Gainax has certainly made a name for itself over the years. For a lot of Westerners, their first exposure to the studio’s work was probably Neon Genesis Evangelion. Bring up 90s anime, and the show is bound to make its way into the conversation at some point. That being said, looking back at their earlier works they have a lot of interesting stuff that they’ve put out. Today, we’ll be looking at Gunbuster, an early OVA by the studio.
It takes place in the near future, when humans have developed the means to travel great distances through space. Unfortunately, this has caught the attention of large bio creatures from a distant world, which humans refer to as Uchuu Kaijuu (Space Monster). These creatures view humanity as a threat and have dedicated themselves to wiping out the species, getting ever closer to the Earth.
In order to fight back, humans have created a fleet of spacefaring battleships and giant combat robots, with their ace in the hole being Gunbuster, an absolute titan of robot that is piloted by two people.
This is where the show’s main character, Noriko Takaya, comes in. She’s a high school student training to fight in the war against the Space Monsters. Noriko’s father was an admiral in the first fleet to lock horns with the creatures, dying in the battle as he helped one of his subordinates escape their crippled battleship. With a family lineage like that, one would expect Noriko to have a knack for battle herself. That just isn’t the case, though.
Noriko has the nickname of “The Daughter of Defeat” among her classmates, as se has been doing a terrible job in her training up to this point. Watching her practice, she struggles to keep her mech upright, never mind actually doing more involved movements. Nevertheless, Noriko’s coach doesn’t give up on her, believing that she has the ability to become one of the best mech pilots ever if she sticks with it.
And this is what about half of the series focuses on: Noriko’s struggle to become a competent pilot not only in they eyes of her colleagues, but to herself as well. She slowly gets there, but every time she makes it a little further, she seems to be hit with another crisis. Ultimately, though, the show focuses on Noriko’s growth as she becomes a better pilot, toughens up mentally, and eventually becomes one of Gunbuster’s pilots.
Given that the series is an OVA, most of it focuses on Noriko’s growth without spending much time looking at the other characters. It’s unfortunate but understandable given the time constraints that come with making an OVA. It would have been nice to learn more about Jung, Kazumi, and Coach, but there just wasn’t any time for that. As such, they do come across as a little bit one-dimensional.
I would have especially liked to have seen more time spent with Kazumi, who Noriko refers to as One-sama, since she is like a mentor to Noriko. She’s a highly skilled, mentally disciplined pilot, the complete opposite of Noriko. Kazumi is basically who Noriko dreams of becoming, but we hardly see anything besides her very professional side for most of the show. In later side we see hints of her softer side, and there are those times where she’s caught talking to Coach, questioning why she has to be partnered with Noriko, but given the time constraints of the show, it just wasn’t possible to explore these in greater detail.
Nonetheless, what was there while watching Noriko grow until she’s a decent pilot at the end of the series is interesting to watch, especially when comparing it against later Gainax series that followed similar plot devices, as it gives an idea of how the studio’s storytelling has evolved over the years.
It can’t be emphasized enough how Gunbuster feels like an early prototype for later works by the studio. Coming back to it years later, it’s obvious that Noriko is like an early version of Shinji from Evangelion and one could just as well draw comparisons between Jung and Asuka or Coach and Gendo if they wanted to. The foundations for what would be used and expanded upon in future works are right there.
Moving beyond story, this series also looks and sounds amazing. There is a ton of detail in the characters, environments, robots, and the like. A lot is going on in many of the scenes as well, especially in later episodes when large scale space battles erupt. Of course, one thing people who have seen the show will bring up is the bounciness of all the girls’ breasts. It sounds like a silly thing to bring up, given the sheer amount of fan service that permeates anime today, but this was something that people just didn’t see in the late 80s. Sure, there was raunchiness and naughty jokes back then, just look at series like Dr. Slump or Urasei Yatsura, but here was this obsession with making that particular part of the female anatomy move around with a striking level of realism.
Also worth noting is the artistic choice to make most of the last episode without color. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after that it’s a really interesting choice. On a very basic, superficial level, one can see a lot more detail in all of the scenes since everything has been reduced to black, white, and shades of grey. However, it also adds to the mood, given that we’re heading into the climatic final battle in that episode.
Before closing off, it’s worth noting one other element that is used in Gunbuster, that being time dilation. The show recognized the laws of relativity and how it impacts the characters. There’s a lot of space travel going on and as a result, those that are cruising the stars are aging at a totally different rate than those on Earth. As such, we see this isolation grow as Noriko spends more time in space, and those she knew back in high school becoming older and older while she’s away, turning into very different people when she visits them later on.
Gunbuster is one of those shows that I do like to revisit from time to time. First, it’s an early work from Gainax, which makes it interesting simply as a way of seeing how the studio has evolved over the years. Second, it’s just a very good a anime. The story is interesting, the image quality is amazing, and some of those songs will get stuck in your head for a very long time. It would have been nice if it was a full-blown series in order to flesh out some of the characters and moments in the series, but on the whole it’s easy to let this shortcoming slide. If you haven’t seen Gunbuster, I definitely recommend checking it out.
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