Anime Secret Santa: Gunbuster review, part two

I took a bit of a break, and I’ve still got Kyousougiga to watch as well as Kamisama Kiss. Plus, Dumbing of Age isn’t going to read itself. But I’m back on the Gunbuster train.

Thankfully, the show itself took a bit of a break too. Ten years have passed since they left school and old classmates are instructors now and even have kids. It’s crazy what ten years can do to your old high school friends. I don’t know yet; I just went to a student-organized five year reunion with my friends, so who knows what’ll happen to all of us in five more. But enough about that, we should be talking about anime. 

I’m actually glad I accidentally spread this review over two parts, because it’s in these last two episodes that I realize what Hideaki Anno and his crew at Gainax were trying to do with this entire show. Anno, just like with His and Her Circumstances (at least the parts he worked on it) and Evangelion, is trying to create an incredibly humanizing piece of fiction, in Gunbuster and Evangelion’s case set in this superb world of robots and bouncing boobs.

The dichotomy with the robots provides a great contrast with everything else that’s going on around them. By all means, robots should not exist in this show and it could, in fact, work both without them and the aliens that they’re fighting. The way that this story is framed, of distance between friends and loved ones, is Voices of a Distant Star before Shinkai even thought about making it.

What created the agency for these characters was things like seeing Amano 15 years later meeting Noriko six months later. Or even before that when Noriko saw Kimiko 10 years later. The execution of seeing them together after that extended absence was maybe what Voices was missing that Gunbuster did not for me.

In those moments, it set up the final conclusion’s emotions so much better than any of the fantastical/science fiction elements could have alone. Anno knows that it’s his characters that drive the story and he characterizes them spectacularly. Noriko has grown so much, yet she looks exactly the same as when we first met her. Amano is still the strong young woman she was, but she’s matured in ways much less tangible and evident without looking just a little bit below the surface. And Jung Freud provides the perfect third wheel to the duet of Gunbuster pilots because of her lofty personality and little intrusions/insertions into the story. Jung’s introduction provided us with Noriko in space for the first time, then gaining friends, then growing stronger for the sake of humanity.

The sixth episode, in typical Hideaki Anno fashion, quickly runs out of budget and, in fact, is animated almost completely in black and white. The only color sequence is at the very end when Noriko and Amano return home.

I spent the first four episodes just having fun with being immersed in the world of Gunbuster and into the mind of a younger Hideaki Anno. But the fifth and sixth episodes convinced me that the man knows how to weave a story and how to write characters. He sometimes struggles with story, as this was way too sprawling for what I ended up taking out of the series (which was the relationship between Noriko and those on Earth and how being separated affected her), plus we didn’t really find out anything about these aliens that attacked aside from that they are evil. But we arguably don’t learn that with Evangelion either and that was fine.

Now, if only Hideaki Anno always had infinite money or money management skills for his animation budget.

Anime Secret Santa: Gunbuster review, part one

I don’t have much of a reason to write here anymore, because I’m too damn busy writing for the Fandom Post or on Twitter. But I always try to throw a few first impression reviews at the beginning of each season and I’ll occasionally rant on about what happens to be on my mind. I rarely have the attention span to want to sit down and do a whole, cohesive article though. I also don’t have the time, working 9–5 and writing for aforementioned places.

But the Reverse Thieves’ Anime Secret Santa project was solicited and I answered the call. I got the three shows back, and they were: Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Black Heaven, and Gunbuster. Black Heaven is that show with the clip I like to make fun of and Tylor is 26 episodes, so the obvious choice was Gunbuster, the six-episode Gainax OAV from 1988 that marked the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno of Evangelion fame.

Ah the joys of watching shonen action heroes improve in an instant. In a mere month, protagonist Noriko Takaya goes from worst to second with the help of the Coach. You see, Noriko was selected for a special mission out of the entire school, likely because she’s a little bit genki. The coach, Koichiro Ohta, is one of the survivors of the Luxion, on which Admiral Yuzo Takaya died.

The first episode was quite humorous, with giant robots taking the roles of humans in the typical comedy scenes. In one, the high school girls snicker at Noriko as she jumps rope instead of practices inside of her robot. When the resident onee-sama steps in, they all run away saying “Excuse me!” in typical anime girl fashion. It’s moments like this that immediately set the stage for what the show’s lighter moments will be.

But this shonen training montage wasn’t all for naught. Noriko proves that she does indeed have the potential that the Coach said she did; though where he saw that potential is very, very up in the air. She pretty much masters the basics of moving that robot along with a Lightning Kick that drops the supposed second best in the school.

By the second episode, they’re in space and faced with Jung Freud, a not-so-subtle reference to the famous psychologists. She acts as a nice foil to Noriko for a while, but her formerly tough exterior is melted away almost instantly, and possibly disappointingly. She challenged ace student Kazumi Amano to a battle, where they duke it out and find that the other ain’t so bad at fighting after all.

The beef of the second episode is with an exercise where Noriko and Amano have to travel light speed. The ramifications of it are that they’ll leave and come back two months after they leave due to light speed travel being all science-y and such (I don’t understand it, pretend to understand it, or even know if Gunbuster is portraying it correctly or not). Nor do I care because they’re 12 seconds late in returning, thus they spent four more months gone than they expected.

On the trip, they see the shambling remains of the Luxion. Noriko, emotional, jettisons herself from her rocket and boards the ship. Two days had passed on the ship’s time since the attack and she just wanted to find her father. When she gets to the bridge and it’s gone, it is the best moment of the series thus far and I think it’ll have a hard time topping that in terms of emotional impact.

I assume running into the Luxion was unexpected, but it meant a lot for Noriko, who not only missed her own birthday by four months, but Jung Freud’s as well. More importantly, she grasped at a sliver of hope that was barely even there and lost it all when that door finally opened. Seeing her recovery from that will be paramount to her growth as a character, and it’ll be extremely interesting to see what Anno—who, of course, later proved his storytelling chops dealing with emotional trauma like this with Evangelion—does with it.

It’s in the third episode that things really start moving. Noriko is finally faced with a loss that weighs heavy on her heart, not only as a human being but as a pilot. Amano has chosen to un-team up with Noriko, believing that Noriko is too inexperienced to be of any real help. This turns out to be true when she teams up with Smith Toren, named after the translator of the same name. When the two go out on a mission, it turns out bad for Noriko. Her job was to defend Smith, but she failed. He was lost in the battle and they’ve since gone warp speed away.

This is the kind of loss that a TV show almost needs to have to make us really sympathize with the characters. Noriko has had it relatively easy thus far, given her rapid growth and Lightning Kick to the second best. She was high on that, but still knew her relative inexperience is a hindrance. But just how much of a hindrance she would only find out on the battlefield, where Smith could have just as easily been Amano or Jung Freud. And then what?

Noriko, emotionally and physically drained by this point, sees the coach and the presumed Gunbuster robot and breaks down. She’s crying, but she doesn’t want to give up and that’s the best part about it. She doesn’t want to give up, she wants to try harder to make it so this never happens to her again. I admire that out of a character, to be so transparent, and the moment has convinced me that Gunbuster is more than just fun robot show.

With episode four, I can see where Hideaki Anno’s seeds are for Evangelion. Noriko’s entire arc in this episode is basically the same arc as Shinji, just their reasons for not wanting to fight are different. I’m inclined to believe more in Noriko’s arc than Shinji’s because we’ve been around her for longer than Shinji by this point.

But looking squarely at Noriko, she’s grown leaps and bounds in just one episode. She’s still distraught over the loss of Toren Smith (and aren’t we all) and she’s going through some serious PTSD just by being in space. She gets over it with sheer willpower to help those that are literally dying around her and it’s quite uplifting to watch.

To do so, the titular Gunbuster robot is finally unveiled and it is quite amazing. I wish I had a toy of it in my hands right now, but that would make typing a little harder.

The introduction of Gunbuster—superimposed against Amano and Jung Freud’s robots to perhaps look much larger than them (or maybe it is actually larger? I assume it’s larger)—is among the great moments in Gainax badassery. Not only did this spell the “death” of the Noriko of the past, it’s a cool giant robot!

Gunbuster has, thus far, been really fun. I’ve only put it off this long because there’s no legal way to watch it. But, given that this secret Santa told me to, I finally have the opportunity to pirate it and feel a little less bad. I’ve got two episodes left, but I’m SUPPOSED to have it up by today and I’ve just been busy playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution or reading Dumbing of Age or tweeting on twitter. Things have got in the way and I will finish it, and post the rest of the review. But until then, merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy holidays to those that don’t.