Tiger and Bunny is a cool show. It’s not great, with some of the plots being outright stupid at times, but the cast are such an endearing and entertaining bunch that simply watching them muck about makes fine viewing in off itself. At least, almost all of the characters are endearing. So, to illustrate this, let’s rank the heroes in Tiger and Bunny in order of how much I like them. An exercise in pointlessness or a unique approach to reviewing a series through its characters? Let’s go with the second option.
1: Sky High
It’s not just that he’s the best character. Yes, he’s an inherently likeable guy, what with his gormless honesty and goofy catchphrase. Yes he’s likeable despite the show never feeling the need to give him a complicated backstory episode. But what propels him into first place is he was the star of by far the best and most heart-wrenching Tiger and Bunny episode so far. How long do you guys think he sat on that bench for? My heart goes out for him, there’s no way I could give him anywhere other than top spot.
2: Wild Tiger
In a world where having the main character be a generic high school male lead is all the rage, Tiger is a refreshing change. Middle aged man with falling job satisfaction and broken family life. Not too many of them in anime. He’s refreshing, funny yet humanly flawed. His own stupidity does get on my nerves sometimes, but the show does tackle that character trait rather maturely. His own unwillingness to retire or tell Bunny about his diminishing powers, despite it being the right thing to do, is totally in character for him. Yet it’s clear the show does plan to, and has already, punish him for his actions.
3: Blue Rose
I like her relationship with Tiger. Tiger acts like a father figure to her, as though she’s his surrogate daughter. Meanwhile Blue Rose likes him with what can only be described as a high school girls crush. Now I originally didn’t like that they’d taken that route, until the very final scene of the episode where Blue Rose frantically blurts out that she will treasure the towel forever, barely registering with Tiger. It showed the series knew how silly her crush was. Also because, in a series chock full of homolust and bishies, it’s nice to have that ass to ogle every now and then.
4: Rock Bison
Because the poor dude needs more love! He’s a cool guy. I enjoy how the old timers like him, Tiger and Fire Emblem are all buddies, to the point that neither of them are particularly bothered by Fire Emblem’s advances. But he gets overlooked so much in the story. His moment of glory came against Jake, yet what did they do? Skip over his entire fight scene, cutting from him charging to him hanging from the statue. His episode will come, and it will be glorious.
5: Fire Emblem
I should probably dislike his character, considering the painfully stereotypical gay black man archetype. But I can’t bring myself to because he’s got all this little character quirks I like. I already mentioned how the old guard are just used to his advances, but there’s other things too. How his voice goes all deep and harsh when he gets irritated at something. His insistence that he too is one of the girls. Also that hair man. Coolest damn hairdo ever.
6: Origami Cyclone
And here’s where we start to get into the heroes I’m not so fond of. While at the very least his personality is tolerable, whiny little bitch isn’t exactly the most endearing of personality traits, especially when that seems to be his sole trait. But mainly what bugs me is how he became a hero in the first place with that ability, yet he never uses it for Hero TV. Considering how many Nexts there are out there trying to become the next new Hero, surely some of them have abilities with a greater viewing spectacle?
7: Dragon Kid
The tomboyish girl eventually learns to become more feminine. How many times have you heard that damn storyline on kids TV. Hey girls, don’t be athletic. You’ve got to stay indoors and take care of babies while wearing pretty hair ornaments. It’s not like she even has much personality outside of that episode anyway. Bleh, at the very least, she doesn’t take up much screentime in her dullness, unlike a certain other hero…
8: Barnaby Brooks
The most annoying part about Bunny was that he was starting to get interesting. At the start he was a bland, lifeless blob, dragging down what was trying to be an amusing buddy cop anime. But then he finally started to open up to Tiger a bit and express something resembling emotions. I was finally starting to warm up to Bunny. But then along comes the second half of the series, pulling a massive 180 on his character and somehow managing to rob him of all emotion and personality once again. All I can do now is look up genderswapped images of him for entertainment.
So fire away: What are your Tiger and Bunny hero rankings?
The Cart Driver 
Agreed with first 5, tough Blue Rose can be realy annoyingly delusional at times. Barnaby was still better than last place. He would be 6 if you ask me. He at least kept his serious and straightforward honest attitude troughout the episodes.
You forgot the second league heroes.
Yep, pretty much in agreement with you, although I’m tempted to put Blue Rose first for obvious reasons. So yeah:
Sky High > Tiger > Blue Rose > Fire Emblem > Rock Bison… the rest…
I want to put Rock Bison higher, but the show is robbing him of any screen time. I can’t believe he hasn’t even received an ep. If the show is saving that for some sort of melodrama story where he ends up dying, I will be seriously pissed!
But yeah, thereās only one ultimate star of the show; Keep it classy Sky High you awesomely lovable man-child!!!
I might be tempted to rank Tiger at the top, which is a turn up for the books indeed. As you say, in a world of bland highschool protagonists it’s could to have a variety of character – and not only that, but he’s actually likeable!
He does have that ever-so-slightly cliche “everything is for the sake of Good” outlook, which is both a bit unrealistic and overdone at this point, but at least Tiger&Bunny shows how it doesn’t always work out well for the good guys (as seen particularly in episode 16).
Sky High would definitely be second though. His honest cheesiness is endearing to us all, and his episode was a touching one.
Those two are far-and-away the leaders, possibly with Rock Bison next behind them, and Barnaby is definitely at the bottom of the pile. He somehow manages to be completely unlikeable, which is a great feat considering he has no personality whatsoever.
The rest you may interchange at will; they don’t really get enough screentime.
I think I agree with Rock Bison being nr. 3.
Sky High > Tiger > Blue Rose > Fire Emblem > Barnaby > Rock Bison > Dragon Kid > Origami Cyclone
Sky High is great because he’s all stereotypical superhero and doesn’t give a shit. Tiger is a good character. Blue Rose has dat ass. Fire Emblem is funny. Barnaby is okay. Rock Bison is uninteresting. Dragon Kid is uninteresting and without style. Origami Cyclone is a pathetic piece of shit.
Also Tiger > Legend > Blue Rose
Legend is awesome, owns all the baddies, is a huge fat whale, and doesn’t give a shit.
Kotetsu > Sky High > Barnaby > Rock Bison/Fire Emblem > Dragon Kid/Origami Cyclone/Blue Rose
About time you posted some T&B
I would say Bunny can go above Dragon Kid and Origami Cyclone, lololol, poor guy. But I hate his personality change too. (And everything about him that is not a part of shipping him with Tiger, my goodness.)
I actually really dislike Origami Cyclone now that he has had his episode. I thought he was amusingly not there before that.
Anyway, I would go with:
Tiger >> Blue Rose > Fire Emblem = Sky High > Bunny > Rock Bison > Dragon Kid > Origami
I, for one, do not want to rank Rock Bison above the other characters purely because we know so little about his character. And an episode for him does not seem to be coming. I liked what you said about the old guard though. Those poor, outdated heroes. At least they are reflected better on the scoreboard than certain useless ones…*coughorigami
Sky High is nice and adorable, but eh. =D
Also, Fire Emblem is actually kind of badass. He’s the only truly self-made hero: Whether it’s because he inherited money, or he did something to become rich, he’s the only one of the lot who doesn’t need a sponsor to go out and do hero stuff. He’s doing this shit because he wants to and can. Go go eccentric rich guy.
With his badass Emblemmobile!
While F.E. does use his own company to sponser him, thus cutting about the middleman, he still requires revenue from advertising to fund his exploits. I believe they’re Animate (an anime retail chain) and FMV (a Fujitsu owned brand of computers/tablets).
Sorry Shin, just thought I’d be a smartass and point that out. š
Well, a man’s gotta eat somehow!
I could mostly agree on all the rankings there except for Sky High, I’d lower him on the list by a couple of rankings. Got to love the flawed goofy Wild Tiger, and Blue Rose’s silly little crush.
But what the heck did they do to Bunny/Barnaby? Did they sterilize the guy or something, because he became a total johnny-no-personality. =_=
How dare you dislike Dragon Kid. She of all people deserves more screen time. HOW DARE you rank her lower than that flaming gay stereotype.
She would get the business from behind.
The only thing I might change would be putting Fire Emblem over Rock Bison as the latter hasn’t gotten much screentime. Other than that, I couldn’t agree more especially with your descriptions of the top three. š
Pshaw. I like Dragon Kid. She just needs more screentime. Though not as much as Bison does. Poor guy.
And here, have more genderbent Barnaby (and Kotetsu).
http://LolaKills.deviantart.com/art/TigerANDBunny-Ladies-208358271
/did not draw.
Hey does anyone notice that Sky High is the only one who looks like a western comic character on the opening? And he even got the name of the stupid movie about heroes high school lol, as if this anime was a parody of that parody movie!
Tiger>Sky High>Fire emblem> nevermind everyone else
This post suddenly made me feel like braving the depths of the FY! Tiger & Bunny tumblr…
Don’t.
It’s all fucking shipper bullshit. The Sky High tag is all yaoi.
If you want a good T&B community, go to 4chan.
LOL yeah, so much Rock Bison x Origami Cyclone yaoi…I don’t even recall the two of them even speaking to each other yet in the anime! Not too sure if I wanna brave the depths of 4chan? ^^;
It has already been pointed out that Ivan pretty much didn’t do anything before his episode and that’s the way his bosses liked it. So they probably hired him with the intention of showing who sponsors him and not for actually doing anything heroic. The guy he reports to even looked happy he was in background instead of actually saving someone.
Ivan also had to rely on his ninja skills to save the day. That’s how he always ended up in background scenes.
Barnaby went from 75% tsun to 120% dere. I heard he still acts like himself in the CD Dramas though only towards everyone that isn’t Kotetsu and apparently makes fun of Karinas crush on Kotetsu. Though I have no way of seeing if this is fact.
But I don’t dislike any of the heores and enjoy each and every one of them.
What about Legend and Lunatic? Surely you should rank them up somewhere.
Legend’s something like a Shiro-figure, always appearing in the background even though he’s already so dead. Well, already dead. It’s hard to become so dead. I think that’s pretty redundant.
About rankings – I think it’d be more dramatic if you ordered ratings from worst to best. Even during things like your monthly wrapups, we start reading ‘oh man this show is awesome’, but at the end it’s all ‘this sucks this sucks too and oh this sucks’. Eh, to each his own – it’d be boring if everything was ordered the same way.
Finally, Rock Bison seems to just be a person with drills on his shoulders?
Mr Legend. Because domestic violence and child abuse always leads to awesome back stories.