Gunbuster The Movie

Aim for the Top! Gunbuster is a six part OVA series, released in Japan in 1988, it was the directorial debut of Neon Genesis Evangelion mope-mind Hideaki Anno, and the second commercial project for fledgling studio Gainax. Starting out as a tit-bounce sports show parody, Gunbuster quickly pulled the rug, morphing into a bleak treatise on space war sacrifice. Under review here is the 2006 theatrical-run re-edit that parred down six thirty minute episodes into a ninety odd minute feature, better to run alongside newly minted sequel series Diebuster.

Mankind's initial light speed steps into the cosmos are marred somewhat by an all-out attack by giant insect Space Monsters. Zip-king flagship The Luxion is sunk, along with series heroine Noriko Takaya's father. Flash forward several years, Takaya is moored in a military training academy, struggling to make sense of mecha space armour. Comically inadequate, Takaya is still short-listed for space war by her crippled coach. Why? She's got guts! Resulting montages, and something of an explanation for Takaya's oafish piloting (sensory overload), are excised here. Plot rolling forward into space without ever really crystallising why such responsibility should rest on such a passive character. This lends the first half of Gunbuster The Movie a darkly comedic quality - Takaya consistently caught up in events monstrously out of her depth.

These deletions, as well as drastically reducing girl-crush star student Kazumi Amano's role, highlight Takaya's similarities to another Anno hero, Shinji from Evangelion. Both are rootless children shouldering a world shattering burden they never actively pursued; a pair of reluctant kids tangled up in someone else's idea of who, or what, they should be. This idea even extends to this form fiddling release. Gunbuster The Movie's streamlined narrative direction raises some interesting questions about director's cuts and after-the-fact rearrangement. With the jiggly fan service the series pioneered all but gone, and Takaya's melodramatic relationships trimmed to fleeting connections, the series loses its schizophrenic identity; allowing the feature to concentrate on off-world alienation. Is this an attempt on Anno's part at integrity injection? It certainly brings the piece further in line as a prototype offering of what would become the Evangelion phenomenon. Or is it simply a sensible arc attempt operating within a halved timeframe?

The first four episodes rifled through in record time, full undivided attention is turned to the fifth and sixth segments in which Takaya finally begins to shine, and the cost of deep space pugilism is explored. Such favouritism is excusable, since this is where Gunbuster transcends its mecha show forebears, arriving at a mood and place unique to the genre. Takaya literally slips out of Earth time during her war. Whilst only a year passes for her on the light-speed frontline, decades pass on Earth. Friends and rivals living out the entirety of their lives while she remains, essentially, a child. This is what makes Gunbuster special. These elements are the main meat of the story, rather than endless rounds of alien bashing. Gunbuster expertly juggles these hard sci-fi time rulings with triumphant 70s mecha action tropes in the penultimate encounter, and melancholy monochrome forever war for the finale.



The fact remains, Gunbuster is a rare, and genuinely affecting piece of animation, whatever the form.