Tiger & Bunny 16

This was definitely one of the darker weeks of Tiger & Bunny, despite a hilarious banquet scene where the heroes are all dolled up (see above). The occasion is Barnaby breaking a record previously held by Mr. Legend, the original Hero. He’s the guy who inspired Kotetsu to become a hero himself. He still gets teary-eyed watching old TV footage of the guy…and I’m sure deep down Tiger kinda resents Bunny breaking his childhood hero’s record, though he’d never say it.

They could have just let Legend be an infallible legend and called it a week, but no! While Ao no Exorcist uses the heroic memory of Shiro, this series chooses to tear the legend of Legend down. Tiger’s friend Ben uncovers something huge: Legend also experienced a dip in powers late in his career; so much so that his criminal captures had to be staged to keep up appearances. This lead to a drinking habit, and then it led to the habit of beating his loving wife out of frustration. Legend was killed by his own son, to save her.

And his son’s name? Yuri…AKA Lunatic. Dunno about you, but I wasn’t expecting that! This was a bold move, but it works; it explains Lunatic’s vast wealth and resources, and because of what happened between him and his father, he developed his twisted sense of justice. Meanwhile, Tiger’s powers are dwindling so rapidly, he can’t even stop an ordinary human, and ends up in a dumpster, his ideals crushed, his dream of his daughter calling him cool in serious jeopardy, and his days as a hero seemingly numbered.

Rating: 3.5

No. 6 3

Shion starts reacting unfavorably to his strange dark bruises, and Nezumi must operate to remove a pupa. In the process, Shion’s hair changes color and he gets strange pink strips all around his face and body. His friend aged rapidly before dying from the bee, but Shion survives, thanks to Nezumi, who saves his life for the second time.

Now Shion must come to grips with his new reality: he’s outside No.6, looking in. He can’t have the same mentality he had before. Nezumi doesn’t like the city one bit, and will gladly laugh heartily as it burns to the ground. Furthermore, he threatens Shion not to go crawling back there, or they’ll be enemies. While Nezumi has every right to be bitter considering how he was treated, Shion can’t quite be okay with him wishing for the city where his mom and friends live meeting a horrific fate.

In the meantime, we meet another resident of the real world, the “dogkeeper.” She politely stands by in amusement while Shion lays out his plan to warn the city about the killer parasitic bees. But his plan is full of holes. He won’t be warmly recieved if he goes back, especially looking the way he does. Heck, he may have blown it with Safu, too, what with his exile and new, punkish look.

Rating: 3.5

Usagi Drop 3

Daikichi’s name means “excellent luck”, but there are some in his life who’d consider him unlucky, suddenly having a six-year old aunt dumped in his lap to take care of. He simply can’t keep working overtime while sending Rin to the temporary nursery school; he’ll eventually burn out. So after consulting with another co-worker who is a parent, he decides to make a professional sacrifice for Rin’s sake.

This certainly means demotion, and the disappointment of his peers, but to my mind, there’s no question whether he made the right choice. By having a set time to go home, he can pick Rin up earlier and spend more time with her. She is a very good little kid, but she is having wetting problems stemming from grief over her father’s death, worry about Daikichi dying, and of course, fearing her own death. This fear trifecta is a lot for an adult, let alone a six-year-old.

I’m also glad Daikichi’s family more or less took the sticks out from up their asses and warmed up to Rin. The way they acted at her father’s funeral was inexcusable (when adults are in a bad mood, the kids feel they’re to blame), and after they spend more time with her they realize she’s not a bad kid after all. Of course, the fact remains, her mom (her father’s maid whom she hates and thus “forgot about”) is out there somewhere. But Daikichi’s actions suggest regardless of whether he finds her, he’s in for the long haul.

Rating: 3.5

And now for some pretty charts!

We here at RABUJOI have watched a lot of anime. Not as many as some, but no trivial amount. So we were wondering, which animation studio has churned out the most works we’ve watched? The below charts are the result. We took all of the tv series, OVAs, and films we’ve seen in the anime genre and sorted them by cheif animation production company.

A few notes: These are only works we’ve watched and rated, not all the works the companies have produced.  A few works (e.g., Shikabane Hime) are co-produced by two companies (in its case, Studio feel. and GAINAX). So those shows count for both companies. So when sorting by total number of works (series + OVAs + films), here’s what was revealed:

That’s right, GAINAX and Ghibli are tied for the top spot with fourteen works each. Not too surprising. While GAINAX is a mix of formats, Ghibli is pretty much just films. We haven’t seen any Ghibli films since Tales from Earthsea, so Ponyo and Arriety aren’t included.

But what about pure episode count? Trickier, but doable. More caveats: we included the full count of episodes for currently airing Summer 2011 series (e.g. all 11 Usagi Drop eps, although we’ve only seen the first two). Concurrently, for past series we’ve either dropped or only watched part of (e.g. Bleach), we only count the episodes we’ve watched, not the sum total aired. Finally, we don’t count films as episodes, but we do count OVAs. With all that in mind, let’s have a look at the top ten studios, ranked by total episodes we’ve watched:

The “Other” column on the left is a mélange of 39 different studios. Pierrot’s lofty figure isn’t surprising, as we confess we have watched a lot of Naruto and Bleach in the past…their episodes aren’t typically that high-quality and are extremely drawn-out and filler-prone, so the high ep count should be taken with a grain of salt. Bones and J.C. Staff churn out loads of series, while Sunrise’s count is high due to big (50-episode) Gundam series.

There are some companies (including P.A. Works, Tatsunoko, David, Beetrain and Daume) we really like who are either not yet prolific enough for this list or we simply haven’t watched enough of their works yet.

One thing’s sure, perennial RABUJOI favorite GAINAX’s work count will continue gaining with their current series, Dantalian no Shoka, the continuation of Panty & Stocking, and the final two Eva films. Perhaps our second favorite studio is financially-crippled GONZO, who haven’t done much since Shangri-la, but plan to have a Last Exile reboot out late this year, which is very promising.