Back to zenron's Profile zenron's Profile

What would happen if you turned away from society? What would happen if you stopped on the road of life? What would happen if instead of moving forward, you planted your feet squarely on the ground and refused to lose your childish purity? What if you never grew up?

These are all questions which Annarasumanara asks the reader. I'd say that thematically, it is similar to the likes of Peter Pan, but that would be doing this manwha an incredible injustice. For a story all about rejecting adult life, this story is a lot more mature than the average.

The story is of course, based ... around magic. Not the type you usually see in fiction, with Wizards and battles, but with the type of Magician you'd see at Carnivals or Birthday parties. The plot is ambiguous for the most part. You're never sure whether someone is telling the truth or not. Hell, you're never even sure if some of the characters are sane or not. But, this is not a negative. It's handled very well. It never makes the mistake of making something so ambiguous that the narrative becomes confusing or loses it's grounding in reality.

The art is, without a doubt in my mind, the best art I've seen in a Manwha or a Manga. It's truly a joy to see people break away from normal art and do something abstract or interesting. It's clever in a way that I haven't seen in a Manwha before, where the abstraction of the work actually has tangible meaning to the plot, and isn't done just randomly out of nowhere. There are a couple of artistic quirks which I really want to talk about but I'll leave them, I don't want to spoil it.

When it comes to characters, it's nice to see some real character progression throughout the series. The characters really change as the series goes on.

This is a Manwha which I can give my full recommendation. 10/10 from me.

Tiger and Bunny begins with an interesting premise. The idea of fitting superhero stereotypes reminiscent of the Western comic books into the framework of a reality TV show was a good idea. Tiger and Bunny ultimately works as an anime, but it does fall flat in some parts.

The art is the main thing which will grab your attention. This anime uses a mixture of 2D and 3D art in a way that I haven't seen done before to this level of quality. The 3D is mainly used for the characters and generally doesn't clash with the rest of art because of the stylistic way ... it's produced. It was a little distracting at first because I'm not used to seeing a character move so much, but this is generally forgotten as the art is so different to most animes that a few flaws can be forgiven.

The sound is pretty great all around really. Watching Tiger punch a super villian in the face to the sound of a sweet guitar rift and some strings was always good. The music was a bit overpowering during the action scenes, I guess to give a feeling of epicness to them, but the score just ends up feeling cluttered and indecipherable in some parts. The sound design is generally excellent other than that though.

The characters play off all of the archetypes you can think of. You have Kotetsu, the aging hero with good morals battling against not only his enemies but also against his age and the world surrounding him. He's the classic underdog. Barnaby Junior is Batman, Kriem is Harley Quinn, Jake is Magneto etc. The characters, aside from Batman, are all generally written really well, and this is really the highlight of the series. The supporting cast of heroes are all great. Kotetsu, the main character, generally the steals the show, but episodes are devoted to the support cast and this is in my opinion the highlight of the show. However, the rest of the plot is devoted to Barnaby's sob story and the crime syndicate named "Ouraboras". Herein lies the main problem of Tiger and Bunny.

It gets quite heavily bogged down in the plot, and honestly the series could do without half of it and it would work a lot better as a whole. It got to a point near the end that I was kind of wishing for one of the happy go lucky episodes from the beginning of the series. By the end of the series I was tired of the cliched plot elements. There comes a twist in the story which you'll get way before the show seems to expect you to. They make it out to be some big reveal, but it's not.

The final blow in the story came for me during the last two episodes. Now, I'm going to spoil something that happens so if you're really concious about it, stop reading it now. It won't effect your enjoyment at all. Kotetsu dies, only... he doesn't die. We get the very familiar death scene where Barnaby holds Kotetsu in his arms while he dies. But then the next episode, Kotetsu suddenly gets up and finishes the fight. There was no attempts at pacing this well, no build up or tension, no epic moment. It's as if they got a memo from the marketing department telling them that they have to keep everyone alive for the movies that have now been announced. I knew Kotetsu wasn't going to die because I'd seen the pages on here about the movies, but I at least expected a little more to what should have been the climactic battle of the story. I could go on all day about the way the story fails in terms of pacing, originality and plot, but I'll let you all decide that for yourselves.

So that's Tiger and Bunny, a generally excellent anime that is let down by the lack of a decent story.

*Note, this was written for another forum.

This anime is seemingly high praised across the internet, so as this is my first review, I thought I may as well review something that a lot of people have heard of. Let it be known that I will say at least a couple of controversial points in this review. You have been warned.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann(meaning Heavenly Piercing Crimson Lotus Enveloping Face), follows the story of Símon, a boy from an underground village who finds a mysterious mech(collectively termed "gunmen") while digging and is whisked away from his home by the seemingly badass Kamina and a young ... girl with barely any clothes named Yoko. They're swept along into a resistance force to take down the Spiral King, the guy behind the people being underground in the firs place, with Kamina at the front.

The biggest gripe I have with this anime is how juvenile certain parts are, and it's kind of jarring to see these things juxtaposed with some actual mature themes. This is one of those animes where every "move" has to have its own special name which must be shouted at the top of their lungs, because everyone knows that when you shout and add random adjectives to things then you automatically do more damage.

Another element which I found kind of childish was the fact that near the end of the series, they started to make up a lot of science for no real reason than for the protagonists to somehow break these laws. I wouldn't have minded this, a theme behind the anime is about breaking all barriers, never giving up and confronting things head on, but honestly the science seemed kind of redundant and it didn't make any sense half of the time.

Then of course is the casual male pandering. The show doesn't even try and hide this. It's jumping up and down shouting "Look! Boobs!". Go search for "Gurren Lagann yoko" on google and you will see what I mean. I would say that this anime is being incredibly self aware and is actually poking fun at shounen anime in general with it's childish elements, but it comes across as a little too stupid for that.

However, the show confronts these childish elements and uses it to it's own advantage, to create an emotional impact on the viewer. You expect everything to always be great, but then bam! Something happens and of course I'm not going to disclose what, but because the anime has been kind of childish up until that point, it will hit you like a hammer.

Now, lets get to the technical elements behind Gurren Lagann. The art has some truly impressive moments, the animation is great throughout the anime(aside from episode 3 which was animated by somebody else) and this all culminates into a pretty awesome looking anime.

On the musical side of things, all I have to really say about this is "ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWER!". Just remember that line, you'll hear it, and it will be awesome. A kind of mix between rap and opera, and interestingly, it actually works.

A worthy note would also be the voice dubbing. If you're going to watch this program, you may as well watch the dub, because it has one of the most impressive lineups of voice actors I've seen in a long time. I was going to give you a list to probe my point but it ended up being too long so I deleted it. Needless to say, if you've ever watched Code Geass, Ergo Proxy, Naruto, Bleach, Durarara!!!, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or a load of others than you will notice recognise a lot of the voice acting cast.

This sounds like a pretty mixed review. Did I like it? Simply put, yes. It wasn't deep or really moving at all to me, but it was interesting and moved at a fast enough pace that you'll never get bored. It's technically great and the story is quite good(if you've ever read the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson, you'll find the story oddly reminiscent).

This anime is not without it's flaws. It's not as good as some people on this site make it out to be, but it is definitely worth a watch.