Nov 29 2011

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.

Nov 24 2011

Bring It On, Bandai! I Will Fight!

Tamashii Nation 2011 is this weekend, and there’s already a ton of pictures of Tiger & Bunny figures on display there. Dengeki has a pretty nice report, but the official Tiger & Bunny Twitter account posted some pictures that weren’t on Dengeki.

Although I think Lunatic looks awesome, and H-01 is pretty sweet too, what really got me going was this:

Hiding there, inconspicuously in the corner like he’s taken photo-bombing lessons from Origami Cyclone… that’s an actual Wild Tiger crapsuit edition figure (maybe with a surprise bulge and dangerous underpants like director Satou wanted). I haven’t been able to find a full photo of it but if it’s even nearly as sweet as I hope it is, I’m going to fight for it. (It might finally be the figure that will make Amiami’s servers go up in flames when the preorders open.)

Aki wished me luck…

…and I think she was laughing.

By the way, Hirata Hiroaki, Morita Masakazu and Inoue Go are at Tamashii Nation on Sunday 11/27. They’ll be on Tamashii’s Ustream program at 16:00 JST with reairing at 21:00 JST, and it’s not region-locked.

Nov 23 2011

Review: Official Books part 2

Official Hero Book 2 and Hero TV Fan vol. 2 are finally out. As I expected, the three week delay was so they could include advertisements for NEXT Project part 2 – in other words the movies – with the books.

Previous reviews of official source books:
Official Hero Book & Hero TV Fan vol. 1
Hero Gossips & Roman Album
Katsura Masakazu x TIGER & BUNNY – Original Drawings & Rough Sketches Collection

Tiger & Bunny Official Hero Book 2
Publisher: Ichijin-sha
ISBN: 978-4-7580-1244-7
Price: 980 JPY [CDJapan] [Hobby Search] [Amazon Japan] [YesAsia]

Tiger & Bunny Hero TV Fan vol. 2
Publisher: Shufu-to-Seikatsu Sha
ISBN: 978-4-391-63216-3
Price: 980 JPY [CDJapan] [Hobby Search] [Amazon Japan]

These books cover the 2nd cour (episodes 14-25) and they pick up from where the first set of books ended. Layout and style-wise they’re similar to them, so if you got those you know what to expect.

Continue reading →

Nov 22 2011

Sweet Dreams With A Hero Of Your Choice

We leave most of the merchandise blogging to Sternbild Central Market these days, but I can’t resist this. Partially because it almost got me to do a spit-take at my screen.

There’s been that fanmade mildly NSFW hug pillow cover available at Mandarake and Toranoana, but these… These are actual, official merchandise.

They’re bedsheets, your choice if you want to sleep with Kotetsu or Barnaby. There are also matching pillow cases, Kotetsu & Barnaby versions. I wonder if these will pop up on Bandai’s shopping webcast next time…

Update: These aren’t exclusives after all, above links go to CDJapan now, but they are available at Amiami and Hobby Search, too.

This photoshopped version is making me think that just like in this photoshopped composition of the posters, the poses on the sheets are a bit too intentional. As is that strip of bare midriff Barnaby is flaunting on the sheet and the poster.

And while I’m going on about merchandise and spit-takes, the character song album that was set for December has been pushed back to February 2012. It has a title now, too, BEST OF HERO. I can only hope the delay is to ensure we have another spontaneous discharge epic experience like “sandy beach, sandy beach” waiting for us.

I also got the new official books, Hero TV Fan vol. 2 and Official Hero Book 2, in the mail today. Review coming as I have time to get acquainted with them.