It’s never easy to accept one’s mortality.

The heroes of Tiger & Bunny are a lot like athletes, aren’t they? Heroes compete against one another as sport, racking up points and our adoration. They captivate our minds and hearts with supreme athleticism and superhuman feats. Like athletes too, then, all heroes go through that period of twilight when their powers begin to wane and they can no longer live up to their reputation.

“You have to be honest with yourself. There’s certain things that I could do then that I can’t do now. I think once you make that level of assessment, you can still be as effective or as efficient as your team needs you to be. You just have to do it differently, and I think that’s the challenge of aging or your body maturing.”

That is just what one athlete has to say as his career begins to decline; the process is not as easy for everyone else. Many athletes begin to feel frustration, and soon, fear and doubt start to settle in. Kotetsu must be going through the same ordeal as he sits there on the couch, staring at a notebook detailing his steadily diminishing powers. To heroes, it’s very likely that their powers represent immortality. Without his abilities, Kotetsu is just another man — someone who’ll eventually grow old and die.

To make things even harder, Kotetsu has to be honest with himself and to the people who depend on him. He isn’t a lone wolf; Kotetsu is part of a team, and if Barnaby doesn’t realize his partner can no longer operate at 100% capacity, the duo could put themselves in danger. Plus, I wonder how Kotetsu is feeling when he heard of the Lady Killer’s death. Sure, the Lady Killer was a murderer, but he was also a human being — someone who died because Kotetsu failed to do his job. Essentially, that death is on him.

In his moment of weakness, Kotetsu puts on an old film of Mr. Legend. You can see his eyes light up even before he begins to watch. Once the film begins, Kotetsu smiles like a young schoolboy watching a clip of his favorite baseball player. Kotetsu thinks back to when he was a child and how he had a chance encounter with the famed Mr. Legend.

It’s fascinating how two people can look at the same thing and come away with two completely different interpretations. To Kotetsu, Mr. Legend was a hero who had saved the lives of many. You can just imagine young Kotetsu taking in his idol’s sayings and internalizing them. The Kotetsu we all know and love was the result of Mr. Legend himself; in a way, Mr. Legend was a father figure to Kotetsu.

On the other hand, Mr. Legend was literally Yuri’s (aka Lunatic) father and yet he represented something completely different to his son. Behind closed doors, Mr. Legend was a drunkard and a wife-beater — an over-the-hill superhero who couldn’t accept his mortality and, as a result, took it out on his family. Kotetsu and Yuri thus have completely different ideas of the same, exact person.

Could one of them be wrong about Mr. Legend? Is Kotetsu idolizing a wife-beater? Is Yuri forgetting the fact that his father was once a hero? Neither men are wrong about Mr. Legend, who was both a hero and an abusive bastard. Choosing to believe one conception of the man over the other won’t suddenly make the other choice go away. Both Kotetsu and Yuri will have to come to accept that there are two sides to a coin. Kotetsu’s friend didn’t tell him about Mr. Legend’s untold decline for no reason; Kotetsu has to understand that his idol wasn’t perfect. On the other hand, Yuri has to let go of his past and realize that his father wasn’t just a monster.

Stray Observations

• Lost in all this talk about Mr. Legend is yet another look into Barnaby’s past. Fittingly, it is also about a man who represents a father figure: Mr. Maverick. Barnaby thinks of the old man rather fondly, but the anime’s portrayal of Mr. Maverick is rather suspect. We never did find out why Jake Martinez killed Barnaby’s parents. Conveniently enough, Mr. Maverick had taken young Barnaby out for shopping on the day of his parents’ murders.

Could it be that Mr. Maverick had arranged for their deaths so he could create the perfect superhero? I don’t quite mean perfect in the superpower sense, but perfect in terms of image and ratings. Barnaby’s story would be a tearjerker if it wasn’t so over-the-top, but in the world of T&B, where money and heroism go hand-in-hand, who knows what a CEO would do to capitalize on such an opportunity?

• Agnes continues to bother me. She cheers when Lunatic appears because it’ll mean high ratings for her TV show. Someone as bright as her, however, must realize that Lunatic will murder criminals rather than apprehend them. Essentially, she’s gleeful to see people die.

• The rest of the heroes look so silly at the banquet:

• Oh, I thought this was a great episode by the way.