Monday 30 May 2011

Tiger & Bunny - Episode 9

Poor old Dragon Kid has had pretty much no exposition over the course of Tiger & Bunny so far - indeed, it feels like every time we've seen her she's been either directing traffic or people to safety.  Still, apparently she's also a rather handy NEXT in her own right complete with the power of electricity, even if she is very much a stubborn tomboy.

Dragon Kid's character slots into our episodic story for the week surrounding the young child of the city's mayor, and with a requirement for someone to babysit him cropping up in the face of a spate of child kidnappings its left to our superheroes to do the job.  The trouble is, the child in question is a NEXT itself, and it seems that he'll only accept Dragon Kid as his surrogate parent for the duration.


Thus, our young Chinese girl and her Kill Bill inspired getup finds herself hanging out with both Tiger and Barnaby on babysitting duty, before both child and babysitter get kidnapped by a trio of NEXT with unusual powers to smell out money, danger and lies between them (which is probably why you never see them hanging out with Ryan Giggs).  Who is going to save the day on this occasion?  Regardless of those final machinations, Dragon Kid learns a little more about how to understand her parents way of thinking while Barnaby's continued hunt for the killer of his parents takes another twist towards the end of the episode.

It feels like I say this every week, but once again we have an episode of Tiger & Bunny based around a concept that is as old as the hills, yet once again it doesn't really matter.  I'm not entirely convinced that Dragon Kid quite got the character-building treatment she deserved here (it certainly pales to that given to Blue Rose and the Origami Cyclone), yet the instalment as a whole pulled off its usual fun blend of action and comedy whilst also weaving some more aspects of its over-arching story as it pertains to Barnaby into the mix.  It's perhaps this ability to mix quick blasts of largely harmless and mindless fun in with something more important and long-term for the series that stands it in good stead, and even when it's plumbing the depths of "seen it all before" story lines it still continues to work its magic to some extent.

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