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This Week in Anime - Sophmore Slump

I remember tiger and bunny being a very mild success, borderline embarrassing one considering how heavy (relatively speaking for the time) the advertisement for it was. So I was a bit confused at the column talking about it like it was a mega success, but that link contextualize it much closer to what I remember from the time. I think it was just a mega success in the niche/small fujoshi communities, and the fandom at large just didn't care that much for it.

Then you're remembering incorrectly. Viz pushed it to a solid degree over here, but Sunrise infamously had low expectations for it when it first came out, and expected one of their other original works at the time, Sacred Seven to be the big hit, so they were caught off guard when T&B ended selling ridiculously well over there. I'd say that's probably the reason why it took so long to get a sequel, but given that we hadn't yet reached the point where the industry was booked year to year and Sunrise was all about sequels back then, I think they just didn't understand what they had (which might also be why Double Decker failed to recreate the magic despite being marketed as something in the same spirit). Kind of a shame too, because in the gap between seasons, they ended up missing out on the entire Marvel movie craze at it's peak, and had Sunrise been faster about a second season, they probably could have made a franchise out of it.

meiam wrote:

I remember tiger and bunny being a very mild success, borderline embarrassing one considering how heavy (relatively speaking for the time) the advertisement for it was. So I was a bit confused at the column talking about it like it was a mega success, but that link contextualize it much closer to what I remember from the time. I think it was just a mega success in the niche/small fujoshi communities, and the fandom at large just didn't care that much for it.

Uh, are you sure you're talking about Tiger & Bunny, and not another anime? Because as another user wrote:

Divineking wrote:

Then you're remembering incorrectly. Viz pushed it to a solid degree over here, but Sunrise infamously had low expectations for it when it first came out, and expected one of their other original works at the time, Sacred Seven to be the big hit, so they were caught off guard when T&B ended selling ridiculously well over there. I'd say that's probably the reason why it took so long to get a sequel, but given that we hadn't yet reached the point where the industry was booked year to year and Sunrise was all about sequels back then, I think they just didn't understand what they had (which might also be why Double Decker failed to recreate the magic despite being marketed as something in the same spirit). Kind of a shame too, because in the gap between seasons, they ended up missing out on the entire Marvel movie craze at it's peak, and had Sunrise been faster about a second season, they probably could have made a franchise out of it.

As I said, I kept wondering why My Hero Academia's mainstream success in the US didn't help those same fans boost Tiger & Bunny to be rediscovered just like how Studio Trigger's work (Kill la Kill, Darling in the Franx, etc...) led to many fans of Trigger to discover/re-discover Evangelion and Gurren Lagann, or Hajime No Ippo fans branching out to Ashita No Joe.

I mean both Tiger & Bunny and My Hero Academia had similar premise, and yet one succeeded, and the other one almost became forgotten.

So I went looking for some number to see if I remembered correctly, I started with wikipedia... which just referred me back to ANN lol

Anyway, number are about what I remembered, okay but nothing special. It never really broke the chart and came behind plenty of other stuff week after week. A modest success.

meiam wrote:

So I went looking for some number to see if I remembered correctly, I started with wikipedia... which just referred me back to ANN lol Anyway, number are about what I remembered, okay but nothing special. It never really broke the chart and came behind plenty of other stuff week after week. A modest success.

Yeah, but it didn't achieve the same type of mainstream success in the US like My Hero Academia did despite Tiger & Bunny came out first, and that left some Tiger & Bunny fans asking (and with some jealousy, don't worry I'm not one of them) what did the anime title did wrong that MHA did. I would agree with bad timing, but other people have asked "why isn't My Hero Academia helping Tiger & Bunny (or even causing MHA fans to branch out or discover T&B) in the same manner and same way Studio Trigger's anime is helping Evangelion and Gainax's anime titles getting rediscovered?"

That's what I along with other fans of Tiger & Bunny were hoping for My Hero Academia's mainstream success in the US vould translate for Tiger & Bunny and I didn't see a massive crossover of MHA fans watching Tiger & Bunny.

Because MHA and Tiger & Bunny aren't similar at all.

So yes, Tiger and Bunny was a hit

How many Tiger and Bunny fans were Marvel movie fans, especially during the testosterone-filled first two MCU phases? Meanwhile, lots of MHA fans were also fans of the MCU and of the better DC movies i.e. the Dark Knight trilogy.

More still: only one female character in a main cast that included a bunch of other handsome dudes as well as a very flamboyant gay man, and honestly almost no female characters overall including among the villains, competing hero teams, or side and family characters ... just again mostly handsome dudes in tight outfits who preferred the company of other guys, and this included the villain whose interest in females was limited to violating and murdering them.

The 13 years between the first DVD of Trigun and Badlands Rumble were not particularly good for it.
If the movie came out maybe 5 years earlier and also got localized in a timely fashion, it would have been a much bigger deal.

The new Trigun at least is more-or-less its own thing and doesn't rely on nostalgia from the original. Then again, I don't think that the new Trigun series is considered a hit, either.