Sorry, I've been meaning to write up my experiences of Gunbuster II for a while now. Finally got round to doing it for my blog today, so here are the relevant sections.
Firstly, some context on Gunbuster from a piece I wrote a while back:
Gunbuster is the story of a teenage girl named Noriko who is desperate become a pilot and go into space in order to fight an utterly alien insectoid threat responsible for the death of her father years earlier. She's perpetually lost in an environment beyond her capabilities, firstly enduring a training scenario in which she is bullied and misunderstood, then made an outcast in the battle fleet she is assigned to as all her peers look down on her as someone who would never have been recruited were she not her father's daughter. Her only advocate is Coach Ota, a mysterious and aloof individual who is the sole survivor from the disaster in which her father perished. But how far are the two of them willing to go in order to avenge themselves of this tragedy that has twisted their lives out of shape?
What starts as a seemingly silly and dated series turns into something else entirely as of the second episode, in which we're introduced to Anno's boundless genius for imagining science fiction scenarios that throw his characters into the heart of their personal darkness. Gunbuster is a study of loss, loneliness and sacrifice, raw hearted and sincere in a way that actually hurts to watch at its most intense. As our heroes go out on successive missions the effects of relativity in their near light speed journeys take them away from everyone they love back home. Time itself is their enemy, isolating them from everything apart from their single-minded (and many would say insane mission). Space has seldom been depicted as lonely and cruel.
And at the climax of everything is one of the most truly magnificent endings I've ever witnessed, one that I can barely talk about or write about without crying. I'm crying now. It's such a payoff that people still talk about this show in reverent tones despite the many quantum leaps in animation since.
It's out in the UK on one DVD for about twenty quid, but you can probably find it for cheaper with minimal searching. If you're capable of suspension of disbelief with some of its more dated aspects then you'll be hard pressed to find any mini-series as rewarding. All the Eighties goofiness only adds the endearing overall effect for me. And you've got to love any show that'll throw in a character like firebrand pilot Jung-Freud.
Then Gunbuster II:
There are some pretty heavily spoilers in the following review. If you've seen neither series and are likely to then I'd really suggest you skip what's to come. Do yourself a favour and beg, borrow, download or steal these shows from whoever/wherever you can.
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SPOILERS
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There are a number of things that impressed me about the creative choices made by the writers and designers. The original Gunbuster us one of the most dearly loved properties amongst anime fans. The people who love it are devoted to it and can't really talk about it without their lower lip starting to wobble. And it's totally a product of its time and of the medium. Aspects of it have dated, and aspects of it will seem bizarre and jarring to non-anime fans. It's not some Ghost in the Shell style affair that's taken with the idea of seeming credible outside of the medium's core audience. But for something so loved it must have been tempting to have made the sequel try to be more than anime, for it to attempt some kind of artistic longevity/credibility. For it to seem sensible, like a work of art should.
Thankfully these concerns are totally unwarranted. If anything, the silliness of Gunbuster II is far and away sillier than Gunbuster's. In the original you had obsessive attention to detail focusing on the animation of bouncing breasts, you had robots practising forming human pyramids, skipping and sit ups, you had those genius science lessons and that fantastic audio-only Exelion talent competition. In the sequel there the elite psychic pilots are called the Topless, newly manufactured giant robots that come in enormous transparent packaging as referencing the fact that they're essentially action figures, space suits that have massive rounded heads with thrusters hanging out of the back making them look like cute little puppy dogs and the heroine's nickname is Goonybird.
It's also totally grounded in the here and now, and in fact already looks slightly dated because of it. Don't get me wrong, I consider this a major strength. Anything with the name Gunbuster needs to be strongly nostalgic, of which more later. For now suffice to say that it was made by the same creative team who made the incomparable work of utter genius that is FLCL, and it shows. Indeed, in the opening episodes there seem to be more references to FLCL than any other series, what with Lark's resemblance to Lt. Kitsurumabami, the arrogant and out-of his depth starship captain's resemblance to Amarao, Lark's Vespa, using cats as a means of interstellar communication . . . in fact the entire animation style, particularly in the battle at the end of the first episode, are references to Gainax' great insane experiment.
Plus the opening and closing themes are perfect choices. They play both with and against the content, and while the opening images are disappointingly taken solely from the first two episodes the montage of still paintings in the glorious closing theme are fantastic, especially Nono in full on Dix-Neuf cosplay.
So, what is it about? In a far distant future a young woman named Nono runs away from home to become a space pilot so that one day she might become a true Nonoriri. She's at her lowest ebb, in debt and working in a bar when into her life walks Lark, a member of the frightening powerful psychic corps of Buster Machine pilots called the Topless. But Nono is not what she initially seems to be, and could she one day have it in her to become a space pilot, even a Topless herself?
As is usual with decent anime series a simple premise is taken to some totally unexpected places. Throughout the opening few episodes you tend to wonder exactly what this series has to do with the original, besides there being a number of Buster Machines in the mix. It seems almost ambivalent towards the first series. For example, I was continually asking myself, "When exactly is this set?" I'm not going to answer that here, as the series placement is crucial to what it becomes. Another aspect of the original show that is missing are the effects of Relativity, as there is no intergalactic faster-than-light travel in the sequel whatsoever (well, not quite, but I'm not going to spoil it). To begin with I found this disappointing, until what the show is really about hit home for me and suddenly it clicked and started working gangbusters.
If Gunbuster is a story of loss and self-sacrifice caused by relativity – a science fiction take on war-veterans never truly being able to go back home – then Gunbuster II is about the loss of the sense of self, the loss of memory, both on the personal and the racial level, over the kind of timescale only usually offered by science fiction. Nono is an amnesiac with no idea who she is and what she's capable of, her memories are almost all submerged besides her need to be a Nonoriri, a term which isn't made clear until much later and also concerns what has long since been lost. The Topless are a corps of phenomenally powerful psychic pilots who will all lose their powers as they reach adulthood, each Topless (Lark, Nikolas, Casio) being at a different stage of the loss of everything that has bought them prestige and power. Once they lose their powers they can no longer bond to their Buster Machine, a fact which Casio mourns as he bitterly speaks about how the giant machines just move on, when he never can.
The Buster Machines themselves are in many cases ancient, particularly Dix-Neuf, the cloaked and battle scarred old warhorse that Lark is bonded to. There are wounds and patches that are thousands of years old on his armour, graffiti scrawled in a long dead language by long forgotten pilots. Emerging from Dix-Neuf's head is a gigantic horn from a centuries old head wound, a piece of shrapnel embedded in his cranium that the cantankerous old bastard refuses to remove. The horn prevents him from using many of his old abilities, but if it were taken out he'd forget centuries of battle experience. In a universe slipping into decay and decadence because of the loss of history and memory, Dix-Neuf has made the choice to remember, and that choice has cost him.
I really fucking love Dix-Neuf. Especially as you find out more about him in the closing episodes. What an extraordinary character.
The story is shot through with references to loss. Old Buster Machines use technology that has long since become lost to humanity. Old enemies return who the heroes are no longer equipped to be able to deal with. A huge manmade space-station that is so ancient that it is beyond memory lies where Jupiter should be. Mankind no longer ventures beyond the rim of the solar system due to some barely remembered cataclysmic event and have surrounded themselves with an ancient defensive technology whose purpose and construction are forgotten. Historians in the show piece together the narrative as though it is an archaeological site, the unearthing of a prehistoric civilisation.
In the episode in which Nono finally starts to remember who she really is, a tiny fragile tune is played as though it is on a music box from long ago. As she looks down from the rim of the crater on Pluto Nono starts to hum the same tune, as if it were a fragment of melody from her long lost childhood.
But it's not. It's a memory from our childhood.
She's humming the theme song from Gunbuster.
It's simultaneously meta beyond meta and emotionally resonant. It's gone beyond being a misty-eyed reference to a twenty-year old show and become an incantation, a calling forth of the powers and the principles of living of an earlier age.
And at that moment everything that has come before starts becoming contextualised. Where this series fits in relation to the earlier one begins clicking into place until the final revelation at the end of the final episode, an ending that impossibly matches the original for emotional impact. I'm not going to spoil it. Suffice to say there is a motivation that compels Nono to do everything she does, even when it seems at odds to everything that's sensible. In the final episode humanity's last hope lies with turning the Earth into a doomsday weapon and Nono goes all out to prevent them from executing this plan. It's not until the final scene that you realise exactly why, and then it all suddenly makes sense.
In Gunbuster, Noriko sacrifices everything to save the Earth for everyone apart from her. In Gunbuster II Nono nearly sacrifices the whole human race to save the Earth for one person. And she makes the right decision.
In fact the ending of Gunbuster II is so perfect, so wisely chosen, so utterly right that it restores my faith in the world and those who write within it. It's as though something I've held precious for years has somehow been added to, enlarged, made stronger by someone who respects exactly how much a throwaway six-episode Nineteen Eighty-Six mini-series from a much derided trash medium can really mean to people. Fans are often ridiculed for caring too much and hating and attempts to change and mess with their beloved cultural artefact. While Gunbuster II initially seems to play fast and loose with the original, at its close you're left in no doubt that this series is in part intended to be a fitting monument to one of the greatest shows the medium has ever produced.
Yes, I cried buckets at the end. More than I've cried in a very long time, in fact. From the moment Dix-Neuf takes the initiative, to finding out exactly what's in the drawstring bag in the second cockpit, to Lark standing on the hill with her lantern at the very end . . . if you have any kind of love for the earlier show, then you really need to watch this.
The legacy of Gunbuster is all about memory. My only sadness is for those who have yet to see either show, who don't have years of fond and heartfelt memories for the girl in the pilot's chair who tore her own uniform at the breast and hollered "Buster Beam!" as if her life depended on it. For those people I want you to know that you're in for a treat, but I wonder if your experience of this magnificent sequel will ever match mine. I can't imagine that these series, seen back to back, will retain nearly as much of the impact as seeing them separated in time, going back years to when you were a different person.
Don't let that stop you though. |
