Just as Ozaki promised – more information on the movies! The first Tiger & Bunny movie “TIGER & BUNNY – The Beginning” will hit theaters in September, as it was announced today. There isn’t much information about the movie itself yet, but a few things came to my mind when I glanced at the site.

1. There’s no actual staff listed yet. I doubt Satou is directing this time, his Ashura movie is opening in August and he was just announced to be directing the new Saint Seiya CG movie. He must have several projects going on at the same time on this rate, but that he would also work on Tiger & Bunny movies seems improbable. Ozaki did spoil on Twitter earlier that producer Tamura Kazuhiko is working on the movies and that the same studio is animating them as the anime itself. Only cast listed so far are Hirata and Morita, which is pretty much given.
2. The title is subject to change as it says on the movie site (that’s what “（仮）” means after the title). I hope they will change it because right now it has too much of a recap movie vibe. It could just be signifying it’s the first movie, though.

As much as I’d like the movie to be all new material, I’m about 99% certain that a portion of it will be recap. Why? From Ozaki’s recent tweets, it’s pretty clear he wants more people to get into Tiger & Bunny and to enjoy it. It would be counter-productive to make a movie that is hard for new audiences to approach. These guys seem very good at marketing their creation, and that’s just pure marketing logic.

I’m fine with some recap though, if it brings more success to Tiger & Bunny.

Update: Seems I was right in my recap thoughts, this article at Anime! Anime! calls the movie a “hybrid episode” with material they weren’t able to use in the series (timeskip stuff, maybe?). It also mentions that the second movie is planned for 2013.

Update 2: Some spoilers from Newtype seem to indicate that the second movie won’t be a direct continuation to the first one – they’ll be stand-alone stories. New character(s) will also be introduced in the movies.

Update 3: I’m seeing lots of comments that maybe the movie will be a prequel. That sounds far fetched to me. Why? Because they’re called Tiger & Bunny movies. They met in the first episode of the series, and before that there was no “Tiger & Bunny”. A prequel would most likely be about Tiger’s early heroing days. I think it’d be fun to watch but it’d just be a Tiger movie, not a Tiger & Bunny movie (I’d totally watch an OVA about Wild Tiger’s early days). Barnaby’s early search for Ouroboros wouldn’t make a very interesting movie, and I doubt his academy days would either, since he seems to have mostly kept to himself and not bonded with anyone.