[Anime] Tiger & Bunny

[Dr Kain]

I have to say, as a person who is somewhat tired of the same old anime cliches, this series freaking rocks!! We watched the first volume (contains episodes 1-13) over the last two nights and have enjoyed nearly every minute of it. For those of you not in the know, it is a show about super heroes who are sponsored by corporations and their exploits are shown on TV for ratings. Each hero has different sponsor logos on their armor, with some of them being Bandai, Amazon.co.jp, SH Figuarts, Tamashii Nations, Pepsi, among other companies I have never heard of before (who could be companies from that universe). The main characters are an older hero in his 40s named Tiger and he is forced to partner up with a younger man in his 20s named Baranaby, whom Tiger constantly calls Bunny due to his speed and how his suit of armor looks. The show is full of action, comedy, and drama and the animation is quite good. The heroes are all likable, but so much so that I really cannot say any one of them truly stands out to me. On the other hand, there is another character that is a hero that kills, named Lunatic, that I absolutely loved the moment he first appeared. Overall, the show took me by surprise and is great so I definitely recommend giving it the first 6 or 7 episodes a try to see if you like it. It is very unique and feels fresh from what I am used to from anime. Lastly, the English dub is fantastic, so you can't go wrong with either language track.

 

[Kaji Motomiya]

http://forums.henshinjustice.net/showthread.php?t=66386

Totes miss watching this anime, though.

 

[Dr Kain]

We watched the second volume of Tiger & Bunny today, finishing the series, and overall, this series was incredible. The only major complaints I have with it are how rushed the final episode felt and the lack of development for Rock Bison. Aside from that, I have nothing but praises for the show because its story was well told, the characters were all likable and outside of Rock Bison, they all had some really great development (especially Blue Rose and Origami), the music fit the mood, and it did not go into the standard cliches it could have done that you find in anime and super hero stories. Not to mention the entire series was quite enjoyable from start to finish. Lunatic remains my favorite character in the show (too bad he did not get more screen time), but I have to say that my favorite between the main eight is a tie between Barnaby and Blue Rose, with surprisingly Sky High in third. Although, for the other characters, Saito just down right rocks!! This show gets a solid 9/10 from me and is one of the best series to come out of Japan in a long time and is probably in my top 10 favorite anime series. I cannot wait for the movies to come out, especially the one that hits Japan next year.

 

[Toku Prime]

I quite liked T&B. It was one of the first anime shows I watched (not including watching pokemon as a little kid etc) but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed. The first episode seemed to bring up so many interesting ideas and concepts, but unfortunately it just abandoned most of them straight away and went after only a couple. It was enjoyable enough, and I'll check out the movie when it comes out, but it just kinda left me wishing there's been more. Lunatic especially is a character that I wish could have been explored a lot more. I don't know if they were gambling on getting a second series with him. I also wasn't keen on the "one year later" epilogue. Without spoiling anything for people who haven't seen it yet, the finale of the series involves Wild Tiger making a big decision concerning his career and family life...and then one year later it's been undone and we're back to the status quo. It just seemed like a waste when there were one or two much cooler (and obvious) ideas they could have gone with to have their happy ending.

But overall, it's worth giving a go. American-style superheros wearing costumes designed by the guy who thought up the Moe Moe Z-Cune (the Akibarangers' morpher/gun/communicator).