So, two movies. There’s no news yet on what they’ll be about, nor have I seen who’s in the staff (but I hope Satou will be directing again, and Nishida writing). I have a bit mixed feelings about that it’s going to be movies instead of S2 or OVAs, because I haven’t seen that many good movies based on TV anime.

My biggest worry is that the movies will be a recap – or even worse, recap that retcons the story. Recap movies tend to be boring since I’ve already seen the anime and I know what’ll happen, better graphics doesn’t really make it that much more interesting for me. The retcon movies on the other hand make me rage. Let’s take the Macross Frontier movies as an example; I saw the anime and I enjoyed it even though it had flaws and my favourite character got killed. The movies retconned so much of the story and characterization that I wasn’t even sure what I was watching – and I just couldn’t like them even though my favourite character survived in them. I really, really do not want to see retcon happen to Tiger & Bunny and its characters.

(To clarify: I don’t believe they’d take the recap/retcon route, especially if S2 is in the works behind the scenes; it makes more sense to do a proper lead up to it with the movies. It’s just something I wanted to note because many anime movies pick the easy way and recap the story.)

The new footage that was shown at the Hero Awards 2011 event may indicate that we’ll get a new story. The staff have stated on more than one occasion that they have a lot of material they couldn’t fit into the anime, so the possibility of all that being used for the movies is pretty high. They could do a lot of stuff with just the 10 month timeskip, but if I’d have to make bets I’d say at least one of the movies will be set after the anime ending because of what Ozaki mentioned in a recent interview. It’s also more than likely that the movies will get new sponsors since the sample pictures had the hero suits blank of advertisements. New project, new sponsors.

The other major gripe I have with anime movies is that I’m not in Japan and have no chance to go there just to see a movie. They can take up to a year to be released on BD/DVD, and the wait is going to be agonizing. The likelihood of getting spoiled for plot is pretty high, too, since I know many Japanese fans and I doubt I can avoid all the spoilers… I don’t know if I even want to avoid them because I’m dying for more Tiger & Bunny. I’ve seen some speculations about the movies making it to the USA pretty fast because the streams were so popular, which is great for the American fans. I’m European so I’ll probably get the Japanese version faster, though.

I’m pretty hopeful we’ll eventually get S2, and the movies’ job is to tide us over until then. Ozaki wanted to do a continuation fast, and a S2 wouldn’t have been ready until 2013. It’s understandable they want to make more when Tiger & Bunny is so popular. Too long wait would be bad in business sense, and Sunrise (and Bandai) are doing this for business after all. The movies are only step 2 in NEXT Project (Hero Awards was step 1) so who knows what we’ll get… I’ve heard there should be four steps in it.