Monday 25 April 2011

Tiger & Bunny - Episode 4

Now that its main dynamic between Kotetsu and Barnaby has been very much established, it's about time Tiger & Bunny turned its attentions to some of the show's other superheroes - something it duly does with this fourth instalment as Blue Rose is put under the spotlight.

Blue Rose, real name Karina Lyle, couldn't really be much more different than Wild Tiger - while he works as a hero with saving people as his only true end goal, Blue Rose is a far more apathetic hero who is only fighting as a springboard to a career in music, and someone who is more than a little irritated when saving lives gets in the way of her social life or her work as a singer.  This sense of apathy is only heightened when Blue Rose finds herself confronted by a machine gun-toting maniac on her latest mission, the embarrassing fallout of which seems to have set her down the path of quitting as a hero.


Naturally, this leads to Blue Rose being left with a straight-up choice between a gig at a local bar and her work as a hero, and just as inevitably the hero work she decides to skip just happens to be a rescue mission on a fiery oil rig where her ice-based powers would be just the ticket.  You can probably also guess what happens from that point forth but hey, I won't spoil the episode for you entirely if you haven't already figured out how it's going to end.

Thus, this particular instalment of Tiger & Bunny is about as predictable as it gets (simply knowing it focuses on Blue Rose gives away the entire plot, it's that obvious) and you could argue it also lacks a bit of the sparkle of previous episodes in terms of its character dynamic as the series as a whole carries the clear and present danger of falling into such tired and well-worn plot devices.  Luckily, its slickly presented action scenes and Wild Tiger's constant interference in... well, pretty much everything, allow the series to continue ticking along in a reasonably entertaining manner, but I do get the feeling that this show is going to need something to shake things up a little sooner rather than later, lest it get bogged down in over-used mediocrity.

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