Review: Tiger and Bunny (anime)

Oh it's been over a year since this anime ended.
Those good times where I, along with the the rest of the fangirls around the world anticipate our SUPERHERO SATURDAY for our favourite NEXT heroes.

Also, today is the 31st of October, one of the character's of this shows birthday so I think it's the perfect time to finally leave my two cents about Tiger and Bunny.

Studio: Sunrise

I gotta be honest with you that this will be a very difficult anime to review, since it's my fave anime of 2011. it was something that made me think "Ah, there's no anime better than this one anymore" by the end of the season. It's something you wish to have a second season, but then again I fear to have more cos usually second seasons ruined everything... especially if it's an original anime.

To be honest, at first I was put off by the anime promotional poster. It looks so retro and some mascot girl is spread across the image. Also the title made me think it was some kind of hentai anime LOL.

but I checked it out anyway since the rest of the anime during that season looks... unappealing to me.

Then the first thing that made me impressed with the anime was...

my reaction: "LOLWTF WHY ARE THEY ADVERTISING COMPANIES"

It reminds me of how Johnny Storm had sponsors plastered on his hero suit, in Fantastic Four movie adaptation. I thought it was funny. It looks like a parody of reality tv shows, and being a superhero is serious business (they even have Hero Academy). And at least the hero gets PAID for saving lives (Consequently, the hero himself must pay for property damages). Really, has no one thought of that? Somehow it makes me question how western superheroes end up getting away with it, the costumes and props and stuff. Unless you're Ironman and Batman of course. And you don't have that one particular damsel in distress to save and get married and have a love triangle with a villain/rival, or have a second spineless damsel who becomes the hero's weakness. HEY IT'S JAPAN! Plot and characterization is a whole another level!

Speaking of characters... Tiger and Bunny may look like another shounen. Main character is the typical hotblooded and naive type... but instead of a young boy they took a man in his mid 30s, and he's also a SINGLE FATHER. That was another surprise, and it was intriguing. It's funny that the writers actually wanted the demographics to be for older otakus, those who retired from anime and sentai fans... the show ends up attracting many fangirls and even housewives. And every hot-blooded guy needs a cool and level headed partner to keep him on track. Instead of a girl, the heroine is a... um... obviously male version of Farrah Fawcett look-alike. Why I call him a "heroine" because he's kinda gay, does his hair and all -oh just check out his description. Plus his nickname is "Bunny" (yay more sexualization). At first I didn't like Kotetsu much because he's like an overgrown child, but later he showed his kakkoi side and worked hard for his partner's approval. The reason is that the writers want a character that represents working class people who's undergoing mid-life crisis... especially when they had to deal with a younger carreerman (Barnaby represents this). Barnaby on the other hand, at first I was disturbed by his behaviour that seemed too familiar, but then in the second cour I my feelings for him was neutral. At the end it is revealed that he shares the same birthday as I do so I was like "OH NO WONDER I DISLIKED HIM"/"OH NO WONDER HE'S LIKE THAT"

hightlight of the show

Did I mention gay? Oh yes, there's one character who's really on par with Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, but he's gay and goes by the name of Nathan Seymour. He's not only a superhero, but he has his own company. Too bad he wasn't given the chance to show his flashback or whatever, but heck... he likes pink and calls himself a woman, yet he spits fire and has a muscular body. Therefore he's awesome! (in spite of his butt groping tendencies XD)

Though every episode is fun, giving us THE FEELS and making us crave for more... there's a darker side to it. These superheroes are super enhanced humans called NEXT which is a kind of disease(?) that came to be many years prior to the show. NEXT was discriminated at first, due to their freaky nature, they have unexplainable supernatural powers which emerges/develops anytime in your life... until there's the show called Hero TV, where the NEXT can put their superpowers to good use; becoming HEROES! This is an effective media idea to change the minds of the public towards NEXT. NEXT are after all, still humans, but with just something extra. Even the younger characters had to deal with their own dillema, not only as a NEXT but as a person as well (note that, one of the reasons you need to pick up this show is because of one loveable weeabo character)

 

DEGOZARU!

But then here's the catch; Some villains have superpowers too. So what's the deal? Why are there still NEXTs not using their powers for good? Why isn't every NEXT recruited into Hero Academy to become heroes? Perhaps there's a conspiracy behind this reality TV show? :3

The only thing I'm disappointed with the show is that they didn't go in depth about the scientific theories of NEXTs' existence, the history and the logic behind the development or the natural selection. I really hope this can be explained in their second movie (this is me being a sciencefag).

As I said earlier, about the art... at first it looked too retro for my tastes. But then I grew to like it. Character designer made a great deal of research on what the characters should wear, depending on their personalities. And it's rare to see characters who look goddamn different from each other cos you have far too many anime/mangas that only has one or two face templates. You have the guy with rather droopy eyes, there's one with a bit of wrinkles, one with rather crooked nose, etc. Heck, most of the fangirls are probably surprised that they're into men with faical hair (but I reckon we love Kotetsu cos he is a moe oyaji). However I'm a little disappointed that Masakazu Katsura doesn't vary much of the girls' faces. And finally the city is NOT JAPANbut it looks more like an advanced version of Manhattan. It's a apparently multiracial city since in the cast you have a French woman, Latino guy, a couple of Russians, Asians, Blacks and the rest are Caucasians.

I mean dude, this has more aesthetic values man. Skills of this artist is worth being worshipped than those who draw those same flat-faced bug eyed lolis! 

Animation was nice especially during the fight scenes, and the motorcycles scenes. The rest of the time was pretty so-so but that's not the point here. Just sayin' that even the producers didn't expect to gain that many fans (Ozaki didn't give a f*ck about those... particular group of fangirls)

Also i love how... typically superhero-ish the OST is. It sort of reminds you of the superhero cartoon shows you see on TV. And I somehow got addicted to it. Plus there's some jazz and a random opera song (Barnaby's theme lolz).

So yeah the first movie is out, too bad I'm not in Japan to see it. Second movie will be out next year.

Ok i wanna conclude this. I could talk all day about Tiger & Bunny cos I love it so much that I watched it twice. And oh these are my collection. 

sadly/luckily i'm not otaku enough!

Anyway, I just remembered someone asking me why I like this show, although I said that I'm not a superhero fan. The reason is simple; the BROMANCE.

It's also the reason why I enjoyed The Avengers. So it has nothing to do with muscular guys running around in a spangly suit.

Review: No. 6 (anime)

[WARNING: May contain Spoilers]

Important reminder; my blog contains an incredibly useless reviews cos it sounds more like an opinion. I don't rate the story, character, art, etc aspects as it may seem biased.

that awkward moment when fangirls go "omgwtfbbq they look like Yuu Kanda and Allen walker kyaa kyaa!" when i think they totally look different from that pair...

I’m intrigued due to the genre – sci-fi, but is not related to space battles or robots. And to my surprise there’s a great deal of politics and hierarchy system in this story. And goddamn conspiracy theories.

And let’s not forget about the target audience.

No.6 is an adapatation of a 9-volume mini novel, about a utopian city called No.6 (apparently in the future, humans evolved into people who no longer have the ability to think of epic names. We can see the transition in this age where numbers are used for each growth of iPhone series). And utopian cities often has it’s dark secrets, so the story is obviously about that. But it centres around a genius boy and an eccentric slum-boy, together they find out the secrets of the government.

So it started when Shion, the boy living in a privileged area with his mom due to his intelligence, provided shelter to a runaway boy called Nezumi. All he did was to innocently help the poor guy, but then the officials found out that he cooperated with a criminal, he and his mom were immediately shoo-ed out of the elite area. In spite of that, they lived a pretty okay life, and Shion is pretty much fine without the intellectual environment. Four years later, bees started to pop out of each person’s neck and they die afterwards. Shion was arrested on suspicion of insubordination to the city, but before he could go to court, Nezumi came back to save him.

And then, the bromance starts.

So they managed to get out of no.6, and Shion can see the outside world where the life was rather horrible. Well, didn’t look so terrible, but I guess they had more freedom to do anything. Okay, maybe except for the citizen erasing scene where the corpses are later dumped into a science facility? Shion and Nezumi lived together for a while, and along the way Shion had a scar which looked like a snake wrapping around his body.

Uh… how did the story go again? Right… Nezumi wants to rebels against the no.6 government, but Shion is naively trusting the higher ups while at the same time fascinated by his friend’s fabulousness. Long story short, No.6 is DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

highlight of the anime

Then the story diverts to supernatural shit, I think there’s a mother nature goddess thing, and I’m starting to think that the story is losing its grip. Owait, there has been superatural stuff since the beginning anyway. You have one guy who can control rats and also another guy/girl(?) who are good with dogs. Also there’s this girl who proposed to the guy she likes by requesting for his sperm. Why I mention this is that it's not a realistic or natural thing to do, I guess her personality is rather supernatural too.

So the story ends rather boringly imho. There's pretty much less impact in the bromance (compared to the upcoming anime I will soon review) moreover when the relationship felt so one-sided. Not that I have a problem with it but it's rather forgettable.

But then I haven’t read the (translated novel), so I don’t really know how good it really is. I heard it's so depressing that it makes a pretty good story.

Nerd talk

Hi.

It's been over a week since my last update.

Shit happened. So I was not realy in the mood to update blogs although I have my drafts ready.

I actually forgot the topic that I intended to write in this blogpost. But I'm gonna begin with something anyway. I just resumed my lower intermediate Japanese class a month ago. I did a last minute revision on my "beginner 2" notes. The next day a couple of classmates mentioned that they didn't revise, and probably forgot what they've learnt. Typical. I must've forgotten a few things too. But then... since I watch anime and listen to Japanese music most of the time, I think I've been revising unconsciously. I haven't reached that level, but it's easy to remember vocabs and a few verbs when you often rape your ears with Japanese audio.
My only problem is remembering the particles, and probably sentence structure. Ask me to speak spontaneously then i'd be like...

Oyeah so here's the supposedly main content. I've been thinking about the 'nerd culture' or 'otaku culture', whatever you call it. When I was a lot younger I thought nerds and geeks are those gariben/bookworms who don't really have a social life. But now, tumblr tells me otherwise. Fangirls and fanboys are like the subsection of the nerd culture. And then I wonder how does this differ with the non-nerds (or what we call 'normalfags' ). But then I define 'normalfag' as someone who doesn't have any particular hobby and follow the norms and mainstream stuff. Of course there are nerds who follow the norms but seems like nerds have something that they can occupy with. And I'm also talking about non-anime geeks like those who likes cars or sports or... oh, hmm does being a shop-a-holic considered a nerd too? Do Beliebers, Little Monsters, Directionals include in the nerd culture too? I know Doctor Who and Star Trek fans are considered "nerds". But how do they differ?

It's like they're so obsessed with their fandoms that they notice that there's nothing wrong with their love life (not that it's a problem to me). Being someone who is interested in various things, I tend not to understand the life of those who are not attached to anything 'fun'. Occassionally I hang out with my non-nerd fans, and we can talk about general things... but somehow it's not as exciting as conversing like below...

• "hey do you watch ?"
• "yeah the animation is pretty good but I personally hate the ending"
• "IKR? Remember the time when did "
• "Yeah seems like there's a loophole there. Because mentioned that . But why is the ending like that?"
• And then you two start being all philosophical and whatnot. And you're probably discuss about the songs and moe/bishin characters too.

Okay so that's one of the most sophisticated example of a conversation. Because most of the time I hear derpy shallow fangirling kind of talk (hey I'm guilty of this too)... or just a bunch of otaku-joke that no normalfag can understand (THIS CONSPIRACY THEORY EVENT ACTUALLY HAPPENED BUT THEN SOMEONE SENT A D-MAIL TO THE PAST SO OUR CURRENT WORLD LINE DOESN'T SEE IT HAPPEN!!!!). Bottomline, it's fun to be occupied with silly things; you'll forget your despair and you get ideas for fanfic. you learn life lessons. You may walk alone in a shopping mall, feeling sad or neutral, suddenly you see something that reminds you of your fandom, suddenly you're grinning like an idiot. Hey it makes your day.

Yeah being a nerd is fun :3 and we do have a LIFE!


Next... FALL ANIME.

So I'm gonna watch Magi, Ixion Saga, Kamisama Hajimemashita, Code Geass: Boukoku no Akito and Code Breaker. So far I've already seen Zetsuen no Tempest and Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun and the most anticipated...

K!!

I'm most impressed with this anime, since the first episode gave me a lot of eye-candy. It's so intriguing and so mysterious, and you wanna know more. Though it may remind you of Durarara!!, No.6, Persona 3 (game) and probably Code Geass and Guilty Crown. The characters look so perfect, it's impossible to choose who you want to fall in love with (who cares. TAKE ALL BISHOUNENS!!!) And the cast is wuahahaha c'mon~ you have Tomokazu Sugita, Tsuda Kenjirou, Ono Daisuke, Takahiro Sakurai, Mamoru Miyano, Fukuyama Jun, Kaji Yuki, Namikawa Daisuke and even Sawashiro Miyuki! I have high hopes for K but I hope it didn't turn out to be like Sacred Seven, it looked amazing at first but then it was mehhh. However, K has beautiful OST to make up for it even if it reaches a downfall. The OST is composed by Mikio Endo... apparently he's a newbie composer and K is his first work. I look forward to this. I miss looking forward and get all excited towards an anime, ever since Tiger & Bunny is over nothing else seem to complete me.

Yeah this shall be the only first impression post in this blog haha.