It’s been a while since we’ve been blogging, and blogging again. And right now we’re not so sure about how much blogging we’ll do about season 2. It’s not just about how much our lives have changed since the first season (it’ll be 11 years when S2 airs – we’re no longer students, we have day jobs and commitments) but also the fact that it’ll be on Netflix and the first cour will be released in one go.
A large part of the experience for first season, probably for most of the people who got into TIGER & BUNNY while it was still airing, was waiting for the next episode to come out. Waiting, discussing, theorizing, talking about the plot and the characters. The wait for the final episode was both excruciating (and filled with carbs) and a lot of fun. We literally talked about TIGER & BUNNY every day for months. This social aspect is really important and I’m not sure if the series would have gathered the following it did if it had been released in one go for streaming. It might have been fast forgotten if it hadn’t been for the fans talking about it so much throughout the entire first season as it aired.
Times change, and binging a series can be fun – we’ve probably all been there with “just one more episode”. A binged series has to be great to make it memorable, it’s just too easy to zone out mentally when you’re on a full day marathon through the season. There’s no time to digest what you just watched when the next episode is already queued. Streaming platforms dedicated to anime (Crunchyroll, Wakanim, etc.) still do weekly releases, and Disney+ has been successful releasing an episode per week for their MCU series – although some of them actually work better when binged, and they feel like they were made for binging despite the weekly releases. Netflix is the outlier here and we sort of wish S2 would be streamed somewhere else.
The first season is currently available on Netflix in my country. They have removed all sponsor logos from the hero suits (which makes the opening sequences very awkward without nothing to zoom to) and the episodes lack the C-part. Not including the C-part (the stinger after the ending and before next episode preview) is like walking out of a Marvel movie the moment the credits start rolling. Many episodes had vital plot points in the C-part. So, if any of you have watched the first season only on Netflix, we urge you to find another version and check it out. This is the biggest problem with the Netflix release, parts of the episodes missing without good reason, and it raises a worry if S2 will have these mindless edits.
Lastly, there’s the QUALITY GYM. Parts of S1 production were rushed which shows in animation quality – something that is very common in anime as new episodes are produced while the show is already airing. Having half of the season released in one go means more even and higher quality… but the QUALITY of S1 had its own charm. If you haven’t seen the TV versions of the episodes, you might not realize how big the differences were.
Check some examples below, comparison of TV version and the corrections made for blu-ray release: