Tiger and Bunny/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Americans Hate Tingle: Not a very severe case, but while Barnaby is easily the second most popular character among the Japanese fandom (Kotetsu being the first), quite a few viewers from the Western hemisphere are downright insulting and hateful towards him for being a "pansy-ass, whiny, self-centered jerk of a loser".
  • And You Thought It Would Fail: The creators have expressed their surprise at the show's success -- because everyone was sure it would be a complete bust.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Viz Media recently bought its English rights!
    • Oh, and they implied that they're going to air it on TV on a certain famous block. Which block? Toonami.
  • Awesome Music: The first opening theme, Orion wo Nazoru and the second ending theme, Mind Game.
    • The second OP (Missing Link) and first ED (Hoshi no Sumika) aren't too bad either.
    • The soundtrack (which takes cues from American superhero movies) also has some decidedly epic moments.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: A couple of the episodes subbed by Hulu suffer from this. One was hastily typed and full of misspellings and missed spaces, and two more go so far as to leave half of the dialogue completely untranslated. Fortunately, some of these instances were corrected after a while but not some of the mistranslations which lead the fandom to believe that Barnaby took on the name of his deceased father after his parent's murder (when Barnaby was his birth name) and that Pao-lin wanted a boy to notice her when it was just people in general.
  • Cargo Ship: The stuffed bunny from episode 5 has apparently been getting as much action as Kotetsu and Barnaby. Also popular is Kotetsu/Bandages.
  • Complete Monster: Some minor villains arguably qualify. Funnily enough, they tend to be disproportionately targeted by Lunatic.
  • Counterpart Comparison: Barnaby to Batman; their backstories are quite similar, though their personalities are not.
    • Keith Goodman has recently been getting compared to Alfred F. Jones due to their relatively similar appearances (tall, muscular, blue-eyed blonds) and their personalities (Upbeat, somewhat ditzy Love Freaks).
    • Jake Martinez is drawing an increasing number of comparisons to the Joker. (Though his younger counterpart must have raided Alan Gabriel's closet.)
    • And Kotetsu is Godot, or at least shares the same tailor; or perhaps an Older and Wiser Spider-Man.
    • A lot of people compare Lunatic with the Punisher, thanks to their similar ideologies.
  • Cliché Storm / Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Subject matter wise, this show's take on superheroes could have been fresh and ground-breaking... if it was made in the 80s/90s.
  • Crack Pairing / Ships That Pass in the Night: Antonio/Ivan is pretty popular on Pixiv. They have never been seen talking together even once.
    • Keith/Ivan is becoming pretty popular as well.
      • Drama CD 4 is basically Keith/Ivan pandering at its finest.
    • As well as Yuri/Ivan. And then, recently, Pao-Lin/Ivan has also been gaining some popularity. Then there's fanart of him on there with Barnaby too... seeing a pattern here?
    • Kaede/Lunatic. Yes, it exists.
    • Yuri/Scarf-tan thanks to this image from the Hero Awards pamplet.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Wild Tiger, a super hero who's been around for ten years - and has seen better days -, has suffered a decline in his performance at work. People also no longer warm up to his old-school brand of super-heroics, leaving him a sort of pariah among his peers. As a result, his sponsor company employing him goes belly up and pawns him off to the greater corporate sponsor where he must follow a set of rules or be left unemployed - one of them working alongside a younger, more marketable companion, which will presumably remind him even more of his own inadequacy. Any similarity with today's weak job markets cannot be a coincidence.
    • People have been having a lot of fun photoshopping this scene from Episode 19 (contains spoilers).
    • From that same episode: Maverick drugging Barnaby and then showing himself as a Complete Monster in front of a semi-paralyzed and emotionally broken Barnaby. Date rape comparisons, anyone?
      • To make it worse, the next episode has a disoriented Barnaby waking up in bed in above druggist's mansion while he cooks food for him. Bonus points for memory loss.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Biglobe ISP conducted a character popularity survey of most of the shows from the spring 2011 anime season. Behind Kotetsu (1'st place) and Barnaby (2'nd), Sky High was the most popular character in the series...And the entire season.
    • An in-universe case with Origami Cyclone, who gets a lot of sponsors and a high card sales rate despite placing last in the hero rankings.
    • There had been plans to kill Rock Bison off, but his surprising popularity in the Japanese fandom meant that the idea was jossed and he ended up getting some extra lines and screen-time.
  • Epileptic Trees: There have been a few people suggesting Scarf Girl keeps turning up everywhere because she is either the Big Bad, involved with Ouroboros, a Fan Girl for the heroes or she's just cursed with awful luck.
  • Fan Dumb: There's a horribly loud Vocal Minority of rabid Kotetsu fangirls who bash and hate whoever dares accord Kotetsu something that isn't pure praise and worship. Here's a proof: they even attack *Kaede*
    • And as far as these fans are concerned poor Barnaby just can't win. First he's an asshole for being condescending / disrespectful towards Kotetsu; then he's "creepy and weird" for being nice to / not bickering with Kotetsu; from episode 18 onwards he's "stealing the spotlight" by getting involved in a new subplot (even though Kotetsu always gets considerably more screen-time than Barnaby); he's a selfish, immature loser because he dares to be happy about achieving his life's goal while failing to notice the decline in Kotetsu's powers (ignoring the fact that we all see Kotetsu himself trying to keep the problem a secret); and yeah, he totally deserved that slap from Kotetsu (though it would've been better if it had been a good, sound punch)!
      • These very same people also seem to resent the Ho Yay undertones that other fans see between Kotetsu and Barnaby; namely because of the latter's "disgusting bitchiness" which makes him unworthy of their hero.
  • Fan Yay: The show is really popular among fans of the Bara Genre. Heaven only knows why!
  • Fashion Victim Villain: Jake Martinez: He's as evil as he's fabulous.
  • Freud Was Right: Episode 15 features a fountain that seems extremely sensitive to Keith's chance at love.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Many fans had a habit of joking that Ivan would be the first to die... Until episode 11 rolled along, at which point the fandom changed its tune to, "OH FUCK IVAN BETTER NOT HAVE DIED." He didn't, but it certainly was a close one.
    • Kotetsu drinks Mr. Legend's Hero Beer. Cute, but then came Episode 16... Haha, not funny.
    • Along the same lines, Kotetsu's smartass remark about Lunatic having a glove on his face (and the fandom's subsequent adoption of "Palm-Face" as a Fan Nickname for him) has become a case of Dude, Not Funny following the revelation in episode 16 that the design is based on the handprint burn scar on Yuri's face, left there by his father when Yuri burned him to death.
    • This video was just a slightly creepy and weird thing before Episode 19.
    • In Episode 19, Barnaby says Kotetsu was among those people who the murderer in his memory changed into; Kotetsu jokingly replies that he didn't do it. Then comes Episode 20...
  • Ho Yay + Les Yay: Take a look at this page.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: So far, Ivan has paired with almost all significant characters. And Scarf-tan.
  • Memetic Bystander: Scarf-tan.
  • Memetic Mutation: For the fans not trying to turn everything Kotetsu and Barnaby say in the end credits into a slash prompt, the main pastime seems to be photoshopping Origami Cyclone into the background of everything.
    • Similarly, Barnaby wearing five pairs of the same glasses after he mentioned he owns that many in the end credits.
    • Fans have now officially commandeered MY PARENTS ARE DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAD from Batman.
    • Fans have taken a great liking to the pink plush bunny that was meant to be Barnaby's birthday present.
    • Episode 9 has given us HANDSOME ESCAPE!
    • Sky High's "X. Soshite X". Is also turn Up to Eleven in the fanworks.
    • All shall be awed by Kotetsu's amazing catbeard
    • "Now my body pil-- er, I can smell like Kotetsu!" / "I must have that delicious Oyaji Moe scent!" (See Memetic Sex God below).
    • "Origami Cyclone = First Hero To Die. Fucking Calling It"
    • The animatronic tiger Kotetsu rode in the mall in episode 19 is also slowly making its way here.
    • "Is it Saturday yet?"
    • Or the time Barnaby appeared wearing nothing more than a tiny speedo for a photoshoot, which has been edited into every scene with a screen imaginable.
    • Following this fanmade mmd Fandom exploded with dark tiger (called Ebi in Japan) fanart.
    • Fans have become incredibly preoccupied with fried rice after they learned Barnaby had been practicing making it just for Kotetsu.
    • After learning that not only Barnaby and Karina, but even his own wife had a Tsundere side that was revealed only towards him, the fandom has concluded that Kotetsu has a second NEXT power - drawing out the tsundere in those who're fond of him.
  • Memetic Molester: Lunatic. It doesn't help that he has a dungeon.
    • After episode 19, Maverick. In his case, what doesn't help is the date rape allegory from that episode.
    • Jake Martinez, whose outfit can charitably be described as looking like a male hooker's. Taking down Origami Cyclone, Sky High, Rock Bison, and Wild Tiger all down in Curb Stomp Battles naturally spawned a lot of rape fanart.
    • Also Barnaby himself, who's often portrayed in fanart as being a raging Kotetsu fanboy in a manner similar to "Perverted Homura" from Puella Magi Madoka Magica (whom he is sometimes drawn as being dressed like).
  • Memetic Outfit: Fans have taken a liking to the "crapsuit" from the first episode, especially once Kotetsu broke it back out in episode 21.
  • Memetic Sex God: Kotetsu gets a lot of fans very hot under the collar. Pixiv's taken to turning everything he says or does into a metric ton of porn, while 2chan's bought out the entire stock of a brand of cologne simply because they wanted to know what he smelled like. 4chan also joined in soon after. (For added irony, the production team was originally afraid that Kotetsu wouldn't be well received by the audience because the they didn't expect viewers to find him physically attractive[1], among other things.)
  • Men Don't Cry / We Want Our Jerk Back: Common fan reactions to post-timeskip Barnaby.
  • Moral Event Horizon: For Maverick, it's having Samantha murdered. Of course he actually passed it twenty years ago when he killed Barnaby's parents, but the former is the first time we see his evil side for ourselves.
  • Narm: Barnaby's breakdown scream in the stinger of episode 18 is more than a little hard to not laugh at, with facial distortion to rival anything seen in Code Geass.
  • Narm Charm: T&Bros are sincerely quite fond of Kotetsu's "crapsuit," particularly after episode 21. It even got its own fan anthology.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Lunatic. His costume, his mannerisms...he's all around creepy. His methods of "heroics" just add to that. The SFX when he ignites his flame sounds vaguely like screaming.
    • Episode 15: Cis' flesh starts tearing off after she's revealed to be a cyborg. Her "skeleton" is REALLY creepy.
    • The entire reveal about Maverick. Just to illustrate - after episodes 19 and 20, the scene of Kaede talking to him in ep 21 had some people panicking like if she was about to get killed by a slasher-movie villain.
  • No Yay: Maverick is really possessive of Barnaby; to the point of drugging him, mind-raping him several times and isolating him in his private mansion. Add in the Power Perversion Potential of having memory-altering Next powers and no amount of industrial strength Brain Bleach is ever gonna be enough.
  • Paranoia Fuel: What Maverick did to Barnaby may serve as this for anyone who has been raised by foster parents. The people who (apparently) loved and cared for you? They're Manipulative Bastards who only ever saw you as a tool to fulfill their own agendas. And while people in real life probably don't have Psychic Powers that enable them to rewrite memories, there are still plenty of ways to manipulate someone ever since childhood.
  • Real Women Never Have Crushes: A lot of fans react this way to Karina's frequent displays of embarrassment and emotional vulnerability where Kotetsu is concerned, since they see it as an "over-the-top display of her femininity".
  • Robo Ship: Keith unwittingly falls for an android in the 15th episode.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: The Karina x Kotetsu versus Barnaby x Kotetsu battles can get pretty dirty, so be careful what you say on any forum devoted to the topic!
  • Tethercat Principle: Episode 15 uses this one, ending with Keith still patiently waiting to meet the girl he fell for, unaware that she was the robot he'd destroyed the night before.
  • Unpopular Popular Character: Kotetsu - least popular superhero on HeroTV, most popular character in the fandom.
  • What an Idiot!: Maverick's plan to dispose of Kotetsu. It would probably have been easy to call up Ouroboros and arrange a heroic hospitalization, where he could do a memory edit during a visit. Instead he opts for a flashy plan that requires mindwiping everyone who knows Kotetsu's identity and then plastering his name and face all over the news, even though the necessity of the disposal is because his twenty-year edits on Barnaby's memory started failing when exposed to contradicting information. He also forgets that Kotetsu has a family, who could potentially cause the same problem. Not to mention that wiping the name Kotetsu T. Kaburagi from every record everywhere is time-consuming, probably expensive (do men in black suits get paid by the hour?), and could still fail if, say, Antonio had a note in his jacket reminding him to pay Kotetsu back. It's almost like how a Xanatos Roulette would end if it was played out logically, really.
  • The Woobie: Kotetsu (in later episodes) and Ivan.
  1. ↑ To quote Ozaki: "Another problem was, as you said... it's been considered that any anime character with facial hair would be a 'bust.' Apparently Japanese women do not feel attracted to men with facial hair."
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