Tiger & Lunatic #16 — Daddy Issues

July 16th, 2011

 

This episode was about 80% flashback and angst, and you know how I love that.

Impressions:

The theme of this episode was basically "less is more." Every time they did something right with the writing, they had to go too far and completely undermine what they just did right. It started relatively promising, with a very short origin story for Lunatic inadvertently (well, probably) killing his father for beating his mother and then showing up in the middle of a chase. Then he changed his mind, left, and out came Bunny’s garish red suit and it was back to more Bunny flashbacks. Can we manage to go at least a couple episodes without that? You don’t see Batman spending every minute of every day wailing about his parents. Oh, and Kotetsu was getting increasingly fussy over his dwindling powers.

The second half got more interesting… even if it did have to unfortunately begin with a Lunatic shower scene before revealing that Lunatic’s dad was Mr. Legend. I have no idea why they felt the need to space that out across about four flashbacks except to pad out the episode. Also, his mother is crazy as hell. Maybe that’s why she was getting smacked around. The scene was fine until mommy started foaming at the mouth. She went from a sympathetic character to incomprehensibly crazy in about 10 seconds of screen time. Then it was just more angsting around, random rapists on roofs with whips who are strong enough to hurl other people through the air with one hand, and flashbacks about Mr. Legend becoming increasingly unhinged as he lost his powers and self-medicated with alcohol. Well, since Yuri’s also screaming at ghosts of daddy while downing a bottle of vino, he’s not exactly a pillar of mental stability either. Again, something that this episode really could have done without. Along with Kotetsu ending up in a dumpster. I got it, he’s pathetic now. You’re skirting the line here between heavy melodrama and Biff Tannen crashing into a truck full of manure.

Preview:

Kotetsu goes home to wallow.

Posted in Tiger & Bunny | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Anonymous says:
    July 16, 2011 at 2:58 pm

    what happened to my ambiguously gay hero comedy?

  • lollerman says:
    July 16, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    I’m curious. Angsting is synonymous with bad writing, it seems. What would you consider good angst? Or is that simply impossible to do?

    • Aroduc says:
      July 16, 2011 at 7:20 pm

      When it is part of the scene and adds to a character or writing instead of dominating it. Angst is not the same as drama or depth, which is the confusion anime makes far too often, especially when it’s resorted to week after week. A character can easily be emotive without wallowing in self-pity. Used judiciously, a little pathos is fine, but far more often it’s clumsily wielded like a giant sledgehammer.
      Basically all of that goes for exposition and technobabble too while we’re at it. Other things that Japan hasn’t seemed to gotten the hang of yet.

  • v1cious says:
    July 16, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    I don’t understand why you’re still following this show. It should be clear by this point that you’re never going to like it.