So, I finally got the chance to watch Gunbuster this week. I had been planning on watching on watching it for a while, but never really got a chance. Now that I have Netflix, I just decided, on a whim, to rent both Gunbuster and its sequel, Diebuster.

Gunbuster stars a teenage girl by the name of Noriko. Noriko is the daughter of the famous admiral of a fleet destroyed by the Space Monsters. Since she was a little girl, Noriko has always wanted to be a mech pilot. To accomplish her goal, she enrolls in an all-girls piloting academy. Unfortunately for her, she’s an abysmal pilot. She is constantly made fun of by her peers who say that the only reason she go into the academy is because of the status of her father.

Fortunately for her, Coach (whose real name I forget) believes in her and offers her special training on more than one occasion. Even with this training, she is still unable to become exemplary at piloting. Truth be told, Noriko, in real combat, is a class A coward. The focus of pretty much the first four episodes of the series is the development of Noriko as a character and her overcoming her cowardice (and general suckiness.)

The first thing I noticed about Gunbuster was the amount of effort Gainax put into it. For a show from 1988, it looks very nice. To put it in perspective, it’s a show made in the year of my birth… The character designer for the series was Haruhiko Mikimoto. I assume that all of you know who he is, but if your memory is a bit foggy, he was also the character designer for Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and also Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in a Pocket which followed Gunbuster by a year. In the anime industry, Mikimoto is one of my most beloved artists.

The second thing I noticed was the blatant amount of fanservice in the show. Gainax doesn’t even try to hide it either, instead embracing opportunities wherever the”y may be. Don’t expect to see any steam hiding key features during bath scenes. Also, expect a little extra “bounce” during some movements. It;s all in good fun though. At some points, like on of the last scenes of Gunbuster the fanservice makes it kind of funny.

If I were to describe the series with one word, it would be “touching.” I like how the series pays special note to the concept of relativity. When ever a fleet warps, which involves the fleet going at speeds near the speed of light, their concept of time is different from those people living at earth. Of course, Noriko constantly reflects upon this fact as she realizes that her best friend is aging faster than she is. She really doesn’t think about this until she notices that not only is her best friend married when she gets back to earth for the first time, but she also has a child, which really shocks poor Noriko.

Diebuster is really just a continuation of Gunbuster. It takes place many thousands of years after the original series (although, you can only place an exact date on Diebuster’s events after watching a certain scene in its last episode.) I can’t really detail very much of the story, mostly because I’m afraid that I would spoil something interesting about it, but I really like how it ties into the Gunbuster’s story. It is my opinion that Gainax managed to top themselves with Gunbuster’s sequel. Unlike its predecessor, Diebuster is awesome for the whole series and just not for the last three episodes. It also has a different character designer, too (Okama.)