Merchandising!

Kotetsu’s cap is going to be made for sale! The executive producer of Tiger&Bunny, Masayuki Ozaki tweeted that he’d tried on the sample hat the other day. (Via ANN.)

Our immediate reaction was “do want”. And not just the hat, there’s a ton of things in the series that could be turned into character goods with ease, starting with the plushie in episode 5. We rounded up a quick list of items:

  • Pao Lin’s hairpin
  • Barnaby’s necklace
  • Yuri Petrov’s (fabulous) hairclips
  • Nathan’s star earrings
  • pink rabbit plushie
  • Mad Bear mascots
  • Heroes’ communicator bracelets

Kotetsu wears other bracelets, too, so those could also be a possibility. But weepinbelll on Tumblr noted that maybe his wife died of cancer and one of the bracelets is a pancreatic cancer awareness bracelet. This doesn’t sound too far fetched because of the amount of detail there is in the series.

There’s bound to be a lot more merchandise coming to the market because of how popular the show is getting. The popularity’s even affecting products that aren’t directly tied to the companies sponsoring the heroes but that are shown just briefly in some scenes, like the perfume bottle in one episode. It’s also worth mentioning the Official Hero Book that’s coming out in the end of July. Character profiles on the official site are really short compared to how much information most other series give about their characters, and I’m hoping the book will have complete profiles.

The Wild Tiger figure produced by S.H. Figuarts sold out already on preorders (you may get lucky and find it still available somewhere but it won’t be cheap), and I’m told that the Hero TV t-shirts are selling out, too. (Thanks, Kuuki.)

I don’t know about anyone else, but Sunrise can take all of our money for mini voice i-dolls of Kotetsu (“Lil’ Bunny!”) and Barnaby (“My name’s not Bunny, it’s Barnaby!”). Well, almost all. We want to get bunny plushies and those hats and… Yeah. (And I already preordered the Official Hero Book.)

New OP & ED themes

The news section on the official Tiger&Bunny site was updated on June 11th with information about the artists who’ll perform the 2nd opening and ending themes.

New opening theme will be MISSING LINK by THE NOVELS. They’re a new rock band and they’ve been doing well on Oricon indies charts. MISSING LINK will be their next big single and the CD will be out in August.

New ending theme will be MIND GAME by Tamaki. She’s also a fairly new artist who made her big debut earlier this year with the theme song to the movie Into the White Night.

I checked out some tracks I could find on YouTube and The Novels sounds really good to my ear. They feel kinda similar to Unison Square Garden and ROOKIEZ is PUNK’D. I’m not so sold on Tamaki, her voice seems really delicate and the songs I found were all kinda melancholy.

I wonder if the new songs will have something in common like the current ones that both have something to do with stars? I’m also tempted to say something about nothing beating the current ending animation in fabulously sparkly gay, but then it’ll just automatically mean Sunrise will outdo themselves again. (Like they don’t do that already every week.)

There’ll be some character song CD’s coming soon, too. Blue Rose and Kotetsu&Barnaby’s have already been announced. (If Kotetsu&Barnaby’s song turns out to be a duet I pretty much must own it.) More about them later!

Tiger tops Bunny… and everyone else

ANN posted news about the Spring anime character popularity poll held by a user on BIGLOBE. Not all the Spring anime series were included in the survey, but the results are still pretty surprising.

  1. Kotetsu T. Kaburagi / Wild Tiger (Tiger&Bunny) 2,374 votes
  2. Barnaby Brooks Jr. (Tiger&Bunny) 1,912 votes
  3. Sky High (Tiger&Bunny) 1,141 votes
  4. Erio Touwa (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko) 681 votes
  5. Meme Touwa (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko) 607 votes
  6. Naruko “Anaru” Anjou (AnoHana) 566 votes
  7. Hakase (Nichijou) 563 votes
  8. Kurisu Makise (Steins;Gate) 528 votes
  9. Karina Lyle / Blue Rose (Tiger&Bunny) 503 votes
  10. Aria H. Kanzaki (Hidan no Aria) 481 votes

And bubbling under was Dragon Kid on place 12. If you compare the amount of votes Kotetsu and Barnaby got to the rest of the characters in top 10, the only appropriate word I can come up with is “steamrolling”.

Kotetsu isn’t your usual anime leading man so I think that blogging about why he’s so popular is inevitable now. ( `ー´)八(`ー´ )

Derp happens

(No I’m not talking about myself…)

I’ve read so many QQ’s about the quality (or lack thereof) in episode 11 that I figured I should probably say something about it.

Guys, take a chill pill. It’s one episode. Sure, the derp moments were pretty derpy. And there were enough of them for even me to feel a bit annoyed. But remember that TV anime is made under a tight schedule and budget. Most series are only a few episodes ahead in production than what’s being broadcasted. (If the rumors about the last episode of Togainu no Chi anime are true, it was ready less than 24 hours before it was set to air. And the whole thing was herpderp to begin with!) Also, the inbetweeners aren’t as good at drawing as the key animators, and that’s where most of the derp was.

Many TV anime have their art fixed for DVD and BD releases, it’s kinda becoming a standard. Tiger&Bunny is getting prettied up, and when I heard about that I expected to see more derp in the broadcasts, since it can be fixed anyway.

Comparison of TV and BD versions.

Okay, I admit that I’d prefer to watch my anime with less derp, but this is just something we have to deal with.