Gunbuster
a review by ObscuringHazel
a review by ObscuringHazel
First off I want to say I legitimately enjoyed Gunbuster. Quite a bit in fact, which is why I'm giving it the positive rating of 5.7 (you'll see why later). This review is gonna be pretty loosey goosey eating a sandwich because I don't care that much about it I just kinda want to get my thoughts out and warn people who think Gunbuster is gonna be some crazy epic or masterpiece of the mecha genre or something like that.
Minor Spoilers Below
Gunbuster is a show full of great ideas that is strangled to death in its extremely short 6 episode length. There's a lot to like about the show (especially if you're a fan of mecha) but everything is just whizzing by way too fast to latch on to anything and get invested. The show follows Noriko whose dream is to become a robot pilot like her late father and fight against monsters in space. What kind of monsters? I don't know, wish the show told me more about them. They look kinda like bugs.
The whole show has about a million or so moments like this where you're thinking:
I sure wish I knew what the fuck was going on right about know so I could actually give a shit about it
but Gunbuster consistently disappoints. If you've ever watched Garzey's Wing it feels pretty in line with that except with some poor sci-fi thrown in. The technology is poorly defined, there's so much jargon that I can't understand 1/3 of the words said about anything to do with the ships or robots, and what real concepts are used (i.e. time dilation) are done completely wrong.
None of the sci-fi comes even close to breaking the show for me though. What it really comes down to is the pacing. There is a whole 24 episodes worth of story, concepts, and characters here but it just doesn't fit into 6 episodes. My favorite example of this is episode 4 which I'll break down for you in serious and great detail in the paragraph below.
In episode 4 Noriko has failed fighting in space and her partner died (her partner who she met for the first time, fell in love with, and went into battle with in the span of one episode). She decides to get stronger and starts training. Then Jung, who was chill with her before, suddenly gets pissy because Noriko is the one who's gets to ride ~~the coach's dick~~ in gunbuster and not her and then they go fight in space, Noriko gets PTSD, they go back and Jung and onee-sama (yeah I don't remember her real name) get in a cat fight. Then onee-sama goes to complain to coach that it's not fair that noriko gets to ride ~~the dick~~ in gunbuster and she doesn't (yeah I made the same joke because that's actually pretty much what she's talking about) and how he should use her to "exact his revenge" or something (idk wtf she's talking about here). THEN they get attacked by the bugs and Noriko is held back because she sucks and Noriko cries and someone dies (I don't think we were supposed to care about her) and everything's going so bad, they've lost 42% of the robots until HOLY SHIT IT'S GUNBUSTER. Noriko gets in the super robot (which I think they only mentioned the existence of once before in like episode 1 and it's super secret or something yet somehow everyone including regular soldiers know about it) and kicks some bug thorax and she gets stabbed by the big bug but she electrocutes it and the day is saved aw yeah.
This is easily at least 3 good episodes worth of content that is crushed into a pitiful 25 minutes and serves as a perfect microcosm of what the experience of this show is as a whole. It's extraordinarily hard to give any shits at all when everything is rushing past at mach 17. This extratone-speed pacing ruins just about everything the show has to offer. "How did Noriko go from little bitch who can't even be in space to insane super robot pilot badass in like 2 days (or was there some weird timeskip that was never telegraphed to the viewer)?" "Is Jung bipolar?” “Why does the coach have a japanese style room on a spaceship? I'm tired of seeing this, it’s pretty much a cliche at this point.” These are the questions that this incredible pacing makes you ask yourself. It's not even an incredibly entertaining speed it's just somewhat boring at times. Not all the time, but some times (the battles in particular because it's impossible to care about any of the characters, if you can call them that). The first episode is pretty entertaining because of the pacing though.
Now in spite of all this hate so far I'd say that Gunbuster is worth the watch and I did have a decent amount of fun watching it. Gunbuster is packed full of great ideas (the time dilation, the PTSD, humanity is just a virus in the galaxy, blowing shit up with black holes, last episode in black and white, I could go on.) but they aren't given the room they deserve to breathe. It feels bloated and incredibly rushed and definitely could have used another dozen episodes or so to fully flesh out its universe.
Now you could watch this seriously as a mecha fan to witness the history and progression of your favorite genre, LIKE A NERD. Or you could watch this for the meme(?), have a good time, and enjoy the fanservice (and that's how I'd recommend you watch it). I'm including this in the review because I just want to say: more shows should do fanservice like this show. This is both the best and least intrusive fanservice I've ever seen. It (somehow) really adds character to the show and I feel the show would legitimately be worse without it. The characters just happen to be wearing pretty skimpy suits to pilot the mechs and also Noriko just really likes chilling in her underwear (also there's a bath scene but it's pretty normal). It's a great way to stay low key but also be really appealing (but I'm just a stupid 20-something-year-old calling DRAWINGS of high-schoolers hot so you should just ignore this whole review because I'm obviously a pedo, reported for sexism. Not to mention that Noriko is well over 18 by the end of the show). It also helps that it's an ova and can show raw nips (make what you will of that sentence).
example of fanservice to break up the text:
So all in all my actual score for the show is 5.5 but I added 0.2 because Noriko is, ah, let's say, well endowed (but not too well endowed. goldilocks zone, baby). So final score 5.7/10
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