Genre: Sci-fi/Mecha
Creator: GAiNAX/Hideaki Anno
No of Episodes/Volumes of Manga: 6 episodes
Reviewer: StorminNorman
Review:
Gunbuster was the first GAiNAX series of any sort,
created not long after The Wings of Honneamise: Royal Space
Force and following along fairly similar themes. It is a 6
episode OAV series following Noriko Takaya, a young girl training
for the Space Force as the pilot of what amounts to a mech.
Things don't go so well for her however, she has
problems just keeping her mech upright, and has to deal with taunts
from her classmates, as well as survive a challenge from a girl
who will become her rival. Fortunately, Noriko has the backing
of the group's mentor, Coach Ota, who believes she is the one
capable of flying the ultimate mech: the Gunbuster. Under his
guidance she learns to pilot her mech properly and make it into
the Space Force.
And that's just one episode. As is typical with
GAiNAX series, they manage to pack so much into a single episode
that you feel as though it could be an entire series in itself.
Gunbuster is no exception. It is interesting to watch from
a historical perspective, too, as many elements that appear in
Gunbuster turn up later in Nadia, Neon Genesis
Evangelion, and especially FLCL.
One thing that makes Gunbuster (which also
goes under the title Aim For The Top) so different from
the standard run of Space/Giant Robot anime (and the reason I
have referred to it as Science Fiction, rather than either of
these two genres) is the way it actually takes science, and in
this case the Theory of Relativity as it relates to faster-than-light
travel, and shows how it affects ordinary people. Noriko winds
up spending so much time travelling faster than light, that she
seems to have barely aged, while everyone around her grows older
and older.
The scenes in which Noriko is shown with her (much-older)
friends are some of the most moving scenes in the whole series,
and the impact of the final episode (which mostly takes place
several years after the opening episode) can not be understated.
The final episode is interesting for another reason
too: it's done entirely in glorious black and white, except for
the very last sequence. At first it's difficult to adjust to this,
but after a time it becomes obvious why GAiNAX have chosen to
remove all colour from the episode.
The sound in Gunbuster is fairly stock late-1980's
anime fare. Heavily synthed opening and closing themes, and synth-generated
string music for the incidental sequences. The video I watched
only had monaural sound, which on my 5.1 system sounds kind of
tinny. If it were remastered for a DVD release, it would probably
be improved dramatically.
The actual animation quality is similar too. GAiNAX
have a habit of squeezing the most story out of the fewest frames
of animation, and it would be safe to say that they lack the perfectly
smooth animation of, say, a Studio Ghibli production, or even
some of Sunrise's higher budget efforts. Still, the animations
for flying through space are excellent, and some of the battle
sequences look awesome on a 68cm TV.
It should be noted that Gunbuster contains
a fair whack of fan-service, and so may not be suitable for all
ages, but, despite this (the fan-service is never gratuitous,
similar to how it occurred in Evangelion), or maybe because
of it, I can highly recommend this series for anyone looking for
a decent giant robot anime with lots of action and a very strong
story.
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