Pre-watch Thoughts
The Evangelion Rebuild series has been a disaster for the anime
race. I really did not like director Hideaki Anno's latest anime
film, Evangelion 3+1, so I am going to rewatch GunBuster, a
giant robot anime by the same studio he used to work for,
Gainax. I really liked GunBuster when I first watched it and now
I am really worried that it won't be as good rewatching it after
many years. I have already had this happen to me once when I
rewatched the Area 88 OVA it just felt silly and didn't make my
heart flutter as it did the first time I had watched many years
ago. Part of it, is that I have changed, I have watched so much
anime that I have lost that paradoxical sense of wanderlust. I
say "paradoxical" because of course I was just sitting in front
of TV or a computer monitor and yet I could be easily whisked
away to another world. Now I still enjoy anime but in another
way, a less admirable and less escapist way. by complaining
about anime. I take some pleasure in being nitpicky when it
comes to most new and old anime I watch but now I know I can't
hold back anymore and that I will be as critical towards this
too, I know it's not cool to identify too much with things like
TV shows, everyone from your average anime-hating trad-cath on
discord/matrix to Hideaki Anno will tell you that, yet I do not
look forward to tear this anime apart. With those apprehensive
feelings in mind, here goes nothing.
Aim For The Top!
I was worried for nothing, GunBuster is even better than I
remembered though I am not going to lie the ending felt a bit
less impactful because of Diebuster (aka "GunBuster 2"). Some
things are better off left to the imagination, the world 12.000
years in the future which still had not forgotten our brave
heroines turned out to be a very uninteresting place, not worthy
of their sacrifice, and the "welcome back home " sign was shown
to be just the hack work of a few shallow, selfish characters
not a general sentiment. It is hard but one day I'll be able to
divorce that cursed money-grabbing, nostagia-faggotry sequel
from GunBuster. At least none of the original characters from
GunBuster were in DieBuster, unlike what happened to FLCL (again
from Studio Gainax). I think I was more of a humanist when I
watched GunBuster many years for the first and only other time.
I was moved by the message of what humanity could achieve in the
future. GunBuster was released in 1988-1989, it is set in the
futures, the year 2023, the Soviet Union is still around, Japan
won world war 2 which was started by the US sneak attack on
Hawaii which belongs to Japan "since ancient times"(as the CCP
would say), and humanity led by the Japanese Empire has begun to
conquer space but an alien species of giant monsters threatens
to destroy mankind. Meanwhile in the real world, our world,
Japan stagnated, is demographically dying, and is in third place
behind China economically, the Soviet Union collapsed just a
couple of years after GunBuster was released, forget near
light-speed travel in space we haven't even gotten to mars and
everybody is interested in which gender they are and what
latrine they should use. Where is the ambition? Where is the
"pride"? At a "pride parade"? Where people take pride in bumming
people? Where is the greatness? All I see are mediocrities like
Bezos and Musk making millions hosting web servers (Bezos) and
through state-subsidies and media stunts (Musk) or selling
people's private details (everybody else).
There is something very quaint and pleasant about the futurism
of GunBuster. I just find it cute that there were people in the
past who thought that we in the future wouldn't just become a
bunch of bugmen whose only wish is for a quiet and comfy life as
closely resembling death as possible. There's futurists today
who say that we will have colonies on mars, now I don't deny
that perhaps we might send someone to mars just for vanity's
sake (to make a tiktok video of it) but I feel that now we
will remain bound to this planet. I think this sentiment is
shared by many otaku and anime creators which is why there isn't
any space anime like GunBuster made anymore. Space is no longer
the frontier, video game worlds are the frontier - this is the
reason there's so much isekai (reborn in a fantasy video-game
world anime). At the end of Otaku no Video, which is kind of an
ironic weeb anime about otaku (again by Gainax), the two main
characters who are "Otakings" fly off into space to conquer the
stars (like the characters from the anime they watched) but now
if Otaku no Video were to be remade (God, please don't let that
happen) they would be reincarnated in another world which has
cat girls or something. From wanting to explore the expanses of
space to living in a fucking VR headset! What a downgrade. As
Argent said, we live in the lamest dystopia.
In Japan GunBuster is known as Aim for the Top, which is a
reference to the American movie about military aviation, Top
Gun (starring Tom Cruise), and the Japanese girls' tennis
manga/anime Aim for the Ace (which is basically Ashita no Joe
for girls). I haven't watched/read either of them but I can say
GunBuster does play out like a sports manga, except the stakes
are much higher. I mean even the comic relief robot training
Rocky-style training montages are basically a rushed training
arc out of a sports manga. I mean the fact that Coach's
character is there kind of gives it away.
GunBuster is not hard sci-fi so it isn't boring but it's not so
rule of cool that I can't take it seriously, like Gurren Lagaan
(a modern and so infinitely worse Gainax anime) it is about the
sheer scale of mankind's achievements except here you actually
feel the scale sometimes, like in the last episode. I liked how
despite it being "a humanist tale" of progress, it wasn't the
bitter anti-clerical style you have in the west like with the
Castlevania anime. Or more subtly even things like Star Trek, le
fully automated space gay luxury utopia. Okay, maybe old (and so
"real") Star Trek isn't that bad but anime is better, is all I
am saying.
The one thing that was definitively better than I remember was
Noriko's character. She went through a lot more hardships than I
remembered. In fact all the characters are pretty good despite
this anime being just six episodes. Some people complain about
the anime being too short, but honestly, it is fine this way too
because if it was longer we would have simply gotten more of the
same and so it might have been less meaningful as the moments
get diluted into each other, but there is no way to know. Given
that I knew and have already thought about the time dilation
aspects of the plot the first time I watched it, that aspect
wasn't as interesting anymore. Or rather although I have never
jumped forward in time, I have jumped from continent to
continent and whenever I go back and meet the people the people
I knew and they have changed, moved on, and I have not, I get
Noriko's feeling but it is rather mundane. Maybe I am just too
old to care about people deeply like that, were I still a
teenager and I had a "best friend" my age who would suddenly
become older and disconnected from me then I might have cared
more. Because now I could speak to that best friend on the
internet but I would rather avoid it because such meetings are
always awkward and boring. Of course I wasn't carrying the fate
of the world on my shoulders but then again Noriko wasn't acting
like it either. Basically because the creators have never had to
carry the world on their back but were once teenagers they get
the teenager part right but not the "carrying the world on their
back" part right.
I didn't notice the fan service in GunBuster. It's an OVA (i.e.
not for TV but direct to home video) so there's some frontal
nudity if you care about that sort of thing, which you
shouldn't. Then again if you don't watch it for that then it's
your loss, why should I care? If you care about the pretty
colours, I don't know I thought the animation looked good, the
machine artwork looked good if a bit generic when it comes to
some of the mechs and the monsters, and the character designs
for the girls looked cuter and sexier than any braindead
moe-blob modern anime mass produced "waifu" out there.
There is a bunch of made up science in GunBusters. Some of it
is explained in the mini-episode extras called GunBuster
Science Lessosns, this is not real science but some made
up science to make some of the things in the anime make more
sense.
And remember, hard work and guts conquers all.
By Otaking, or The Good Student