This Week in Anime

Your Tiger & Bunny Primer

Jean-Karlo
This week's This Week in Anime was brought to you by Crab! It all comes crawling back to Crab™!

The original Tiger & Bunny anime came out a bit before the massive influx of superheroes became the mono-culture in the U.S. And weirdly enough, it's taken this long for the series to come back with a new season. Netflix is also streaming two movies for the Tiger & Bunny series, The Beginning and The Rising.

Now, I love me some Japanese superheroes, especially the old blood. Yatterman, Gatchaman, Kamen Rider, Casshern, Ultraman, that stuff. And I was always interested in how Japan would handle a take on more Americanized superheroes. Tiger & Bunny has been beloved by fans since its premiere, and not just because of the wave of heroes the Mouse of House churns out on a daily basis. It's a fascinating show, all the way down to the folks wearing those fancy sponsored CG costumes.

What makes Tiger & Bunny work – unlike a lot of "these heroes are realistic!" joints like The Boys – is that it's not relentlessly dour. The characters aren't irredeemable louts or psychopaths, they're just people trying to make an honest living while living under the whims of an unfeeling, uncaring management system. These people live or die by their sponsors. It's more Mystery Men than anything else, and that's a damn original place to start from when you're making a superhero movie.

Kotetsu is a really compelling character, and not just because he's a handsome fail-dad with a stylish outfit. He just needs some loving heart to make him better, or worse, that's a fantasy, too. He's goofy and his sense of heroism really doesn't jive with the mercenary world he's in, but rather than feeling like an idiot he just feels quaint. He's not wrong to want to help people, he's just shouldering more weight than he can carry because he just cares about people that much.

As if to underline it all: his is the only "conventional" superhero outfit among all the other heroes. Everyone else has a fancy suit of armor, but Wild Tiger insists on a cape, a themed cowl, and a strongman suit. Even when he gets his updated power suit, he still wears his old one underneath. You can see him wearing the mask inside his helmet.

Where Kotetsu wants to be a hero out of a genuine-to-a-fault desire to help people, Barnaby is wholly self-interested... or so he tells himself. He's convinced that putting his identity out there and acting as a hero can get him the funds and recognition he needs to track down the Oroboros group, the crime ring involved with the murder of his parents. He may not want to care about other people, but he still cares nevertheless. Not that he'd ever admit it to such an embarrassing dad like Kotetsu.

Also, in a twist of fate, Barnaby Brooks Jr is Kotetsu's daughter's favorite superhero. Not even Wild Tiger. Eesh.

This is explored a bit more in The Rising, but a lot of NEXTs have powers that just skirt the line of being useful. Stuff like producing a toxin that just makes you really itchy. Or making your hand grow really, really big. Or, like... being really good at swimming. Kotetsu himself rides that line, partially because of his shtick, partially because his power on its own isn't the best (he can make himself one-hundred times stronger for a short period of time), and partially because he tends to leap before he looks. Like My Hero Academia and its many characters that have wholly-pedestrian Quirks, a lot of heroes in Tiger & Bunny just aren't meant for the big leagues.

When the series begins, Kotetsu is at least doing well enough to stand alongside the biggest heroes in the city: the immovable Rock Bison, the scaredy-cat ninja Origami Cyclone, the thunder-wielding Dragon Kid, the literally-flaming Fire Emblem, the King of Heroes Sky High, and the ice-wielding idol Blue Rose.

As always, the villain is capitalism. Because all of the heroes are part of Hero TV, a superhero reality tv show, they're all rated on their actions. You earn points for saving citizens and preventing disasters, but lose points if you fail to capture criminals or if they give you the slip. Getting points is important because you cannot become a hero without a sponsor, and doing well means your sponsor is happy. Happy sponsors, happy network, happy hero. Thus, it's against their best interests to help each other out: each hero scrambles for as many points as they can get.

This is also part of why Kotetsu is such a bomb in the ratings: much to his producer's chagrin, he values people's lives over ratings or network shares, so instead of waiting for a commercial break to let the audience get excited he goes and just tries to save people anyway.

It helps that the other heroes aren't terribly complicated and nevertheless get plenty of scenes to themselves. When the team is called out to arrest thief Robin Baxter, they all go their separate ways... together. Dragon Kid and Blue Rose talk about earrings. Fire Emblem... flirts with Rock Bison. Sky High shows off his wind-control powers to Origami Cyclone, showing an uncharacteristically fun-loving side of himself. It's good stuff that does a good job of letting the cast start to see themselves as more than just competitors.

I also wanna point out that I love the character designs in Tiger & Bunny. It's not just Kotetsu's fancy outfits or Barnaby's flowing locks – everyone in this series looks amazing. Masakazu Katsura was brought onboard to handle character designs; he worked on the superhero-flavored Zetman but he's also known for the romantic comedies D.N.A.², Video Girl Ai, and I''s. His charming character designs are fantastic.

... Also, he did a manga called Wingman about a toku-themed superhero and I'm dying to see that get brought back someday.

As it turns out, the CG is on purpose: because many of the costumes would otherwise have to be redrawn if sponsors for the heroes changed (or if the sponsorship brands had to be removed for foreign markets), it's just easier to render them as CG models. The only one who gets traditional animation is Blue Rose, partly because it's hard to shove a logo on her skimpy outfit, partly because she's T&B's source of T&A.

Nobody said idol culture was healthy... A detail the movies leave out from the series is that Blue Rose might have romantic inclinations towards Kotetsu, who's like... twice her age. Thank goodness. Also, because let's be honest, Kotetsu and Barnaby all the way. A family can be a little girl and her two bickering superhero dads.

I wanna touch on one more thing from The Beginning before we get into The Rising: it ends with a really big show of trust for Barnaby from Kotetsu. Barnaby manages to trick Robin Baxter into imprisoning himself, but later finds that Kotetsu specifically went out of his way not only to let the other heroes allow Barnaby to do this alone, but also made sure to hang in the background to make sure Barnaby's plan went off. As much as Kotetsu chafes at Barnaby's antics, he still wants him to feel like a member of a team.

Being that I'm more of a fan of older Japanese heroes, I do regret the more-Americanized takes on the recent Japanese superheroes. But this does mean that a lot of life is breathed into them in English dubs.

Anyway, Kotetsu starts The Rising out with his breath beaten out of him. Wild Tiger and Barnaby have sunk in the ratings in the time since The Beginning (it's been a few months and later events from the Tiger & Bunny series have transpired). They're knocked down to the "Second League", where a bunch of not-so-great superheroes dwell.

The good news is, a mogul named Mark Schneider bought out their old sponsor and pulls the strings needed to get Barnaby back up to the First League, teaming him up with a new hero named Golden Ryan. The bad news is, Schneider had no intention of doing anything for Kotetsu: without a sponsor, he's forced to retire from heroism and take up a job as a cab driver.

You think the guys at Banpresto had a laugh about their logo being emblazoned on such a tool of a hero? I can't see him making any Super Robot Wars cameos anytime soon...

At any rate, a series of disasters strikes the city. Barnaby puts the clues together and deduces that the disasters are connected to an old legend from the city's history: a goddess, angered by mankind's greed, sends earthquakes, sleeping sickness and a massive chasm to devour the city. The problem is just trying to convince the higher-ups to let the heroes investigate this.

Also compounding issues is Golden Ryan being concerned with just earning points for just him and Barnaby, instead of collaborating with other heroes--a selfishness helped along with Ryan's gravity-powers.

It's here... that we can finally touch on Fire Emblem, because they're an important part of The Rising's story.

So... Fire Emblem is self-described as a gay superhero (and he's got fire powers, get it?). Being that they own their own company, they're their own sponsor. But like... Fire Emblem feels like a really bad take on a gay person, more akin to The Crying Game and that era of not differentiating gay men from trans-women or the like.

In a lot of ways, Fire Emblem reminds me of Levin from Tekkaman Blade (I'm going somewhere with this, bear with me). Levin was also swishy, flaming, and very flirty with the protagonist--and there's a very touching episode where Levin talks to a woman about living their truth. There's only one Levin in the world, and they live true to themselves, and Levin contains multitudes that just can't be described by simple binary concepts like "man" or "woman." And in a lot of ways, that's what Fire Emblem is going for: we see in their past that Nathan (Fire Emblem's real name) struggled with their attraction to men or presenting as a woman. Their big climactic moment while stuck in a nightmare of their own worst fears is having a Persona 4 moment and embracing their shadow, celebrating what it means to be themselves. This is really good and genuinely compelling and it does loads to keep Fire Emblem from just being a camp joke... if only Fire Emblem weren't always goosing the other men and touching their butts in what's clearly discomforting. Like, Levin also thirsted for D-Boy, but they kept their hands to themselves.

Nathan's pros definitely outweigh his cons and I don't want to give the impression that I think they're an outright bad character; the phrase "problematic" was made for moments like these. They're a great hero, a trusted friend, and honestly the only ding on their journey of acceptance is the fact that they kept goosing the other guys. Nathan is a person of color and that's always a delight to see in anime. Also, I'm using they/them pronouns for Nathan because it's my understanding the new Tiger & Bunny anime is also doing so in the dub.

And once Fire Emblem comes back they lend one heck of an assist to Blue Rose and Dragon Kid... Also, Fire Emblem is sponsored by Domino's. That just amuses me.

The Fastball Special is a time-honored tradition in superheroism; I salute Rock Bison in return. It's only a matter of time before the MCU makes it utterly obnoxious.

It turns out that none of the disasters have any kind of divine origin: it's all revenge, baby! A man named Virgil is responsible for organizing the NEXTs that kicked the whole thing off. Using Sternbild's mythology against them, Virgil's goal is revenge against Schneider. Years ago, Schneider took advantage of Virgil's father in a business deal, which led to Virgil's father taking his own life. Virgil teamed up with three other NEXTs whose lives had been ruined by Schneider's wheeling-and-dealing in order to take out their revenge.

I can't be the only one who thinks Lunatic resembles a weird cross between Purple Haze and King Crimson. Anyway, Virgil becomes a giant robot crab made out of junk metal and fights off Wild Tiger and Barnaby in an attempt at carrying out his own revenge, claiming justification because Barnaby also took his revenge on the man that killed his parents.

The fantastic showing reinvigorates the public's desire for the old Wild Tiger/Barnaby team-up too, and even Golden Ryan helps spur them back into teaming up again.

With a nice poem from Kotetsu's daughter, the movie closes with the heroes continuing their duty of protecting Sternbild. It's a really solid ending for a solid pair of movies.

As a Tiger & Bunny neophyte, I think these movies also serve really well as an introduction to the series. You get just enough of a taste of the other heroes to want to see more, the dynamic between Kotetsu and Barnaby is well-established, and the general feel of Sternbild is introduced. It's a unique world with interesting heroes, and I'm glad it's priming to make a big comeback to the world of anime. I hope Tiger & Bunny reaches a much bigger crowd this time around.

Nothing would be truer to this fail-dad than being late to his own successful franchise, I tell you what!