Tag Archives: madness? no it’s taibani!

Jul 6 2012

Ozaki’s tweets about the movie premiere

Our favourite moe oyaji, executive producer Ozaki went on one of his tweet sprees about the movie premiere. At the same time, the official site was updated with the new main visual and the new trailer featuring UNISON SQUARE GARDEN’s song written for the movie is also streaming.

The new main visual.

Aki translated the tweets from Ozaki. Original tweets: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

“We’re organizing large-scale events on the first day of screenings including the movie viewing (in the event venue and during the live viewings), codenamed “World Premiere” (twice during night and day). Even looking at this from a global perspective, it’s a unique thing we’ve never tried before, but I hope everyone will be able to enjoy it together.”

“Of course, since it’s the movie premiere, you’ll be able to see it in the regular cinemas as well. I guess it’d be easier to imagine what it’s going to be if I say it’s a movie screening event including live talks and a really great on-scene greeting for all the fans. The event will be about 4 hours long, including breaks.”

“Right now we’re trying to reserve an event venue that’d be as big as possible. However, there’s a high possibility that no matter what kind of a place we reserve, we might still have problems with accomodating all the people interested in seeing it – so to satisfy the wishes of fans from different places, we decided to prepare the live viewings in the cinemas all around Japan.”

“I recommend our event both to those who’d like to see it in the venue, and to those who’d like to enjoy it during the live viewings in cinemas while watching the movie on a big screen and with the cinematic sound effects. For those who’d like to just enjoy the movie, I recommend going to a regular cinema.”

“When we decide where the viewings and the event itself are to be held (probably somewhere in the outskirts of Tokyo), we’ll announce it on the official site. Same goes for the ticket sales schedule. Please wait for the announcements from the cinemas.”

“We’d also like to let those who live in the places where the movie screenings start from October see the live viewings in their home area. Thanks to people from TJOY and Shochiku, I think we’ll be able to provide live viewings in about 100 places around Japan.”

The second version of the advance tickets is also available now, you get a pair of mascots with your purchase. The first version tickets came with Wild Tiger crapsuit card.

Jul 6 2012

Tiger & Bunny -The Beginning- information from around the interwebs

Tiger & Bunny was featured on morning TV in Japan the other day, and new footage of the movie was shown. The theme song for the movie “Linear Blue wo Kikinagara” will be performed by UNISON SQUARE GARDEN who also performed the first opening “Orion wo nazoru”. The new NEXT appearing in the movie is called Robin and he’ll be voiced by Yamaguchi Kappei.

The new Cinema★Cinema magazine features Tiger & Bunny movies, and there’s information also in other new magazines on the movie.

From this month’s Otona Animedia’s interview with Yonetani:

  • Tiger & Barnaby’s suits will be explored in more detail in the movie.
  • Sky High, Origami, and Blue Rose’s suit gimmicks will also get some attention.
  • The scenes concerning T&B’s suits are somewhat prominent.
  • The way the other heroes interacted with the main pair at first will be shown.
  • Shadowing, mouth movement, and the way eyes are drawn have been revised and made more cohesive; the old footage has been fixed accordingly.

Animage, Yonetani’s interview:

  • The movie’s story is based on episodes 1 and 2.
  • From now on Nishida is not just the script writer, but the “story director”.
  • Among other things the movie contains scenes from the first meeting between Barnaby and the other heroes.
  • Close-up on Tomoe will be there as well.

Animage, Hirata’s and Morita’s interview:

  • The voice recording is all done.
  • The movie is 90 minutes long.
  • Plenty of “behind the scenes” material; for example the way Tiger & Barnaby’s suits work and how they put them on.

Newtype:

  • An interview with Hirata and Morita.
  • Next month’s issue will have Tiger & Bunny on the cover and it will contain a special novel.

Cinema★Cinema cover plus special: Tiger & Bunny The Movie:

  • Cover, insert and a double-sided pinup.
  • Opening special “Crazy About Partners”.
  • Interview with director Yoshitomo Yonetani and Ozaki.
  • Hirata and Morita talk “‘Buddy’ Only Knows”.
  • A look back at the partner masterpiece Tiger & Bunny.
  • Sneak peak at T&B The Live.

If you experience lust for the Cinema★Cinema magazine, I found it at least at CDJapan (though their rates for magazine shipping are horrible).

A new movie trailer will be available on July 7th in theaters in Japan, featuring the new song. I’m not certain if it will be available online simultaneously or if we have to wait a bit.

(Sources: T&Bros on /a/ and Tumblr.)

And totally unrelated, but I got my copy of KING OF WORKS and I’ll see if I can get a review together this weekend with plenty of pics!

Jun 21 2012

Just according to Ozaki’s keikaku

The above tweet from Nikkei Marketing Journal quotes Bandai Namco’s CEO Ishikawa, who said that they are putting effort into Tiger & Bunny and new toys and games are in development for the movie premiere this Fall.

Executive Producer Ozaki retweeted it with a short response:

Yes. He said “just as planned”.

What this means (apart from the fact that they want the money we so willingly shovel at them) is that Tiger & Bunny is selling really, really well. It has been – along with Gundam UC – a focus franchise of Bandai Namco for the past year. At this point Tiger & Bunny is not funding just itself, it and Gundam UC are also helping to financially cover for the franchises that aren’t making any profit. Some people might get upset over the money they spend on Tiger & Bunny paying for Sunrise’s flops (Gundam AGE, I’m looking at you), but this is simply how business works. I’m going to keep my business nerd restrained so I won’t bore you to death, but according to the so called 80-20 rule, 80% of profits are created by 20% of the products a business sells (or in this case, maybe 80% of profits come from 20% of the customers could be more accurate). Bandai Namco has many, many franchises, and although Gundam UC and Tiger & Bunny are just two lines on the long list of titles they’ve produced, they are currently the big selling ones. The big sellers allow the smaller, niche franchises to continue existing and keep the fans of those titles happy. This 80-20 rule isn’t applied just to making anime. It has many other applications, and not just in business. If you’re interested in learning more, look up “Pareto principle”.

I’m stating the obvious, but Tiger & Bunny is a true success story, considering how new it is and that it is an original anime. That is also why the merchandise sales are so critical for it, because the related merchandise is exactly where the profits are. BD&DVD sales are critical only to a certain breaking point. Speaking of BD sales, the anime BD&DVD sales in Japan are generally low because of their high pricing system. It’s not just anime that suffers from high prices, a Hollywood movie released in Japan on DVD costs easily twice as much as the European release. An anime title that sells over 10 000 copies per volume can be called a hit. (For the record, Tiger & Bunny sold around 25 000 copies of each Limited Edition BD volume.) “Why the prices on DVD and BD media are kept so high?” is a question I don’t have an answer for. If someone has an answer, please do share~

This post was actually longer first, but then there was a herpderp and I lost the whole thing. Also, at first I was going to just blog about Ozaki being “keikaku doori” and my initial point was that they seem to be investing proper money in the movie production. Instead it came out this way. I guess it couldn’t be helped. And I guess we might never see QUALITY gym again. *knocks on wood*

(TL note: keikaku means plan)