Saturday, April 9, 2011

On Blatantancy and Brilliance

Alternatively: Why Tiger and Bunny is the cleverest show of the season.















More to the point:













Step 1:  Make show about corporate sponsored heroes, thus appealing to 'incisive social commentary' types.
Step 2:  Get corporate sponsors IRL for show.  Put their logos on the heroes.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Respond to all complaints with "But it's realism!"
Step 5: Reap profits, regret nothing.

The part of me that has done a bit of marketing is impressed by both the audacity and the blunt cleverness of this ploy.  But, regarding the show itself, the first episode was pretty entertaining.  True, the armor the heroes wear is often CG, which I won't say I like, but I kept watching the Iron Manime through far crappier CG, and only dropped it because the writing got too crappy.  There's nothing amazingly innovative about T&B, but it follows the formulas (basically it's a buddy cop action-comedy, except that there's potentially humiliating and/or hilarious corporate pandering involved, too) in a way that could be fun.  And hey, free* simulcasting.  Can't really complain about that.

*(Though its ad density, as you may have guessed, is lulzily impressive.  Not as high as Nascar, though.  If anything, there aren't *enough* ads on the armor for it to be realistic.  There's tons of blank space!)

-Stormshrug

2 comments:

  1. I think the corporate sponsorship is backfiring a little bit because some of the heroes become indistinguishable from their sponsors. Like USTREAM guy. You remember what his name is? I sure don't. Something breeze? Wind? Stream? Oh yeah. USTREAM. XD

    That said, I most likely won't be watching Tiger & Bunny because the CG *kills* me. I also got a bad feeling, like the characterization of everyone outside the main couple characters is going to be lazy and stereotypical. It definitely reminded me of the Iron Manime in a bad way, but still seemed a little more promising. The show could prove me wrong, but I'm not going to risk my time for it to do so.

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  2. I feel like it's a little early to be calling characterization on T&B. Then, I've already passed premature judgement on virtually every show this season myself, so I suppose I shouldn't talk.

    It's all drek, but this looks to be the best of the drek.

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