Category Tiger&Bunny

Oct 9 2011

For Fun: Barnaby’s Surprise Birthday Party 2011!

Hey, everyone loves surprises, right? Right?! We’re a bit more classier than getting the Birthday Boy mugged in a back alley while being all alone, though. So we decided to do something else to celebrate the birthday of one Barnaby Brooks, Jr. on October 31st.

How to take part:

Make something that falls under the following categories and take a photo of it!

  • Arts & crafts: handmade items such as plushies, birthday cards, traditional art, or other handicrafts. (Note: You can make part of the present digitally and print it, the photo must be of an actual item!)
  • Food: birthday cakes or other birthday themed food.

Let your creativity flow! Remember that all presents must indicate somehow that they are for Barnaby. You can include him in the photo in same fashion as in Friend Rice Event, but it’s not required as long as it’s clear from your photo that the present is for him. Since these are presents for Barnaby, they must be actual items. Please don’t send in cosplay photos or digital fanart. We’ll make a gallery of all the presents to celebrate his birthday together with everyone! You can freely promote the event to your friends, the more the merrier!

You can send your photos to mail[at]thisissternbild.com at any time before 12:00 (noon) CET on October 31st.

P.S. There’s also a Halloween themed event to celebrate Bunny’s birthday!

Oct 8 2011

Hero Awards live viewing event to be held (Updated 2011/10/21)

http://twitter.com/#!/TIGERandBUNNY/status/122496640505487360

The official Twitter of Tiger & Bunny announced earlier today that a live viewing event would be held together with the first part of NEXT PROJECT, the Hero Awards 2011 event on November 13th. Executive producer Ozaki Masayuki just posted a series of tweets, explaining more details about the event. Due to issues with scheduling and other events, they couldn’t get a bigger venue for the Hero Awards but because the interest for the event tickets was so great, a nationwide live viewing event was decided. The tickets will be available for preorder on 10/13 and as I understood there won’t be a raffle for them this time – scratch that, the official Twitter just announced they will be raffled. There’s a live viewing planned for both the daytime and the evening show of Hero Awards.

The other week, Aki told me that she’d heard the amount of people who wanted tickets for the Hero Awards event was 150 times the amount of available tickets. Kanagawa Kenmin Hall seats 2488 people, and with two shows that day… Well, the number just felt too huge, way too huge even for Tiger & Bunny, and I couldn’t find a source to confirm it anywhere so I just shrugged it off. Now, with the live viewing events planned it doesn’t seem all that far fetched anymore.

I really hope they record these events and release them on BD or DVD later. I want to see them!

Update #1: This tweet seems to confirm that the amount of applicants for the Hero Awards tickets was indeed 750,000. (2011/10/08)

Update #2: Official Twitter announced that the tickets will be raffled. (2011/10/10)

Update #3: e-plus has listed the theaters where Hero Awards 2011 live viewing is available. Aki counted over 100, I got mixed up with my count before I got very far so I’ll just take her word for it. (2011/10/11)

Update #4: Otanews has compiled a more manageable list of the theaters from e-plus. The event will be broadcast to 103 theaters, of which 61 will show both the daytime and the evening show. (2011/10/12)

Update #5: Ozaki is currently visiting New York Comic Con, and he said there that “the studio is hoping to announce the “next step” for Tiger & Bunny at the November 13 event”. Also, English dub for Tiger & Bunny was announced in the same news post at ANN. (2011/10/16)

Update #6: More theaters have been added for the live viewing event, total number is now 107. It’ll be the biggest live viewing event in Japan so far. (2011/10/21)

Oct 7 2011

Hero Gossips and Roman Album on Oricon’s weekly book ranking

Both Hero Gossips and Roman Album made it to Oricon’s weekly general book ranking (this list excludes manga, it has an own list). The figures only include the retailers that Oricon tracks so the actual amount of sold books is probably higher.

23. Tiger & Bunny Official Guide Book Hero Gossips … 13,200 (estimated)
26. Tiger & Bunny Roman Album … 11,757 (estimated)

The first Official Hero Book sold really well, and judging from how fast Hero Gossips seems to be selling it’ll probably reach a similar number, depending on how many copies they’ve printed.

I’m actually having a hard time finding Hero Gossips in stock at the usual outlets where I shop, and Aki was wondering how many of those books have been bought by non-Japanese fans of T&B.

Oct 6 2011

Tidbits from new PASH!

There’s a feature on Tiger & Bunny in the new issue of PASH! Some information from it has started to appear. I’ll update more if/when I find it.

  • During the early stages of development there was an idea to kill Rock Bison in action.
  • During the planning stage Barnaby had teleportation powers, while Kotetsu had memory manipulation.
  • Matsui wants to see Barnaby cook fried rice. Girls in swimsuits are would be nice too.
  • Jake has two powers, but only glows when using his barriers. Mind-reading is an automatic process of receiving, so the glow doesn’t activate, unlike when using active abilities.
  • There are many questions about whether some other supernatural phenomena other than the usual NEXT powers exist in their world. Mind-reading could be one of them.
  • NEXT powers are poorly understood. Their origin is unknown, they don’t seem to be genetic and there are no solid rules as far as their manifestations are concerned.
  • The story was considerably darker during the initial planning stage.
  • Matsui (about the story from episode 25 onwards): Barnaby is slightly tsun (it’s his nature), but they understand and trust each other so thoroughly that sometimes words aren’t even needed.
  • There was a proposition about making Kotetsu the one who scarred Lunatic (the idea was that they had some kind of a confrontation in the past).
  • Hirata sighs that after mere 6 months he lost his 10 year long reputation as the “pirate seiyuu” and has become the “ojisan seiyuu”. Morita on the other hand is now known for tsunderes and glasses.

This is just my opinion, but if they had gone with the teleportation and memory manipulation powers they had in mind first, I think T&B would have turned out a completely different series. As for the story being darker, we grew so attached to the characters because the 1st cour was light-hearted. If there had been the possibility that someone would have died then, I at least would have avoided attachment. (I seem to end up with my favourite characters always dying.)

Morita probably won’t shake off his years as Ichigo that easily, but to me he will forever be Barnaby. He’s done other great roles (my other favourite of his is Rail Tracer from Baccano!) but I think Barnaby is his best performance up to date.

(Also, Matsui should see to that fried rice scene becoming a reality. We need it.)

Oct 6 2011

For Fun: When T&B invades other series…

Tiger & Bunny is getting so popular that the characters started making cameos in other series even before the series finished airing. Barnaby seems to pop up most often, though Kotetsu has been moonlighting on the side, too. There are probably more examples, and I am not sure which series some of these pictures are from. Feels kinda like “Spot Origami Cyclone” -game but instead of just T&B you’re playing it with all the current anime and manga.

Continue reading →