Category Sternbild Stuff

Apr 2 2012

Our Favourite T&B Things

Thank you, and again thank you to all who took part in our little celebration for a year of Tiger & Bunny! We didn’t get as many princess carries as we expected, but Figuarts are really popular judging from the photos.

I think that Tiger & Bunny will always remain a special thing for us. After it ended, we noticed that it had changed the way we view anime. We’ve also met a lot of great people through the fandom, from all over the world. The community that has developed around the series is wonderful, and you rarely see such dedication to support a series – I am of course talking about our shared desire to own everything that the merchandise producers put out.

Thank you, everyone, for sticking with us up to this point! Here’s to the next year – and hopefully many more after it – with Tiger & Bunny and all our T&Bros! Good luck with the preorders tomorrow, and with those that are still looming in the horizon!

Gallery: T&B 1st Anniversary Event – My Favourite Thing

Mar 18 2012

Anniversary Event: My Favourite T&B Thing

You know what? On April 3rd, it’ll be exactly a year since Tiger & Bunny started. (And consequently, roughly six months since it ended.)

A lot of people (including us) have been voting with their wallets, so we thought it’d be fun to see what everyone’s favourite piece of merchandise is. So grab your camera and your most favourite T&B thing in the world, and take a picture of it (or them if you just can’t make up your mind)! If you want, you can also include a short comment about your picture. Fanmade merchandise is allowed as long as it’s worksafe.

We don’t want to leave out those who haven’t been able to get what they want, because those preorder wars are brutal, brutal things. If there’s something you really want to get, you can draw it  – or write a few sentences (or an ode) describing it if art isn’t your forte.

Please send your pictures and wishful poetry to mail[at]thisissternbild.com by March 31st, midnight Central European Time.

As usual with our events, we’ll make a page of your submissions and put it up to commemorate this first T&B anniversary!

Mar 8 2012

Breaking The Radio Silence, And Some Movie Info

It’s been a while since the last post, though I admit not much has happened, apart from Hirata Hiroaki winning a seiyuu award for his role as Kotetsu (we’re still hoping for Morita to get an award for his role, because damn he was good). Also, Aki was busy with her studies and I was sick for almost two weeks so the time&energy haven’t been on our side.

My wallet started to feel a bit better and more supportive of my shopping habit when I got a full time job for two months starting this week. Then I celebrated my new job by ordering the limited edition of Katsura’s artbook and now my wallet has a nervous twitch. (I had been lusting for that book for months so it just couldn’t be helped.) The downside is that due to my new working hours, I may miss the preorder window of chibi-arts Kotetsu tomorrow.

Ok, enough personal blogging, and on to…

Movie Info

Some magazine spoilers are popping up on 2ch, here’s what we got so far via /a/:

  • The first movie is a partially a retelling of the TV series integrating Kotetsu’s past; the movie is centered on Kotetsu’s past and the unknown side of Barnaby, and provides a deeper look into the two of them. Directed by Yoshitomo Yonetani.
  • The second movie is an all-new story, which will also contain some new characters, though the old supporting cast will be explored too. The two movies are standalone.
  • The ticket sales start on March 24 and there will be a live programme on Ustream the same day.
  • Satou will not direct either of the movies due to schedule conflicts, but he is participating in the planning.
  • The first movie incorporates a different POV than the TV series and has a lot of “behind the scenes” happenings.
  • Two thirds of the movie is new material.
  • Heroes will have their moments.
  • Matsui: We will see a different side of closed and revenge-focused Barnaby. It wasn’t seen that much within the TV series, but it has been present the whole time. I think he will be shown as an even more fascinating individual.

SOLD OUT: The Tickets Edition

Nishida on the movies:

  • Q: What should we expect from Kotetsu and Barnaby? What about the two of them would you like to show?
    N: The two movies are set at different points chronologically, so writing about the different distance between them is very enjoyable. They are bound by a very close and firm bond, but I would like to write about how their different ages and circumstances will be causing trouble.

So I was right when I suspected Satou wouldn’t be directing, he’s just too busy. I hope Nishida won’t rewrite what doesn’t need rewriting. There’s no reason to retcon anything.

Update: More stuff from Animage.

  • The first movie’s script is completely done, but Nishida is still writing the second’s.
  • Nishida not only writes the story/script, but also checks the storyboards.
  • Tamura about the first movie: The events connect to one incident seen in the TV series as well. And as the events and memories unfold and are added, the character exploration takes place. We hope that even people who have never seen T&B before will be able to say “Oh, so this is what the story was about.”

Movie site is now open!

Jan 24 2012

By The Way, Our Previous Opinion Still Stands

Winter anime season started a couple of weeks ago, and I could just as well copy what we posted when Autumn season began. Although this isn’t directly about Tiger & Bunny, it can’t be helped that we still compare everything we watch to reactions Tiger & Bunny got –  and still gets – from us. (Aki thinks this will go on forever, and I gotta agree. It’s not easy to beat the experience Tiger & Bunny gave us.)

For example, one thing we really got pampered with in Tiger & Bunny is the fact that Nishida held the reins on scripting the whole time. Of course he wasn’t the only writer but he was involved in every episode even when other writers worked on them. The importance of the writer didn’t really register with us before, we rarely paid attention to who’s writing the episodes until we started watching Persona 4 the Animation after Tiger & Bunny had already ended. The episodes were so uneven that it didn’t take many weeks for us to figure out that out of the three writers working on the scripts, only one actually seemed to have played the game and cared about characterization. This sucks because many of the parts that we loved about the game have been given a really poor treatment in the anime so far – the camping trip episode is a very good example, with bad pacing. Most of the things that made the camping trip so funny in the game were lost somewhere.

Anyways, back to the current Winter season. We ambitiously checked out quite a few of new series, but most of them have already been dropped due to being a) boring b) stupid c) bad d) all of the above. Some of the new stuff we’ve decided to keep watching falls into both b) and c) but because they’re so bad they end up being unintentionally funny. (That means you, Brave 10 and Aquarion EVOL.) Go figure, Aquarion EVOL gives even better laughs than the actual comedies – Daily Lives of High School Boys and Thermae Romae – that we are watching. Another is the most interesting one so far. We both love horror, and good horror anime is pretty rare. The sound design and scene planning in Another gives us chills, we just hope it’ll carry all the way through.

It was watching the latest episode of Another last night that made me realize what really is the difference between watching Tiger & Bunny and watching any other series. Allow me to demonstrate:

And we played a game until it was bedtime. Feels a bit sadman if I compare it to Superhero Saturdays and talking about Tiger & Bunny until we had to go to bed.

Aki would like to add the following:

[Aki_the_geek] one more comment
[Aki_the_geek] this is one of your shortest posts despite the fact you are talking about several anime in it
[Aki_the_geek] THAT SAYS SOMETHING.

Yyyyyyyep.