Tiger & Bunny is a new anime program current airing weekly in Japan. Produced by Sunrise it's currently being directed by Keiichi Satou (best known for his work on Big O). The series revolves around a couple of super heroes who fight crime while driving ad revenue and product placement for a hero themed television program.

Synopsis

The first two episodes of Tiger & Bunny is mainly establishment for the setting and characters which will make up the series. The main character of the series is Kotetsu Kaburagi who fights under the name Wild Tiger with the power to increase his strength a hundredfold for a mere five minutes. The apparent oldest of the featured heroes he has a younger daughter whom he struggles to see when faced with the task of being a super hero. Despite his age he's characterized as naive with an idealistic approach to being a hero stemming from an incident in his childhood. Best known for operating without consideration for property damage, Wild Tiger is the least popular among the cast of Hero TV.

Hero TV is a popular television program that follows the cast of heroes around town when they're tasked to stop The Mutant Brotherhood criminal activity. Their on screen activities (apprehending criminals, saving civilians, etc.) earn them points throughout the Hero TV series, with the winner being dubbed the King of Heroes. These heroes operate for different companies and are financed primarily by product placement on their costumes. Pepsi NEX and various Bandai subsidiaries being the most prominent in Tiger & Bunny. These X-Men heroes are known as mutants NEXT, humans who have mysteriously developed a wide variety of powers over the past half century.

See if you can spot the product placement

Wild Tiger, though the acquisition of his company, is forced to work with a newcomer on the scene, Barnaby Brooks Jr. He shares the same limited power enhancement abilities as Wild Tiger but, unlike the rest of the heroes, has chosen to reveal and use his identity. Like Wild Tiger they share futuristic suits with special abilities. During the second episode Tiger refers to Brooks as Bunny due to the pointy ears of his costume and his tendency to bounce around.

The rest of the heroic supporting cast includes: the popular Red Tornado Sky High who is able to fly around and control the wind; the attractive Mr Freeze Blue Rose, a popular singer with the power freeze objects; Rock Bison, a large armored individual, Electro Dragon Kid, a young girl with an electricity producing staff, Fire Emblem ,a flamboyant (pun probably intended) hero who can throw fire balls; and Origami Cyclone a ninja themed hero who spends more time trying to get in the background of a shot than actually fighting crime.

Definitely not NYC

This all takes place in a futuristic, multileveled, city known as Sternbild City. Despite this name it's clearly modeled after New York City.

Reivew

When watching Tiger & Bunny the first thing that pops out at you is the in your face commercialization of the series. We're all used to series being used to hock merchandise but I don't think it's ever been this obvious. While American television viewers have been grumbling about product placement jumping from the big screen to the little one (deodorant on Eureka, Hyundai on Burn Notice) the Japanese have apparently decided to go all out. They even went as far as to have a product break where Blue Rose shows off her assets and enjoys a Pepsi. I really hope this doesn't open up a disturbing trend. It makes you wonder which came first, the idea for the series or the idea to advertise. It makes you wonder how the industry is doing financially, or whether the show they pitched wasn't good enough to get normal funding.

Wild Tiger's new suit

The second thing that pops out at you is the use of CGI. The problem isn't that it's good, or that it's bad, it's just out of place. It's hard to describe. All things considered the mix between traditional cel animation and CGI elements is done rather well. Unfortunately it's still obvious and distracting at points. Tiger generally emotes a lot physically with exaggerated movements, when I see him do it in the suit it makes me feel as though they're over compensating. Luckily for us they often flip up their face masks allowing for more expressive exchanges.

From a story prospective things are far too basic right now to really comment. While the first episode established the premise, second focused on developing Tiger's back story and personality, nether of which are really unique. The third episode looks like to be a standard bit of development for Barnaby as we wait for the start of an overarching plot and nemesis.The premise, despite its obvious parallels to American comics, has potential. I'm worried that they will try too develop the series for a run in the States only to have a lot of the localized branding elements get lost in translation.

The voice acting is thus far well done (Hiraoki Hirata and Masakazu Morita do a great job at defining Tiger and Bunny's personalities) but the music is lacking. I can't say I'm a fan of the title track and the in background music is pretty generic and forgettable.

Overall the series is definitely worth checking out. It won't win over everyone but should do well with the younger market. Despite the traditional premise and basic start to the show it's easy to see the potential. Hopefully it doesn't become another Star Driver.