Tag Archives: it can’t be helped

Apr 26 2012

Spring Season Anime Round-Up

We’re a couple of weeks into Spring season, so it’s time for some impressions again. Aki and I are still shedding tears into our Pepsi about there not being more Tiger & Bunny, but this season is actually turning out to be better than expected. Since we talked about ZETMAN before so I guess that’s a good one to start with…

We Are Disappoint

The worst fears I had about ZETMAN are turning out to be true. 13 episodes is too little, the pace is far too fast, and they’re changing things too much. I fully expected them to change something – that’s always the case with adaptations – but they’re making the story less dark. I won’t say more about the changes since Aki’s avoiding being spoiled about the manga story. There’s no time to build any characterization at the pace they’re going, and Aki is just confused and doesn’t really give a damn about any of the characters. Or the plot. If they’re even managing to build any plot, so far they’re going for the cool factor and nothing really clicks together. I’m mostly just feeling sad about what they’re doing to ZETMAN. The more I watch it the more I feel like I can’t really recommend it to anyone, and it’s a shame because it does look good and the action sequences are well composed. The opening song is very catchy too. I might end up watching this alone if Aki decides to drop it and read the manga instead.

And The Rest

The previous season, most of the stuff we dropped was because it just turned out boring or plain bad. This season seemed like the season of the ragequit because we actually started with a few of those! After the ill first impressions we found a title that is really worth checking for Taibani fans.

Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyoudai) – Hirata Hiroaki plays the main character: a thirty-something guy who gets fired in the first episode from his job designing (red) sports cars, wears too short pants that show his ankles, squashes his burgers and fails a lot. Sound familiar? Well, it’s not Kotetsu but the parallels are really amusing. We got no idea if Hirata got a bit of typecast here after his success with Kotetsu because he’s using a very Kotetsu-like voice for the role. The series is entertaining with a good pacing, even though the setting itself feels quite generic – the main character has to overcome a lot of obstacles to reach his dreams. I feel like I’ve seen a story like this many, many times before but it doesn’t really bother me. The other things outweigh it. Oh, and Crunchyroll is streaming it so you can watch it there.

We’re also happy that Noitamina is good again after a few seasons of stumbling. We were a bit iffy about Sakamichi no Apollon at first because the series compositor Kakihara Yuuko did an epic failure with Persona 4 the Animation, but so far it’s been really pleasant to watch. Tsuritama was automatically on our watch list because we’ve both got the hots for Nakamura Kenji‘s series – Mononoke is one of our all-time favourites.

The rest of our watch list for this season looks like this: Arashi no yoru ni, Folktales from Japan, Hyouka (this just started so we’re still undecided if we’ll stick with it), Jormungand, Lupin III: Mine Fujiko to iu onna, Eureka Seven AO, and Shirokuma Cafe.

It’s Not Anime But I Like It

Actually, there’s something we want to recommend this season: Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger – a parody on super sentai shows. Now, what makes this interesting for us is that Satou Keiichi did the character design for the show. Maybe we’ll get to see some dangerous underpants (with a surprise bulge) in it. Plus it’s really really funny, even for people who don’t normally watch tokusatsu shows. Give it a try!

Apr 23 2012

Stage Play Information From Ozaki

Executive Producer Ozaki Masayuki went on an info tweet spree again, this time about the upcoming stage play. Aki translated what he had to say:

About the T&B THE LIVE stage play casting #1: We’ve almost fully assembled the main cast. Our enthusiastic staff and the people at JAE did their best to choose the right actors. In addition to focusing on the appearance, acting skills and the ability to perform action sequences, we paid extra attention to the actors’ behaviour, voice, and the atmosphere they create around themselves to fit the characters’ imagery.

About the T&B THE LIVE stage play casting #2: We also considered choosing from the original anime cast, but due to the physical differences, this time we decided to build the team from scratch to create a play full of action sequences.

About the T&B THE LIVE stage play casting #3: The original cast of characters is full of people representing different races, so we also auditioned people who are not Japanese, but due to the fact that it’s difficult to include subtitles or a dubbing in a live-stage play, we preferred actors fluent in Japanese. However, I believe that the original feel of Sternbild – which is like a melting pot full of people of different races – was preserved well.

About the T&B THE LIVE stage play casting #4: We had two aims in mind: to fulfill the expectations of the fans of the anime, and to perfect this event as a live stage play, and we tried to do our best to balance it out. Of course, whether we achieved our goals or not is for the viewers to judge. After all, we’re still at the starting point.

About the T&B THE LIVE stage play casting #5: The main cast and the information on the play itself (locations and the schedule) is to be announced on the main TIGER & BUNNY THE LIVE site in May. http://www.tb-thelive.net/ Look forward to it!

(Sources: 1 2 3 4 5)

It’s nice how they are obviously putting a lot of work into the stage play. We really hope there’ll be a recording of it released on BD or DVD later. It’s not the same as going to see it in person, but this is just one of those cases of “it can’t be helped”.

Apr 16 2012

KING OF WORKS Sneak Peek

The official site updated with a nice preview of the upcoming KING OF WORKS archive. The final look of the set might still change since this is a concept picture, but this gives a better idea of what you’re getting than just listing the things. And speaking of lists, here’s what the archive contains:

  1. Settings Collection (B4 size, 256 pages)
  2. Scripts Collection (B5 size, two volumes with 208 pages each)
  3. Original Illustrations Collection (B4 size, 144 pages)
  4. A box to hold all of it.
  5. Calendar (September 2012 to August 2013)
  6. Illustration of Kotetsu and Barnaby (no preview for that yet)

The total page count (without the calendar) is 816, and the price for all this is still the same as before, 5,880 JPY.

The Japanese fans are calling KING OF WORKS a “definitive blunt weapon”, and it’s going to be quite a hefty package. For comparison, this pile of books has 768 pages and it weighs almost exactly three (3) kilos:

Mar 24 2012

Ustream Special Lag And New Sponsors

Hirata: *photobombs*
Morita: “Ojisan!”

I did my best to watch the special on Ustream, but the extreme lag made it really difficult. Seems that they didn’t show the trailer, but I’m not 100% sure because the stream blacked out for minutes at one point, exactly when they were talking about the movie. Ozaki, Hirata and Morita were chatting and they seemed to have a lot of fun but the stuttering and constant freezes made it impossible to keep up with what exactly they were talking about.

New Sponsors

The movie will have the heroes with some new sponsors. The official movie site has them all listed with pictures of the placement, but here they are for convenience:

Wild Tiger: SoftBank, S.H. Figuarts, FamilyMart (new)
Barnaby Brooks Jr.: Bandai, Crusade, Amazon.co.jp
Blue Rose: Pepsi NEX
Rock Bison: Gyu-Kaku, HYBRID Futomen Doudou (new)
Sky High: Ustream, Tamashii Nations, T-Joy (new), MOVIX (new)
Dragon Kid: Calbee, DAM (new)
Fire Emblem: Animate, Domino’s Pizza (new)
Origami Cyclone: Takasu Clinic, Namu Kyara Ouendan, minimini (new), Bandai Visual Club (new)

So only Barnaby and Blue Rose didn’t get any new sponsors. To me the FamilyMart logo on Wild Tiger’s suit looks weird since the old advertisements blended so well with it. Anyways. Brace your wallets because you do realize what these new sponsors mean?

Yeah. Tiger & Bunny S.H. Figuarts The Movie Edition are looming in the future.

Also, Morita will be a guest in Hoshizora Sunrise radio tomorrow, and starting April he’ll also be a personality hosting Hero Radio on Ustream. (Again, region locked.)

Mar 8 2012

Breaking The Radio Silence, And Some Movie Info

It’s been a while since the last post, though I admit not much has happened, apart from Hirata Hiroaki winning a seiyuu award for his role as Kotetsu (we’re still hoping for Morita to get an award for his role, because damn he was good). Also, Aki was busy with her studies and I was sick for almost two weeks so the time&energy haven’t been on our side.

My wallet started to feel a bit better and more supportive of my shopping habit when I got a full time job for two months starting this week. Then I celebrated my new job by ordering the limited edition of Katsura’s artbook and now my wallet has a nervous twitch. (I had been lusting for that book for months so it just couldn’t be helped.) The downside is that due to my new working hours, I may miss the preorder window of chibi-arts Kotetsu tomorrow.

Ok, enough personal blogging, and on to…

Movie Info

Some magazine spoilers are popping up on 2ch, here’s what we got so far via /a/:

  • The first movie is a partially a retelling of the TV series integrating Kotetsu’s past; the movie is centered on Kotetsu’s past and the unknown side of Barnaby, and provides a deeper look into the two of them. Directed by Yoshitomo Yonetani.
  • The second movie is an all-new story, which will also contain some new characters, though the old supporting cast will be explored too. The two movies are standalone.
  • The ticket sales start on March 24 and there will be a live programme on Ustream the same day.
  • Satou will not direct either of the movies due to schedule conflicts, but he is participating in the planning.
  • The first movie incorporates a different POV than the TV series and has a lot of “behind the scenes” happenings.
  • Two thirds of the movie is new material.
  • Heroes will have their moments.
  • Matsui: We will see a different side of closed and revenge-focused Barnaby. It wasn’t seen that much within the TV series, but it has been present the whole time. I think he will be shown as an even more fascinating individual.

SOLD OUT: The Tickets Edition

Nishida on the movies:

  • Q: What should we expect from Kotetsu and Barnaby? What about the two of them would you like to show?
    N: The two movies are set at different points chronologically, so writing about the different distance between them is very enjoyable. They are bound by a very close and firm bond, but I would like to write about how their different ages and circumstances will be causing trouble.

So I was right when I suspected Satou wouldn’t be directing, he’s just too busy. I hope Nishida won’t rewrite what doesn’t need rewriting. There’s no reason to retcon anything.

Update: More stuff from Animage.

  • The first movie’s script is completely done, but Nishida is still writing the second’s.
  • Nishida not only writes the story/script, but also checks the storyboards.
  • Tamura about the first movie: The events connect to one incident seen in the TV series as well. And as the events and memories unfold and are added, the character exploration takes place. We hope that even people who have never seen T&B before will be able to say “Oh, so this is what the story was about.”

Movie site is now open!