Don’t you just want Pepsi Nex now? xD
HAI ppl!
Welcome to the show with more product placement than you have probably ever seen in anime before. Now, before you are completely turned off by all the advertising, remember more ads = more money => better money to use on the show => better show hopefully… Still, lets see if this show can actually make use of the sponsors it has.
Note: the picture above is from an actual ad that airs during the commercial break for the show.
What is this show about?
In Sternbild City, there exists sponsored superheroes. Big companies sponsor superheroes as they compete in fighting crime on Hero TV. See TV product placement xD. Wild Tiger, one of these superheroes, is an old man with a daughter and is far past his prime, yet he continues to fight as a superhero. As expected, Wild Tiger is definitely doing a horrible job fighting as a superhero and ends up causing more damage to public society than actually helping catch crime. For example, destroying a monorail rail when trying to stop the monorail. This sounds a lot like a certain Disney/Pixar film. Meanwhile, a new hero suddenly appears on the spotlight with the same power as Wild Tiger, and as a plus, the new hero is far younger and performs a lot better. With this happening, Wild Tiger’s sponsor goes out of business and gives Wild Tiger to another company. This new company wants Wild Tiger to become one of a pair of superheroes that the the company will employ, and guess what, his partner is none other than the young guy who has the same power as he does. Together these two will form Tiger & Bunny.
In the shadows, there are hints that someone is pulling the strings to make these crimes occur. What is the secret behind Hero TV and sponsors, and what will the superheroes do in reply?
What is there to watch in this show?
As you might have guest from the storyline, the storyline, the product placement really works for this anime since the placement helps the viewer see the connections between superheroes and their sponsors while giving a pretty realistic sense of what these superheroes have to do in their work. In case I confused you here is a good example of what I mean by superheroes work. After the award ceremony for hero of heroes, the heroes meet with their respective sponsor leads who advise them on what to do to make both the hero and the product shine.
Okay, I think you might be bored of reading about capitalist techniques and advertising, so time to talk about the other things that happen in the show xD. Like most superhero shows, Tiger & Bunny has plenty of action with superheroes flying around everywhere dealing with guns, explosions, and ice creating plenty of fast paced action scenes. Also,The show has a fair bit of situational humor which is sometimes funny, but don’t expect it to be be the major source of entertainment of the show. Lastly, one interesting about the show is how unique the main character is for anime. It is not that common in anime to have a show where the main character is a father and not a young teenage boy. Oh well, not sure how that is going to turn out on the ratings, but we’ll see
Should i watch this show?
If you wanted a more American themed superhero show, this is probably the show to go to. An older lead, family bonds, and large corporate sponsors are definitely things that I don’t see very often in Japanese superhero shows. Assuming you can get past the foreign feel of the show, the show shows signs of being a great action series that will develop well. The only thing that really holds this show back is its animation, especially the sometimes awkward use of CG animation in combination with normal animation. This creates characters that pop out more than other characters because of their different coloring, lighting, and shadowing they have. Besides that, the animation is a little strange with it normally having more details than the average show, but sometimes the drawings make the environment lose its sense of depth or at other times the background is devoid of a lot of details that it should have, creating some desolate backgrounds. I am not sure if it is my copy of the episode or something, but show is sometimes really noisy in the non TV sections. (Yes, I know why the TV sections have the progressive lines and stuff) I am not going to dock any points for this, but it does worry me a bit.
Personal Rating 3.5/5 (A little disappointed that it could not get a better rating with the amount of sponsors it has. It should have been easily been able to top Basquash! opening episode with this many sponsors imo.)
MixMatched 