Feb 6 2012

Character Song Impressions Pt. 2

Everything they planned to sample from BEST OF HERO has now been sampled. You can listen to them on Lantis’ Tiger & Bunny page. Our impressions of the first five song samples are here.

“Mikire sakura” by Origami Cyclone (Okamoto Nobuhiko)

I don’t really think the sample is giving a very good impression of the song, or it’s just not really up our alley. Lyrics on the other hand sound very Origami-style. Full version might give a different impression.

“Todoroke☆Kung-fu Master” by Dragon Kid (Ise Mariya)

Cute like a button, and peppy, but we expected something more energetic. I think there might be more in the lyrics so full version would be nice with this song too.

“No Farewell” by Barnaby Brooks, Jr. (Morita Masakazu)

The song title made me expect something a bit more melancholy (and so did Twitter trolls going on about “Bunny’s feelings” – I can’t remember if it was Ozaki who tweeted that or if it was Hoshizora Sunrise). This song seems really fitting with how the series ended, and Morita sounds happy and hopeful singing it. The song also has this kind of 80s feeling, it’s hard to explain but I got pretty nostalgic listening to the sample.

“You are the HERO!!” by Tiger & Barnaby (Hirata Hiroaki and Morita Masakazu)

We didn’t think it’d be possible for the new duet to come anywhere near “Seigi no koe ga kikoerukai”, but this does. Hirata and Morita sound really good singing together, the lyrics sound like fun, and it just gives this “feels goodman” vibe.

[Aki_the_geek] i have no words to add about the duet because I’m all
[Aki_the_geek] like that picture with a dude in front of a computer with a rainbow waterfall flowing outta his mouth

This one? Seems accurate.

I tried asking Aki about her Top 3 from the samples, but then I realized I couldn’t pick just three. I think she hit the mark with this comment, though…

[derpchan] so what’s your top 3 from the samples?
[Aki_the_geek] 1. duet 2. duet 3. duet
[Aki_the_geek] 😛

(This is the second time ever I’m looking forward to a character song CD like crazy.)

How about you?

Feb 2 2012

BD/DVD vs TV comparisons from volume 9

This is the last volume, so last batch of fixes, too. Most of these are pretty minor corrections, and Blue Rose has again been a subject for repeated bust-size reduction.

Click the images for full-size versions, our layout resizes them automatically so they look a bit blurry here. Continue reading →

Feb 1 2012

Stage Plays And Cute Foods

(I missed all the excitement and buzz about Tiger & Bunny The Live on Twitter thanks to timezone differences and the fact that we were both already asleep. Anyway…!)

Tiger & Bunny The Live is going to be the 3rd step of NEXT Project. Ozaki went on a tweet spree to announce it, you can read a full translation of his tweets here. Save for the other things he said, what really caught my attention was this:

Ozaki: “Somehow, every time it tries to do something, T&B is always told “it’s impossible”, “you should give up” (^^;)”

Yet, Tiger & Bunny always does it, and it does it so well it surprises everyone. These guys have a really unshakable faith in Tiger & Bunny, and I really hope they keep succeeding at doing the impossible. Like with the live-action movie clarification, I got the impression that Ozaki and the others really care about their creation and do their best to respect the original work – the anime – and the fans. This is an important and a crucial part of marketing, you could pull in new audience (or customers) in many different ways but all too often I’ve seen that done while forgetting the existing fans. You shouldn’t exclude the fans you already have on the expense of getting new ones, and Ozaki and the team working on Tiger & Bunny show that they’ve done their homework here.

Well, at least when it comes to Japanese fans. I just wish there was something more for us fans overseas, now we’ll have to wait until BD&DVD releases which take a long time.

Another thing that came to my mind while reading Ozaki’s tweets is that one of the themes in the series is how people from different generations can come to understand each other and bond. What Ozaki said – how he wants people from different generations to come together to enjoy Tiger & Bunny – reflects this and is really fitting in my opinion.

And then, after promising more information on the movie next week, he went on to raise a giant S2 flag:

Ozaki: “This work was originally an anime, and I sincerely understand that what fans really want is a new series. Please wait some more…!”

Speaking of NEXT Projects, Namco Namja Town café event is currently listed on the site on the 4th step place, but I don’t recall seeing it referred to as a NEXT Project so it’s probably there just for promotion convenience. We aren’t even sure how many NEXT Projects there will be, nothing says it’ll stop at step four.

These are too cute to eat.

Jan 26 2012

Hero Awards 2011 BD/DVD Contents Listed On The Official Site

Hero Awards 2011 cover art by character designer Hayama Kenji.

Hero Awards 2011 BD/DVD release contents were added to the official site today.

Also:

Last episode live viewing talk digest
Pocket-size pamphlet (this is marked as subject to change on the official site)
Cover especially drawn by character designer Hayama Kenji

And I just have to say this. Barnaby, I know you have a “stylish” image but man, get a stylist. That suit is just…

Update: It just got more amusing. And here come the manips. More at subcultureblog.

Jan 24 2012

By The Way, Our Previous Opinion Still Stands

Winter anime season started a couple of weeks ago, and I could just as well copy what we posted when Autumn season began. Although this isn’t directly about Tiger & Bunny, it can’t be helped that we still compare everything we watch to reactions Tiger & Bunny got – and still gets – from us. (Aki thinks this will go on forever, and I gotta agree. It’s not easy to beat the experience Tiger & Bunny gave us.)

For example, one thing we really got pampered with in Tiger & Bunny is the fact that Nishida held the reins on scripting the whole time. Of course he wasn’t the only writer but he was involved in every episode even when other writers worked on them. The importance of the writer didn’t really register with us before, we rarely paid attention to who’s writing the episodes until we started watching Persona 4 the Animation after Tiger & Bunny had already ended. The episodes were so uneven that it didn’t take many weeks for us to figure out that out of the three writers working on the scripts, only one actually seemed to have played the game and cared about characterization. This sucks because many of the parts that we loved about the game have been given a really poor treatment in the anime so far – the camping trip episode is a very good example, with bad pacing. Most of the things that made the camping trip so funny in the game were lost somewhere.

Anyways, back to the current Winter season. We ambitiously checked out quite a few of new series, but most of them have already been dropped due to being a) boring b) stupid c) bad d) all of the above. Some of the new stuff we’ve decided to keep watching falls into both b) and c) but because they’re so bad they end up being unintentionally funny. (That means you, Brave 10 and Aquarion EVOL.) Go figure, Aquarion EVOL gives even better laughs than the actual comedies – Daily Lives of High School Boys and Thermae Romae – that we are watching. Another is the most interesting one so far. We both love horror, and good horror anime is pretty rare. The sound design and scene planning in Another gives us chills, we just hope it’ll carry all the way through.

It was watching the latest episode of Another last night that made me realize what really is the difference between watching Tiger & Bunny and watching any other series. Allow me to demonstrate:

And we played a game until it was bedtime. Feels a bit sadman if I compare it to Superhero Saturdays and talking about Tiger & Bunny until we had to go to bed.

Aki would like to add the following:

[Aki_the_geek] one more comment
[Aki_the_geek] this is one of your shortest posts despite the fact you are talking about several anime in it
[Aki_the_geek] THAT SAYS SOMETHING.

Yyyyyyyep.

This is Sternbild

…blogging, and blogging again

Tag Archives: anime