Tiger Mask W

Two men fighting. A setup that drives countless fictional stories, and one which Tiger Mask W delivers in spades.

If you are browsing this and ordinarily enjoy a good battle shonen, just go watch Tiger Mask W, you need read no further. Pro wrestling - at least as it's portrayed here - is basically the same thing with more spandex. They still have attacks with cool names and take implausibly large hits, but there are no gruesome deaths or spirit bombs on display, just an occasional "they'll never fight again" killer move to raise the stakes. It's a Toei series, so the quality is typically choppy ... and relies a lot on "classic" compositions with a static camera against dynamic still poses, but it's well-directed and sustains a feeling of movement for an extended period. Pretty much every fight is easy to follow, flows well, and engrosses the emotions.

OK, you say. The fighting is pretty good. What else is there? The other important part of a series about fighting, of course: giving the characters good reasons to fight. The main plot of Tiger Mask W is a straightforward revenge story, and many of the subplots are roughly as predictable. But like the fighting, it manages to juggle a fairly large cast and develop them at a steady, easy-to-follow pacing. Everything ties together in a neat, by-the-book fashion, which is in keeping with the "throwback" feel of the visuals. You've seen it all before, but rarely with execution this strong. It's not a twisty, meta, or philosophical type of show, it just delivers the goods on satisfying setups and resolution, over and over. Most seasonal anime could stand to learn from this example.

I actually started watching Tiger Mask W with its final episode, which was a chance happy accident: the conclusion to the main plot was in the previous episode, and this was more like an OVA-style epilogue that acts as a teaser for a possible new season or spinoff, with a focus on side characters and stage-setting for new plot arcs. I really hope they go through with producing more of this series, because it's like comfort food to me.

if you like wrestling, you'll probably enjoy it, even tho they mention the original tiger mask from time to time, you can watch this without prior knowledge of the original series, the story it's not that grade, i'll even say that in some chapters it feels like they lost the plot or the sense of urgency, i loved every minute of it, specially the chapters where they fight in the countryside, my biggest problem with this series it's okada, he gotta be the biggest fraud i've ever seen in an anime, all that glacing about being the njpw heavyweight champion, and just one or two ... victory on screen, the rest of his match are either offscreen or him losing, i swer , i have more memories of ryu the jobber winning and fighting more on screen than the supposedly champion , i hate him, what a fraud

Wrestling and anime have a lot in common. They are both hobbies looked down upon by society as a large and have most of their fanbase communicate online. They are also full of idiots and elitists hating on “normies” and “casuals”.

Story:
As far as I could find out, this anime is a sequel to the original Tiger Mask, but ignores other sequels to it. Since the original is solely available in Japanese, I have no idea how this one correlates with it, so let’s just judge it as a show on its own. A young guy named Naoto picks up the moniker of Tiger Mask to ... make it big in the wrestling business and find the man responsible for crippling his mentor and make him pay. At the same time, his former training partner Takuma has the same intentions, but joins the evil organization to destroy them from within. The whole plot isn’t much to write home about, but a simple story well executed can still be a good one. Tiger Mask is pretty straight forward, which is definitely for the better, as the writing doesn’t feel like it could handle big twists or a deeper storytelling. Almost everything that happens is easily predictable, but the show never tries to pretend that it’s going to surprise you. A very nice addition to the cast are the stars of real life promotion New Japan. They give the whole story a more realistic feeling, showing us that this isn’t a fantasy world with made-up guys doing impossible moves, but a show about somebody wrestling. Of course the Tigers still have impossible finishers, but you get the idea.
7/10

Art:
Tiger Mask looks very reminiscent of old 80s sports shounen and doesn’t really try to be more eye-pleasing than absolutely necessary. The animation is kept very simple, which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but here it comes across as rather lazy. Like “the kids won’t notice” kinda lazy. It’s certainly not a budget issue, as the last three episodes DID look spectacular and it makes it all the more jarring to know what maybe could have been.
5/10

Sound:
The opening song is a newer version of the classic Tiger Mask theme, which, even though it’s pretty cheesy as you would expect from a 60s cartoon, still works fine today. I don’t know if the ending theme is a rehash too, but I thought it was pretty cool. The rest of the soundtrack is basically just some stock music. I somewhat missed entrance themes, but that’s just me being a wrestling nerd. In terms of voice acting I didn’t notice anything remarkably good or bad, it was a solid performance. Just a shame that the New Japan guys weren’t voiced by themselves (except for the final episode cameo).
7/10

Characters:
Naoto is a good main character, he’s serious when fighting, he can be a bit goofy when outside the ring and he has some flaws that almost prevent him from reaching his goal. Takuma is a good anti-hero, with noble motives but behaving like a bad guy. However, I found the villains to be weak. Even The Third didn’t have much more going on than just being that one incredibly strong guy who likes to injure people. The side characters were a lot of fun though. Furukawa Mask was hilarious, Haruna and Wakamatsu were fun too. I especially enjoyed the many cameos by New Japan heels, like Naito or Kenny Omega. In total, the cast was fine by me.
7/10

Enjoyment:
Tiger Mask had a few lengths when it looked like this is going nowhere or might even end up becoming a long-runner. Thankfully, the stronger parts made up for it and ended up making it a quite entertaining show. However, as with probably most other sports shows, if you are not interested in the subject of wrestling, there will be little for you to enjoy about this anime. It isn’t really able to stand on its own as a compelling story and could easily bore you to death. IF you enjoy wrestling however (especially Japanese), I’d say it’s at least worth giving a shot. A solid sports anime, nothing more, nothing less.
6/10

Overall:
6.4/10