scans_daily | Tiger & Bunny: Strength in Unity

Some of you guys may or may not have heard of this "Tiger & Bunny" thing that's currently veeery popular in Japan.

It's a sort of buddy cop/reality tv show/Nascar take off on the traditional American superhero genre. The superheroes of the city of Sternbild work for various megacorporations that sponsor their heroing. So all their outfits have branding ala Nascar all over them. In addition, their heroic exploits are filmed for a reality TV show called "Hero TV" where they are awarded points for various heroic actions. At the end of the season, one of them is crowned "King of Heroes." If that concept sounds at all interesting, I'd recommend checking out the show free (for US viewers) on Hulu here.

Our story begins when down and out Wild Tiger's (Kotetsu T. Kaburagi) company shutters its hero division due to economic downturn, and he's bought out by another company to create the first superhero duo with a young up and coming Barnaby Brooks Jr. They share the same power, so this does make some amount of sense. Naturally, they don't see quite eye to eye on the whole superhero biz. Kotetsu is a superhero in the more traditonal mold, where Barnaby treats it more as a job to further his own goals.

This manga one shot, done by the original character designer Masakazu Katsura, takes place between episodes seven and eight. Therefore there are minor spoilers for the show.

In episode seven of the TV show, a vigilante by the name of Lunatic makes his presence known to the city, making the heroes look bad as he kills an entire church full of people right under the heroes' noses. Having lost a lot of faith in their heroes, the companies and Hero TV struggle to do damage control in regards to the situation.

This is one of the things they come up with:

Needless to say, our heroes aren't exactly pleased when they see what's in store for them.

They all have their own complaints:

And while they're bickering about it, Kotetsu finally shows up.

Barnaby isn't happy at his partner's hangover excuse for some reason...

And after being lectured by his drinking buddy, Antonio...

...Kotetsu is quickly brought up to speed on the pose situation. His reaction? "Look at all the fucks I give."

Barnaby takes exception to his attitude--Kotetsu normally doesn't care about any other part of the job except heroing, which doesn't sound too bad until Barnaby's the one forced to stand over him while he completes his expense reports, or dinged for all the public destruction fines Kotetsu racks up as his partner--and reminds him that their public image and popularity is an important part of being a hero. Kotetsu isn't too pleased to be "reminded" of this by a kid more than ten years younger than him...

Their tiff inspires the others to get in on it, and before you know it everyone is bickering about partnership and poses and rankings.

Until Dragon Kid makes this adroit observation.

The argument is put on hold when Kotetsu notices a building on fire down the street. His power can be used only once an hour, and he just used it to get to their meeting spot, so the situation is more dangerous for him than the others right now.

When Kotetsu collapses inside after trying to save a passed out man, the others spring into action, working as a team to clear the way.

Kotetsu sums up the moral of the story.

But the others aren't biting.

With great power comes great responsibility...not to use your time limited powers to get to work because you were hungover.

The others leave to continue their discussion about poses.

Except Barnaby.

Who saw something very interesting on his cell phone earlier when he was trying to figure out why Kotetsu was so late.