In
the future, superheroes will be a lot like NASCAR drivers. They will fight
crime in colorful costumes bedecked in their sponsors’ logos and earn points
fighting crime in the televised hero leagues. Our dynamic duo is genuinely committed
to doing good, but their prior misadventures have kept them in the second
league. However, events will temporarily split up the partners in Yoshitomo
Yonetani’s Tiger & Bunny: the Rising (trailer here), a feature follow-up
to the hit anime series, which screens this Saturday and Monday in New York.
Kotetsu
T. Kaburagi is an aging but still idealistic superhero, known professionally as
Wild Tiger. His younger partner, Barnaby Brooks, Jr. fights crime under his real
name, but Kaburagi dubbed him “Bunny” because of the ear-shaped thingies on his
uniform. They bicker constantly, but they have been through quite a bit together.
Yet, even though Kaburagi helped Brooks solve the murder of his parents, most
hero-watchers think he is holding the younger superhero back. The new boss decides to fix that, promoting
Brooks to the first league and partnering him up with Golden Ryan, a preening
new superhero with the power to control gravity.
Naturally,
just as Wild Tiger returns to civilian life, a wave of super-powered chaos
sweeps across the New York-ish Sternbild City, apparently inspired by the
ancient legend of an angry goddess who once laid waste to the city ages ago. At
least it is good for their ratings.
Viewers
walking into Rising completely cold
will have little hope of keeping straight the large cast of supporting
superheroes, aside from Fire Emblem, their GLBT colleague. Nonetheless,
Kaburagi, the widower single father, is an appealing working class protagonist.
Arguably, T&B celebrates virtues like
courage and loyalty just as much or more than it critiques consumerism. Still, Rising’s most treacherous characters are
all media types. In contrast, the actual super villains are kind of cool
looking, but are not well developed in terms of who and what they are.