Tiger & Bunny

Tiger & Bunny is a hero series from 2011. It was brought to us by Sunrise. I've heard it mentioned a lot over the years, but never got around to watching it. But since it's hero month, it seems like a good time to check it out and form some opinions. 

Story:

Our narrative is set in the future where mutants... I mean "Next" have started popping up. Naturally, this has led to a group of heroes who wear product placements like they think they're Captain Amazing from Mystery Men and who fight criminals & rescue civilians alike to earn points for a television show. Enter newcomer, ... Barnaby, a hero with a dark past he's looking to unravel. He becomes the first hero duo with veteran, Wild Tiger. Unfortunately for both of them, they don't get along all that well and Barnaby's past may be creeping up on them. 

One of the biggest problems with the series is that it has severe tonal issues. It tries to strike a balance between darker and lighter moments like some of the best comic runs out there including Claremont's X-men run and the Wolfman/ Pérez Titans run. The problem is that it sucks at it and there are two reasons for that. The first is that it goes two far in both directions. If you look at those comics that shift tone well, they have pretty realistic degrees on both ends. For example, The X-men facing the brood and finding themselves in a seemingly hopeless situation on account of the royal eggs that have been implanted in them but still maintaining hope and doing everything they can versus Shadowcat telling little Illyana a bed time story for an issue. In Tiger & Bunny, the lighter elements cross into Silver Age goofiness. Think Batman and Superman having a slumber party at the fortress of solitude but somehow dumber whereas the darker elements cross into 90s darker and stupider territory. Which means there's a lot more of a shift between the tones. Tiger & Bunny also fails because it combines the elements. If you look at those good comics, they actually transition from one tone to the other instead of abruptly forcing the tone to change. In this, they'll have goofy silver age elements, like evil plush toys piloting mechs, side by side with more serious elements like Barnaby trying to get revenge for the loss of his parents and that's just highly dissonant. 

Another issue is with the main villain's plan. I don't want to go deep into spoilers, so I'll keep this somewhat vague. Even though who the villain is going to be becomes really obvious as soon as our heroes have a certain conversation in hospital. In any case, our arch villain gets caught with a tiny contradiction and all he has to do to keep things from escalating is pretend he also doesn't know what the deal is. Instead he gives a huge villain speech revealing everything and tries to cover things up by messing with someone's mind. Then he makes things even worse by unnecessarily lying and trying to frame another hero. Even though said hero has had a costume where they can easily be identified just by visually comparing him with one of his old trading cards or videos. To make things even dumber, this guy supposedly wants Next to be treated well and that's why he's manipulated the Hero media but when things aren't looking so good he decides to have androids kill all the heroes that the citizens know and love even though that will clearly interfere with his big plan. I don't know how it's possible to be as egregiously stupid as this villain. 

Although that does lead me with yet another problem I have with this series. They bring up this idea of their mutants being feared and mistrusted a couple times, but it's not something we see any real evidence of. There are, maybe, three scenes where someone is a dick towards the Next. Other than that, they're treated like heroes, people buy their merch, big companies sponsor them to make themselves look good. There's almost nothing to indicate that things are bad for them. The series also wastes its one opportunity to do something with some impact right at the end by having a cheap cop out. So, the ending is pretty shit. The series also likes to repeat itself way too much, going over plot points to a ludicrous degree. For example, the anti-hero appears and gives a big speech about how "he is doing the true justice" and there are about three conversations after that where our heroes can't figure out what he's after. It's like they think their audience is really, really slow. 

Characters:

I've already described how bad the antagonist is, so let's talk about the other major characters. Our big characters are Tiger, Kotetsu, and Barnaby. Kotetsu is a horrible, neglectful father and obnoxious cretin. Barnaby is just boring. Which is kind of the way things go in this series. At best, the heroes are trite and bland. At worst, they're gross homophobic stereotypes, Hi, Fire Emblem. Sky High is probably the most likeable of them all, even though he's dumber than a wet cardboard box, because he's a paragon character with a dog. Blue Rose is an insipid twit with a really annoying crush on a dude more than twice her age. Which might not be so bad if they didn't bring it up constantly throughout the series. 

Dragon Kid and Origami Cyclone are dull. Rock Bison is so boring that even his "best friend" can't think of any personal information to give about him. Seriously, there's a scene where Tiger is giving out some information about all the other heroes and he has nothing to say about this guy. There's also Lunatic, one of those generic anti-hero characters. Although it is worth noting that he wants to be seen as seeking true justice, but he calls himself Lunatic. That would be like Mister Sinister trying to convince ordinary people he's actually the hero while still calling himself Mister Sinister. 

Art: 

The artwork is a bit mixed. Some of the city shots look impressive, but the character designs are kind of mediocre. and the action sequences aren't very interesting. One thing that's absolutely horrendous is the product placement. The hero costumes are plastered with logos to the point of it being really tacky. It's like Sunrise just decided this had no artistic merit whatsoever so they might as well just suck off some fat corporate guys for a bit of extra dosh. 

Sound:

Here's one aspect where I can give the series some credit, the actors are pretty decent. Maybe not great, but they're about as good as they can be with characters this insipid. The best is probably Inoue Go, who does pull off the simple-minded paragon character pretty well. The only truly bad performance comes from Tsuda Kenjirou. It's not really his fault since he's voicing a super flamboyant gay stereotype, but it is awful to listen to. 

Ike Yoshihiro does the sound track and it's the best part of the series. They may not be the best tunes out there, but they're quite good and well put together. 

Ho-yay:

It comes entirely from our gay stereotype, who has fire powers. Wow, that isn't the least bit subtle or clever. And I'm sure one person is going to say "didn't you have a gay character with fire powers in Omicron Squad?" Which is true but I had a lot of gay characters and Anastasia wasn't a stereotype. So, not really the same at all. 

Areas of Improvement:

1. Gives the characters personality beyond tropes. One of the things that makes for a good hero comic is a strong sense of personality from the characters and well developed interpersonal dynamics among them. Plus strong villains instead of total knob heads. 
2. Consistent Tone. If you want something stupid and goofy like the Silver Age, just go for it. If you want something darker and stupider like an early Image comic, go for it. This clearly doesn't have a strong enough writer to pull off something between, so let's not fluctuate between those two extremes. 
3. A Consistent World. If you want to be like the X-men and show powered heroes doing their best in a world that hates and fears them, that's fine. If you want to have a future where everything is built up around a culture of hero worship, that's also fine. These two things do not work together. 

Final Thoughts: 

Tiger & Bunny is a complete mess. It can't decide which extreme tone it wants and ends up awkwardly and really badly mixing them, its heroes range from boring to obnoxious & offensive. It has plot holes so massive you could fly a 747 through them. The world building is wildly inconsistent. The "twists" are really obvious to the point of being bland. They treat their audience like it's made up of a bunch of morons. The sponsorships are tacky as hell and it's just never interesting or entertaining. My final rating is going to be a 2/10. This anime sucks. 

It's an ok anime if you ignore the ending. Otherwise it's a pretty normal one, characters don't progress as much, but there is something at least. Art is pretty good and sounds and voice actors are ok. Good if you don't know anything you want to watch, I'd say overall for me a 7. If you don't mind inconsistencies and like superheroes, i'd say it could be an 8. If you ignore the last 2 episodes which were atrocious.

This gets a 2 because there are a lot of inconsistencies that happen sometimes that take me out of it (like stupid decisions of characters), but in ... the last 2 episodes there are just sooo many ass pulls just to further the plot that i just can't give it more than that. I can't give examples because otherwise it would be a spoiler, but imagine a character without powers teleporting all over the place when there is no possibility of him ever being or doing things that fast, just to further the plot. And that's just one example, so many more in just those last 2 episodes. Just completely bad writing. Can't even tell if it was rushed or not, because several sequences have characters just staring at eachother when they should be moving or fighting. Even if rushed i doubt it could have ended this badly.

After hearing that this show was similar to My Hero Academia, I decided to give it a shot because I liked that one quite a bit despite my dislike for superhero fiction. I saw from the world, the story, and the premise is so similar to My Hero Academia that it seemed like the writer that wrote that manga took ideas from this anime. Unfortunately, My Hero Academia does its ideas a lot better and more uniquely than this iffy anime.

At first Kotetsu seemed like the somewhat adorkable type character and he seemed interesting and seemed like he could be my husbando later on but ... then, it turned out that he was a hot-headed man who acts like a child.

Blue Rose is the typical bratty teenager who's lashing out at everyone because she hates her job and wants to give up being a superhero. Though, she did change her mind but she's still a little brat, especially to Kotetsu.

Barnaby is an underdeveloped superhero cliche as seen from when he saved Kaede in the second episode when we expected her to be dead or injured. Like, how did he turn invisible like that Clay Aiken song and save Kaede all of a sudden when he wasn't seen under the debris in the first place? Not to mention, how cold and vindictive he is makes him another unlikeable character.

Agnes is the bossy woman who is incompetent at her job and should be fired for being such an angry woman.

I don't think that anyone was good in there except for possibly the Dragon Kid. The other characters and their immature personalities just makes me want to give them a slapping.

The other props I can give to this anime is that it manages not to be boring like most superhero fiction and the story, while mediocre, was probably the most interesting aspect of the writing, and the art is quite good. The dub doesn't make their frustrating characters anymore tolerable to watch but they've done what they could do.

Just watch My Hero Academia, it is so much better with better developed and kinder/mature characters (most of them at least, some of them aren't), less realistic and complex, more unique, and it's hilarious.

3.7/10

Heavily inspired by western superheroes, Tiger & Bunny at it’s core is a “buddy cop” series, that follows the superheroing adventures of an odd couple: Kotetsu a.k.a. Tiger, a failing middle age superhero who makes up for his goofiness with his enthusiasm and sense of justice, and Barnaby, a young humourless upstart, who got into superheroing to make light on some mysterious events in his past.

While this is a setup that may ring extremely familiar, what makes the premise of Tiger & Bunny stand out is its setting, which in some ways can bring back to mind One Punch Man. Heroes in this universe are ... not motivated by the goodness of their heart, but are part of a heavily sponsored institution that fights for justice as much as it fights for rating. All the heroes’ deeds are broadcasted live as they compete in a pseudo reality-show, trying to outhero each other while at the same time working on their promotion tours and trying to score sponsorships, like any other celebrity.

Now… I don’t want to be that person, but like, that’s a dystopia, right? Outsourcing public security to an extremely powerful set of cult-of-personality individuals who are literally in the literal hands of corporations? Which in most cases apply way more force than needed endangering more lives than what they save? Like that’s… not good, right? And I know that these are the basic problematic aspects of any superhero settings, but Tiger & Bunny exaggerates them to the point that, realizing that the show doesn’t actually intend to provide any commentary on them feels… odd.

The show sets up this very interesting world, exaggerating and caricaturizing all the problematic aspects of superhero fiction, then creates characters which would naturally come at odds with such system… and then… it just tells a pulpy superhero story which never questions or explore the situation it sets up. And while this approach might be just mildly annoying in a regular superhero story, the fact that Tiger & Bunny is extremely charged with hyper-capitalistic and celebrity-culture imagery, makes its nonchalant approach to its setting slightly more uncomfortable.

Talking about uncomfortableness, there are a couple of odd uncomfortable character things that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention before going forward:

-One of the heroes is a non-binary, drag queen-ish kind of character. While they are generally characterized flamboyantly but relatively tastefully, it is a running joke in the series that their team-mates are constantly off-put and disgusted by them. Nothing particularly new in term of anime tropes, but your mileage may vary on how much this bothers you.
-The main character’s sort of love interest is a 16-year-old high schooler (Kotetsu is supposed to be in his mid-30s). If on one hand this is depicted as a one-way crush, with Kotetsu being mostly unaware of it, on the other the series is vastly uncritical of such crush, and that character’s ending scene is literally her still trying to get in Kotetsu’s pants. Yeah, uncomfortable.
-This is a pet peeve of mine, but I absolutely hate the “tomboy has to learn to be more feminine” trope. That’s pretty much the arc of one of the minor characters. So yeah, I dislike that, if she doesn’t want to wear dresses, she doesn’t “need” to learn to wear dresses, fuck off.

All these awkward choices regarding some of the characters are quite honestly a shame as, aside from the ones I mentioned above, if there’s one strong aspect in Tiger & Bunny it’s the character work. The main duo of Kotetsu and Barnaby in particular, is extremely pleasant and, while cliché, watching their friendship grow through the show is sweet and entertaining. The story is mainly depicted from Kotetsu’s point of view, and the show does an actually great job in painting a really compelling portrait of an aging doofus who’s just trying to do some good in the world and be seen like less of a failure by his peers. Despite a fair bit of the show’s runtime being generally taken by less-than-stellar fight scenes, there’s more than enough character development to make the show more of a character-driven piece than a straight up action sentai thing. The actual linear plot of the show, on the other hand, is vastly forgettable, as it seems to waste so much plot threads to setting up eventual sequels, that nothing, at the end of the show itself, feels conclusive, neither thematically nor narratively.

Before I end this, it is also worth to give a quick note on the aesthetics, as I actually quite like the art style, and don’t even mind that much the fact that all the superhero costumes are done in 3d (it actually creates a really interesting contrast when you see Kotetsu wearing his old costume which, unlike all the other costumes, is depicted in 2d). The one problem that I have with the visuals of the show is that the blocking and editing now and then feel a bit awkward and clumsy, especially during the fights. While this never gets too bad, a couple of moment throughout the show are definitely eye-roll worthy.

Ultimately, I don’t find Tiger & Bunny a particular stand out, it’s not completely awful (as long as you don’t mind the slightly uncomfortable elements I mentioned before), but at the same times it does not do enough with its premise to actually be interesting or insightful. I don’t know if they’ll eventually get on to making the sequel that the show so clearly is trying to call out for, but as a stand-alone product I found this show mildly entertaining but ultimately lacklustre.

This is what My Hero Academia would have been if you hired a bunch of crude and shallow marketing execs to write a hero show. The heavy branding and commercialization of hero work in the show is supposed to be cheeky satire, but it becomes too meta when the actual show itself feels like a cheap cash grab exploiting the same superhero genre. The characters are shallow, melodramatic, and bicker constantly, lacking any seriousness, tension, or emotion. It feels like a bad reality TV show. The Real Housewives if the housewives were dorky superheroes in heavily branded ugly mecha suits performing in front of a ... camera, where the meaningless fake drama overshadowed any life threatening situation or semblance of hero work.

There is no deeper exploration of the ramifications of turning hero work into a 24hr show business or how a society is willing to compromise rational behavior for petty entertainment. The TV director even takes on the role of operations manager during a hero mission, it's so sad. The broader implications of superpowers suddenly manifesting in people are mostly ignored, with just occasional mentions of fear or discrimination. After about half a dozen episodes, a supervillain finally shows up, preaching death to criminals, no matter the crime, and a draconian approach to justice. His debut is underwhelming, his speech crude with no charisma, but somehow his five minutes of wanton destruction is able to magically stir the audience hive mind into a murderous bloodlust, to flip the tables so casually on law and order in favor of carnage. How have such gullible people survived for so long without destroying themselves? Then the very next day, the introduction of a new character who is clearly the same villain out of costume. Not even the slightest attempt. It's poor writing followed by even poorer writing. I dropped it knowing both the cast, the plot, and the premise wasn't going to get any better.