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.

Getting E-mail Is Nice

I was this close to doing a spit-take at my screen this morning when I was checking our email and found this thing that Team Kaburagi sent us. (Aki on the other hand got a warning from me first, she’s thankful for that.) This suggestion for a new fried rice poster is just too glorious to not share.

Team Kaburagi wrote:
there – fixed it for you (bc crack image is… well)

Happy Year of the Dragon Kid, everyone ~!

– TK

(Just so happens I got the PASH! with the actual fried rice poster today. Nice timing!)

Christmas Event Pin Designs

Design by Pilar.

A huge thank you to everyone who took part in our Christmas Event and made your own memorial pin designs. The event idea was given to us by our chat channel mascot, and he also got the honor of randoming the Hero Gossips book we had up for grabs. Congratulations to Kokocho!

You can see all the designs here.

Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, or another seasonal holiday you’re celebrating, we wish you Happy Holidays!

– derpchan & Aki_the_geek

(By the way, December 8th was a kind of unofficial memorial pin day because it’s the day Kotetsu buys the matching pins at the skating rink.)

Fried Rice Is Here To Stay

There are two things in Tiger & Bunny that one just doesn’t seem to be able to escape, and fried rice is one of them.

Recently, Bandai announced this fried rice set from Barnaby to Kotetsu that’s available on Premium Bandai. It was also featured in detail on Bandai Namco’s “Item Thursday” shopping program webcast, where the presenter read an excerpt from Nishida Masafumi’s blog post about the fried rice line in episode 24. Yeah, the same post that he made about Friend Rice Event Gallery. They didn’t mention the event itself in the program, but ever since then I’ve been wondering if the photos that everyone sent have contributed to stuff like this fried rice set being made. Rumour also has it that the planned Kotetsu and Barnaby Chibi-arts have fried rice plates as accessories.

The fried rice line is pretty popular also in Japan, it came in first among Barnaby’s lines in the King of Catchphrases poll that was held for Hero Awards 2011. And by the way, the Friend Rice Event Gallery still gets a steady daily traffic mostly from Japan. Like I was told on Twitter, maybe we have brought this poverty on ourselves now that they’re making all this fried rice merchandise. I regret nothing, even though my wallet has a seizure every month. Arranging the event was tons of fun.

Oh, the other thing you can’t escape?

Barnaby’s speedo. Just wait for Summer and there’ll be an official version of that speedo for sale and ready for sandy beach sandy beach~ ♪. I’m calling it.