic between the leads, two very different superheroes with the same powers who fight in mecha-style power suits (leveraging Sunrise's mecha experience). They're both collaborators and competitors with a cast of American-style mutant (in this series, branded NEXT) superheroes in a corporate-sponsored reality TV show, "Hero TV," that involves combating crime and protecting the civilian residents of their slightly dystopian neo-Gothic New York-esque city, Stern Bild.
Ignore the words, just look at that awesome sketch of Stern Bild during the day. :D (From the official site, "World" tab.)
That's a rare example of an awkward English name, by the way, because the rest of the show has gone significantly out of its way to be as American as possible, so much so that I kind of want to kick the people on Hulu who downrate the show when the subs aren't turned on by default. Apparently Sunrise was angling for the English-speaking market with this series, much like how Cowboy Bebop was, although I'm not sure how warmly Americans will receive mechas/guys in power suits. It seems like "Tiger & Bunny" has been unexpectedly popular with the domestic audience in Japan, at least. :)
The "Americanizations" of the series have been done with meticulous detail: each episode title is a fitting English proverb or idiom, which the seiyu announce in English after the closing credits. All of the abundant Hero TV news scroll screenshots so far have featured wonderfully non-Engrish text. In fact, I have not spotted a single instance of Engrish so far, not even in the walls of text in newspapers, documents, or anything that might be remotely readable by a viewer. (Even the 2nd ED credits, which feature shots of the cast against a background composed of their lines in English, doesn't have a single gaffe!) They most definitely have a native speaker either on payroll or on call to proof everything, which is serious dedication.
Consistent with the Americanization, the characters' names are pretty credible, too. I'm sure they especially went out of their way to convey the uptight nature and privileged background of one of the main leads via his name, "Barnaby Brooks Jr." (the titular "Bunny" - a nickname that's kind of a stretch in English, but not in Japanese).
Barnaby himself is sort of cold and a bit of a dick, even if he's smart, cool-headed, and really nice to look at/listen to (voiced by the same seiyu as Ichigo from "Bleach," Masakazu Morita). As his arc progresses, he becomes a more sympathetic character, but what really draws him out of his snappishness in the beginning is his grudging-then-inevitably-warm partnership with the irrepressible, messy, big-hearted Kaburagi Kotetsu a.k.a "Wild Tiger", a guy who manages to be consistently heroic but yet can't get his 10-yr-old daughter to think he's cool.
Kotetsu, the other main lead, is built to be lovable - the affable underdog, perpetually overlooked or under-credited, and stuck between obligations to family, sponsors, and his own devotion to his old-fashioned sense of what it really means to be a hero. "Tiger" is also downright funny too - he's a wisecracker who gets the best one-liners and facial expressions, and he's the sort of guy with the sense of humor to, say, self-referentially ride a toy mechanical tiger while killing time outside a Christmas ice rink. But right when you think you've got Kotetsu down pat, and can start seeing him fall into certain archetypes, he's forced to evolve and has to respond to that evolution, which makes him a more realistic and truly sympathetic character beyond the "aw-shucks" his lovably rascally nature draws.
Stern Bild at night. Even prettier with the clouds blowing by in the 1st ED animation.
That's kind of true for the rest of the superhero cast as well. It's full of characters who could have been terrible stereotypes, but have actually been sympathetically and carefully developed. I was inwardly groaning when I found out one of the superheroes was a "Chinese rival," Huang Pao-Lin a.k.a. "Dragon Kid," but she's actually been treated kindly and is definitely not living up to the common anime trope of loud, powerful, bossy Chinese girls.
I wish I could say the same for Nathan Seymour a.k.a. "Fire Emblem," a black, ass-grabby gay man, but aside from his stereotypical gay mannerisms, he's actually one of the smarter and wiser heroes, with a deeper insight into what makes the rest of them tick. From his character bio, he's also the only self-employed hero and owner of his own corporate sponsor, which is something unexpected too.
The plot lines of this show are also far more intricate than they appear at first. Admittedly, "Tiger & Bunny" starts slowly, and is mostly lighthearted comedy and action in the beginning. The first six episodes in particular feel pretty disjointed, but by the halfway mark (starting around ep 10), you can start to see where bits of foreshadowing from earlier episodes are playing into several larger, darker, farther-reaching stories. Even in "filler-esque" episodes, like Ep 14 ("Love is Blind"), which centers around something as silly as a backstage purse theft, there are still significant plot points being developed. SPOILERISH: By the 18-19 mark, the seriousness and darkness is layered on thick with a significant plot twist, and by then it's clear that this series can't end with anything short of total upheaval. In this respect, "Tiger & Bunny" reminds me of "Harry Potter," which began as light fun but turned much darker and was intricately plotted in a way that rewards vigilant fans.
Even if you're not being particularly vigilant, the series is already rewarding in its ridiculously gorgeous art. The futuristic neo-New York, with its three levels (named Gold, Silver, and Bronze) and vaguely gothic sculptures on the pillars holding them up, is depicted in loving detail, often glowing at night with the flashing red-blue siren lights of emergency-response heli-fire-engines. The highly believable corporate logos for each of the heroes' in-universe sponsors, flashing by on airship-mounted video-display billboards floating in the blue sky, visible at eye level from large skyscraper windows. The lens flares, the streaks of Tron-esque pink and green that Barnaby and Kotetsu leave behind them as they weave through traffic on their motorcycles, the top views of the city's multilevel roads and rooftop helipads, and the neo-Liberty-statuesque building that holds the city council's offices and dominates the skyline are all hauntingly beautiful.
Backgrounds for the "Cast" and "Staff" pages on the official site. Wish the other halves weren't faded out!
One thing that did throw me off, though, is the obviously visible corporate sponsorship from real companies (not the in-universe employers like Apollon Media or Helios Energy). All of the heroes have large corporate logos splashed all over their costumes - Blue Rose has "Pepsi NEX" on all her limbs, while Barnaby's suit shills for Amazon.co.jp, and either his or Kotetsu's mecha suit is also pre-labeled for Bandai. On one hand, it's kind of inevitable that content creators have been forced to seek new sources of revenue due to dropping DVD sales, and the series itself is somewhat unseriously critical of heavy corporate influences in entertainment. On the other hand, it's a sad sort of development to see what is obviously a lovingly planned and highly creative piece of art also serving as essentially an animated billboard.
The one thing I can't really get behind is the name for the show - "Tiger & Bunny"? I had a hard time taking it seriously at first. But don't judge a book by its cover. :)
Tip: If you do decide to watch this series, do not skip over the end credits, because the epilogues after the EDs are usually significantly long (a few minutes!) and contain important plot elements. Even the shorter ones are at least downright funny (e.g. Kotetsu, after activating a special suit function for the first time in a Moment of Badass, now finds himself slightly encumbered - "Umm... does this retract?").
Between enjoying the return of Gintama from hiatus and being gobsmacked by the news that a new Geass-universe series is in the works, I am presently enjoying and being gobsmacked by "Tiger & Bunny," which I'm watching on Hulu (near-synchronous Japan-US release, w00t!). It's a Spring 2011 original Sunrise series, which means gorgeous backgrounds and fluid fight scenes to die for, even in the opening sequences. The series is a mix of both traditional cel animation and CGI - while the CGI tends to stick out a bit, it's not so bad that it's distracting.
"Tiger & Bunny"'s real strength is that it's an elegantly balanced genre-crosser, featuring a buddy-cop, odd-couple dynamic between the leads, two very different superheroes with the same powers who fight in mecha-style power suits (leveraging Sunrise's mecha experience). They're both collaborators and competitors with a cast of American-style mutant (in this series, branded NEXT) superheroes in a corporate-sponsored reality TV show, "Hero TV," that involves combating crime and protecting the civilian residents of their slightly dystopian neo-Gothic New York-esque city, Stern Bild.
Ignore the words, just look at that awesome sketch of Stern Bild during the day. :D (From the official site, "World" tab.)
That's a rare example of an awkward English name, by the way, because the rest of the show has gone significantly out of its way to be as American as possible, so much so that I kind of want to kick the people on Hulu who downrate the show when the subs aren't turned on by default. Apparently Sunrise was angling for the English-speaking market with this series, much like how Cowboy Bebop was, although I'm not sure how warmly Americans will receive mechas/guys in power suits. It seems like "Tiger & Bunny" has been unexpectedly popular with the domestic audience in Japan, at least. :)
The "Americanizations" of the series have been done with meticulous detail: each episode title is a fitting English proverb or idiom, which the seiyu announce in English after the closing credits. All of the abundant Hero TV news scroll screenshots so far have featured wonderfully non-Engrish text. In fact, I have not spotted a single instance of Engrish so far, not even in the walls of text in newspapers, documents, or anything that might be remotely readable by a viewer. (Even the 2nd ED credits, which feature shots of the cast against a background composed of their lines in English, doesn't have a single gaffe!) They most definitely have a native speaker either on payroll or on call to proof everything, which is serious dedication.
Consistent with the Americanization, the characters' names are pretty credible, too. I'm sure they especially went out of their way to convey the uptight nature and privileged background of one of the main leads via his name, "Barnaby Brooks Jr." (the titular "Bunny" - a nickname that's kind of a stretch in English, but not in Japanese).
Barnaby himself is sort of cold and a bit of a dick, even if he's smart, cool-headed, and really nice to look at/listen to (voiced by the same seiyu as Ichigo from "Bleach," Masakazu Morita). As his arc progresses, he becomes a more sympathetic character, but what really draws him out of his snappishness in the beginning is his grudging-then-inevitably-warm partnership with the irrepressible, messy, big-hearted Kaburagi Kotetsu a.k.a "Wild Tiger", a guy who manages to be consistently heroic but yet can't get his 10-yr-old daughter to think he's cool.
Kotetsu, the other main lead, is built to be lovable - the affable underdog, perpetually overlooked or under-credited, and stuck between obligations to family, sponsors, and his own devotion to his old-fashioned sense of what it really means to be a hero. "Tiger" is also downright funny too - he's a wisecracker who gets the best one-liners and facial expressions, and he's the sort of guy with the sense of humor to, say, self-referentially ride a toy mechanical tiger while killing time outside a Christmas ice rink. But right when you think you've got Kotetsu down pat, and can start seeing him fall into certain archetypes, he's forced to evolve and has to respond to that evolution, which makes him a more realistic and truly sympathetic character beyond the "aw-shucks" his lovably rascally nature draws.
Stern Bild at night. Even prettier with the clouds blowing by in the 1st ED animation.
That's kind of true for the rest of the superhero cast as well. It's full of characters who could have been terrible stereotypes, but have actually been sympathetically and carefully developed. I was inwardly groaning when I found out one of the superheroes was a "Chinese rival," Huang Pao-Lin a.k.a. "Dragon Kid," but she's actually been treated kindly and is definitely not living up to the common anime trope of loud, powerful, bossy Chinese girls.
I wish I could say the same for Nathan Seymour a.k.a. "Fire Emblem," a black, ass-grabby gay man, but aside from his stereotypical gay mannerisms, he's actually one of the smarter and wiser heroes, with a deeper insight into what makes the rest of them tick. From his character bio, he's also the only self-employed hero and owner of his own corporate sponsor, which is something unexpected too.
The plot lines of this show are also far more intricate than they appear at first. Admittedly, "Tiger & Bunny" starts slowly, and is mostly lighthearted comedy and action in the beginning. The first six episodes in particular feel pretty disjointed, but by the halfway mark (starting around ep 10), you can start to see where bits of foreshadowing from earlier episodes are playing into several larger, darker, farther-reaching stories. Even in "filler-esque" episodes, like Ep 14 ("Love is Blind"), which centers around something as silly as a backstage purse theft, there are still significant plot points being developed. SPOILERISH: By the 18-19 mark, the seriousness and darkness is layered on thick with a significant plot twist, and by then it's clear that this series can't end with anything short of total upheaval. In this respect, "Tiger & Bunny" reminds me of "Harry Potter," which began as light fun but turned much darker and was intricately plotted in a way that rewards vigilant fans.
Even if you're not being particularly vigilant, the series is already rewarding in its ridiculously gorgeous art. The futuristic neo-New York, with its three levels (named Gold, Silver, and Bronze) and vaguely gothic sculptures on the pillars holding them up, is depicted in loving detail, often glowing at night with the flashing red-blue siren lights of emergency-response heli-fire-engines. The highly believable corporate logos for each of the heroes' in-universe sponsors, flashing by on airship-mounted video-display billboards floating in the blue sky, visible at eye level from large skyscraper windows. The lens flares, the streaks of Tron-esque pink and green that Barnaby and Kotetsu leave behind them as they weave through traffic on their motorcycles, the top views of the city's multilevel roads and rooftop helipads, and the neo-Liberty-statuesque building that holds the city council's offices and dominates the skyline are all hauntingly beautiful.
Backgrounds for the "Cast" and "Staff" pages on the official site. Wish the other halves weren't faded out!
One thing that did throw me off, though, is the obviously visible corporate sponsorship from real companies (not the in-universe employers like Apollon Media or Helios Energy). All of the heroes have large corporate logos splashed all over their costumes - Blue Rose has "Pepsi NEX" on all her limbs, while Barnaby's suit shills for Amazon.co.jp, and either his or Kotetsu's mecha suit is also pre-labeled for Bandai. On one hand, it's kind of inevitable that content creators have been forced to seek new sources of revenue due to dropping DVD sales, and the series itself is somewhat unseriously critical of heavy corporate influences in entertainment. On the other hand, it's a sad sort of development to see what is obviously a lovingly planned and highly creative piece of art also serving as essentially an animated billboard.
The one thing I can't really get behind is the name for the show - "Tiger & Bunny"? I had a hard time taking it seriously at first. But don't judge a book by its cover. :)
Tip: If you do decide to watch this series, do not skip over the end credits, because the epilogues after the EDs are usually significantly long (a few minutes!) and contain important plot elements. Even the shorter ones are at least downright funny (e.g. Kotetsu, after activating a special suit function for the first time in a Moment of Badass, now finds himself slightly encumbered - "Umm... does this retract?").