I've been following this show for eighteen weeks (caught up the week episode 7 aired), and now we're finally at the end. Catching a show like T&B every saturday night will be a tough habit to break, but it was definitely a fun ride. The finale starts off with repeat frames continued form the previous episode, but with an insert song that plays during the scene. The song didn't really fit the mood of the situation, but it created an atmosphere suitable for a finale.
Maverick and Rotwang wasted no time in sending an flock of H-01's at our heroes. They did their best, but they were obviously no match. I felt that production-wise, these action scenes were probably one of best of the entire serious. Although, that isn't saying much at all, because the budget for T&B was beyond crappy. At least they saved enough of it for the finale, since I didn't spot any especially derpy faces.
Agnes and Saito played key roles in Maverick's defeat and were probably the unsung heroes in Sternbild. We've seen them here and there throughout the series, but they were far cries from being anywhere close to main characters. I think it's really nice to see minor characters that are familiar faces contributing to the plot. Also, Rock Bison finally became useful this episode, haha.
This is where Maverick makes his interesting, but generic spiel about how isn't guilty of anything. There can't be justice without despair, he claims, and that he was the one that provided both of these things to Sternbild. More importantly, he says that it was because of him that the people of Sternbild are so accepting of NEXTs. I think that T&B would've done well with some more exploration into his character. As he stands right now, he is just some bad guy for the sake of having a main villain on a show. They could've added some backstory to Maverick's character, such as him experiencing some sort of injustice for being a NEXT when he was much younger.
Surprise, surprise. We all expected this, but I don't really have anything bad to say about the writers pulling the "fake death" maneuver. In fact, the writers themselves seem to be poking fun at it, too. Tiger asks a really logical question, "I just passed out form the pain, why didn't you check my pulse?" Drama for the sake of drama, but I guess they were just a little too emotional at the time.
So Maverick takes the cowardly way out and wipes his own memories. This pretty much sets up the future for the T&B franchise. Maverick is one of our only connection to the the bigger-than-we-thought organization, Ouroboros. He probably had some real dirt on them. Now that we're left in the dark, the writers have something they can build on.
No worries though, Maverick still gets his due justice, courtesy of our good friend Lunatic. Yuri seems quite satisfied with the job the heroes are doing, despite their different brands of justice. I still wish he played a bigger role in the show. Damn you misleading OP.
So it's been two years since the first episode in Sternbild time, and all our heroes are pretty much up to the same shenanigans. We get a montage of what the heroes do during the free-time, briefly connecting them their character-centered episodes. As for Tiger and Barnaby, they start with a princess-carry, and they also end with a princess-carry. Why not, eh? Despite announcements of retirement from the Hero business, it's very in-character for Kotetsu to be a hero until the very end. It was quite amusing to see him running around with the Second League Heroes. Also, Ben and Saitou seem to best buds now, very cool.
I would be extremely surprised if there won't be a second season. Something IS guaranteed though, as they showed a teaser at the end of the episode announcing the future of the series in November. This should be expected though: it's obvious that the show was poorly budgeted since Sunrise didn't expect this to be this big of a hit. Now they'll try to milk this series for as much money as they can. But what will it be about? Ouroboros for sure, but maybe we'll get to see Kaede and Lunatic play more prominent roles in the story.
Tiger & Bunny was far from an amazing show, but I definitely had fun both watching it and writing about it. I really like anime-original plot-based shows, largely because of the speculation involved while following such a show.
I feel the show's strongest point is the cast of characters. Though we didn't really get anything deep from anyone outside of our titular characters, I think the cast meshed together really well. While their characterizations were arguably generic, it was just plain fun to watch them interact with each other.
The writing wasn't horrible. Many plot points were extremely predictable, but I felt that any cliches they might have used were executed quite nicely.
The production was sub-par, but given a low budget, it's understandable. I'm not really nit-picky on the minor details on the quality of the drawings because I tend to watch the show, rather than the drawings on my screen, if you get what I mean. The 3-D combined with 2-D animation was new to me, but I didn't find it weird at all. In fact, I really liked the 3-D animation in the show.
I really dislike putting a numerical score for any show by breaking it down and scoring every category because some parts simply outweighs others. If I had to, I would give T&B a solid 8/10 based on overall enjoyment of the show.
Until next time T&Bros (and girls), whether it be another season, movie, OVA, or whatever it may be!
-Bern
