Like his more well-known contemporaries Mamoru Oshii (Patlabor, Ghost In The Shell) and Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castle In The Sky), you can always count on Hideaki Anno to helm a compelling animated work. The difference is that Oshii and Miyazaki have spent a lot of time making anime films whereas Hideaki Anno has mostly directed anime TV series instead. His Nadia: The Secret Of Blue Water is a light-hearted, comedic adventure tale based loosely on the writings of Jules Verne. Anno's most recent show, 1998's His And Her Circumstances, is a shoujo (girl's anime) tale portraying the trials & tribulations of two overachieving high school students. Finally, his most famous work and the defining anime of the 90's is his show Neon Genesis Evangelion, an amazing blend of mecha-oriented action, religion, and philosophy (culminating in the absolutely traumatizing 1997 feature film End Of Evangelion). But often overlooked is Hideaki Anno's first effort as director, 1988's 6-episode Original Video Animation series Gunbuster: Aim For The Top!
Based on the first episode alone, Gunbuster appears to be a shoujo-esque satire of the mecha genre. You're very quickly confronted with unlikely scenes of giant robots doing push-ups and jump roping. This is because we're looking at the trainees of an all-girls military school going through their daily coordination routines.
The protagonist is young Noriko Takaya. She spends her time living in the shadow of her deceased father, a starship captain who was killed during the initial assault of a mysterious and powerful alien race. Even though she is a kind-hearted person, Noriko is picked on by her peers because of her general incompetence as a mecha pilot. A new instructor, Coach Koichiro Ota, soon shows up and makes the surprising decision to pair her up with the stunning Kazumi Amano, the most talented student in the school, for a mission in space. This makes Noriko the target of even more harassment by jealous classmates. Eventually, she has to prove herself worthy and her coming of age is the heart of the series.
Gunbuster has a number of admirable qualities, the foremost of which is how it completely avoids the trap of becoming shallow alien invasion schlock like Independence Day or Battlefield Earth. It accomplishes this seemingly rare task by simply focusing on the character of Noriko Takaya throughout the series. Her struggles are what give the show a genuine emotional resonance. The six 30-minute episodes don't appear to give much time to devote to this but the first three are actually all chiefly built around developing her character. The hero robot of the series, the eponymous Gunbuster, isn't shown until episode 4. After that, more focus is given to the survival of the human race and the impending threat of the extraterrestrials, enormous entities who number in the billions.
A particular device used to good dramatic effect is an implication of Einstein's Theory Of Relativity: if you take two people, put one on Earth and the other on a spaceship traveling away near the speed of light, time will slow down for the space-traveller and thus cause them to age more slowly than the person standing on Earth. Since Noriko spends much of the show in space, she finds that people she knew on Earth have aged years while she herself had only been away a few months. There's even cute, supplemental science lessons following several episodes which explain this and other (mostly fictionalized) elements of physics of the Gunbuster universe.
This series is a part of a subgenre of mecha anime referred to as the "super robot" show, mainly popular in Japan during the 70's. Other more famous anime of this type would be things like Voltron, Gaiking, or Danguard Ace. They usually feature ridiculously powerful mecha piloted by good-looking youngsters who shout out the names of their weapons when they use them ("Proton punch!" or "Blazing ultrasonic napalm!" or "Supergigamatictyrannosaurusmxyzptlk beam!"). In fact, for those who care, the Gunbuster mecha itself is very likely the most powerful giant robot out there, able to destroy thousands of huge alien ships with just one shot of its beam weapons. But somehow Gunbuster, made long after the heyday of those old giant robot shows, isn't as juvenile for the most part...
...which brings me to my next point. Gunbuster has a number of instances of what anime fans like to refer to as "fan service" (basically gratuitous T&A, as might be seen in Baywatch). About once per episode, we're treated to a scene of the main female characters either taking a bath or hanging out in their locker room or doing something which requires them to be in various states of undress. Even the military uniforms used for the girls are little more than overglorified one-piece bathing suits. While this sort of thing doesn't usually bother me, here I think it mars what is otherwise a compelling story. I sometimes get annoyed at the image anime has as something for horny 14 year-old boys but I can't exactly argue against that stereotype with Gunbuster. Despite that minor flaw, it's still a great series.
The animation is decent but not what I would consider a sterling example of the Original Video Animation (OVA) format. I tend to use the original Bubblegum Crisis or Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories as the benchmark for animation quality in OVAs and Gunbuster simply isn't in their league. Still, it's perfectly acceptable for something made 12 years ago.
The opening theme, "Active Heart", is a typical example of 80's j-pop. Anime fans will be into it. And, although I rarely mention the topic, I'd like to say that the voice acting is as well done as it usually is in anime. I'm so used to the excellent voiceover work done in Japanese animation that I hardly notice it until I turn on a domestic cartoon (or a dubbed anime) and realize how contrived American voice actors tend to sound. Huge difference.
I haven't yet met anyone who dislikes Gunbuster. It's simply a well-constructed show with a strong grasp of the human spirit. A cynic might call some of it sappy, but they can't deny the power of Hideaki Anno's direction. The final episode, in widescreen format and in black & white for dramatic (and probably cost-cutting) purposes, is one of my favorite endings in any animated feature or series. If you're at all a fan of science fiction, I'd say that Gunbuster deserves a look whether you're into anime or not.
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