Tiger and Bunny 12 – I can hear everything
June 21, 2011
Sky High, the King of Heroes, in action.
Tiger & Bunny episode 12: With the city as hostage, Jake Martinez indulges in a series of showdowns against our heroes.
Karina Lyle, AKA Blue Rose, she may be a bitch, but she dresses well.
Let the man drink his coffee! You think he hasn't already gotten an earful from Bunny?
As the episode opens, the heroes attempt to rescue Origami, who had been captured by Jake in the closing moments of the last episode. Unfortunately Wild Tiger screws up, and everyone is mad at him, especially his supposed partner, Bunny-chan. This fighting within the team was one half of the drama of the episode, and was emphasized by Jake’s ploy of having each of the heroes fight him individually on Hero TV. Bunny stresses this point, by stating, “this is perfect because no one will get in my way”. But are any of the heroes individually strong enough to take Jake down?
Even the King of Heroes is no match for Jake Martinez.
We never got a special episode to develop Keith Goodman, AKA Sky High. In fact, part of his charm is that he is a bit one-dimensional. He is a stereo-typical superhero: tall, blonde, he flies (with the help of a rocket pack), he seems like a nice guy, and he is very good at what he does (having the most points, thus earning him the title of “King of Heroes”), but he is more earnest than clever. I enjoyed seeing him in an extended fight, even though it ended with him defeated and hanging from a sculpture, up above the city’s skyline*.
Kotetsu, AKA Wild Tiger, fares even worse.
The individual matches continue, and Rock Bison’s brute strength does him no good. Kotetsu takes his turn and is damaged so severely that he is rushed into ICU as the episode ends, but he may have discovered something important about Jake’s abilities. Tiger is the only hero to have landed a blow on Jake, and seemingly it was precisely because he tripped and attacked without consciously planning the attack. This post at Days Past Our Megaten Lives lays out the theory. Bunny is next to fight Jake, and his super power is exactly the same as Tiger’s, so unless they find a way to exploit this chink in Jake’s armor, things aren’t looking too good.
*How a sculpture can be above a city’s skyline is anyone’s guess. Quite frankly Tiger & Bunny tends to do things that look dramatic, or are useful to the plot, without worrying whether it makes a lot of sense. Given the super hero genre, I usually don’t mind, but I doubt I would be as forgiving in just about any other show.
Abandoned Factory Anime Review 
June 21, 2011 at 4:33 am
I am expecting for Lunatic to show up and help the fight against Jake if not the very least to inform Bunny about the chink in Jake’s armor.
June 21, 2011 at 10:00 am
I was wondering if Lunatic could help. While Bunny is battling Jake, for example, Lunatic could use his ranged attack. It might take two or more heroes to shut Jake’s nonsense down.
June 23, 2011 at 1:22 am
As awesome as that would be, I doubt he’ll show up. It’d probably be a sticky situation for him if the Sternbild leaders notice he’s missing from his chair. On another note, Mr. Maverick seems to be the one running the city, hmmm.
June 23, 2011 at 10:34 am
Yes, I’m personally suspicious of Mr. Maverick. The city sure has a weird political structure. The first thing I would recommend: open the windows. They should be meeting somewhere where sunlight can reach them. I think they would be a lot happier, and might make better decisions if they didn’t always meet in a darkened room.
June 22, 2011 at 12:19 am
I hope Sky High gets his episode soon, how he’s incredibly humble and earnest is a pretty good twist for someone in his position and it’s like he and Rock Bison have been receiving the short end of the stick for a while now. Since the closest Keith has really got to one would have been Barnaby’s Birthday episode which expanded his character a bit.
Aside from that I’m still wondering what Jake’s actual ability is, with his barriers and telepathy we could easily assume he has more than one but at the same time it could still be a single versatile ability. Similar to how Hundred Power allows both super strength and speed. And putting that aside his weakness probably comes down to having difficulty fighting outside one-on-one fights, so teamwork from Tiger & Bunny could be his undoing.
Other than that I really hope Kotetsu recovers soon, after the beating he took he’s in a pretty bad state.
June 22, 2011 at 6:25 am
“it’s like he and Rock Bison have been receiving the short end of the stick for a while now.”
Especially Bison. They really shafted him by cutting out his whole fight. Fortunately, with 12 episodes remaining, I think we could get a background story from one or both (maybe Lunatic as well).
Yeah, they have been pretty tricky with Jake’s power. At first I thought it had something to do with licking his finger (based upon the jail cell scenes).
June 22, 2011 at 11:50 pm
I can’t help but think that they’re hiding something about him, they could just be being ambiguous with what his ability really is but things have been kind of a coincidence. Following his release there’s somehow no details of how Mr Legend defeated him.
He really did get the worst of it when it cut directly to him being chained to the Minotaur statue. But speaking of Rock Bison he did manage to appear in the drama cd about how he and Kotestu met during their high school delinquent days (Maaya Sakamoto also voiced Tomoe, Kotetsu’s tsundere classrep and the girl who possibly one day went on to become Mrs Kaburagi). So I wonder if they’ll have them look back on those days when he finally gets to his turn. And it would be interesting to see how Yuri’s Lunatic persona came about.
June 23, 2011 at 10:37 am
Awesome, I wish I could understand Japanese, Tiger & Bison as delinquents sounds like fun, and Maaya is so cool, but I wouldn’t understand the character CD. 😦