Episode Title: A Good Beginning Makes a Good Ending
Original Airdate: 4-10-11
The second episode picks up right where the first one left off with Wild Tiger getting stuck with Barnaby as his new partner and immediately the two don’t mesh well as they go after a giant moving statue. There’s a bit of a comedy of errors as Barnaby wants to check out the situation while Wild Tiger wants to jump right in and they end up getting in each others way and only making it out alive by sheer luck. There’s a lot of great comedy moments in this episode, but there’s also the first bit of real heart as we get to see some of Wild Tiger’s backstory that parallels the NEXT behind this episode’s attack.
At one point while he was knocked out, Kotetsu has a vision of the memory from when he first decided that he wanted to become a hero. He was in the middle of a bank robbery when his hero at the time doesn’t have the situation completely under control and he activates his power to send the final robber flying. It’s a great memory especially because the hero wasn’t depicted as a Superman type, but instead was already a bit of an aging hero who didn’t keep himself in peak physical shape. It also leads to the final confrontation with the young child who has the ability to control objects that he touches. Instead of defeating him, Kotetsu reasons with him in the same way that the hero reasoned with him back when he was young. He also plays a little bit of a fake out when the building they were in during the earlier struggle is about to topple over and he yells out to the child that his power is running out and he needs to jump in so he can be a hero. And once the building has been saved by the giant statue, Barnaby calls Kotestu out on his ruse where his power hadn’t really ran out.
There’s also a bit more of Kotetsu being a struggling father with his daughter Kaede who has an ice skating competition that he is once again late for. A competition that ends up being the center stage for the destruction caused by the NEXT kid who can control objects. When Kotetsu isn’t able to make it to his daughter in time to save her from some falling debris, it turns out that she gets rescued by Barnaby instead, and later on Kotetsu finds out that Barnaby is now his daughter’s favorite hero. This episode really combined the comedic and dramatic elements of the story very well, the best scene is really when Kotetsu is talking the kid out of getting revenge on the school bully. The other heroes make an appearance during some of the battles, and Blue Rose gets to make a very theatrical entrance for the cameras, but this one is a real showcase for Kotetsu.
Channel: Superhero 