My Cultural Diet

The original Gunbuster OVA was one of the very first anime titles that I watched back in the early ’90s, along with Black Magic M-66, Dirty Pair, and Project A-Ko. And while all of those titles had a few things in common — namely, female protagonists and the occasional bit of fan service — Gunbuster was always my favorite. Not because of the fan service, mind you, but rather, because of the way it juxtaposed coming-of-age melodrama with hard sci-fi concepts, and used the latter to enhance the former. That, and it had lots of cool, albeit ridiculous, mecha action. (I still get a kick out of the characters shouting out their mech’s special moves. Buster Beam! for the win.) Released in 2006, Gunbuster: The Movie is an abridged version of the original OVA, and as such, it does feel disjointed at times. Several storylines that are obviously supposed to be major emotional touch points are noticeably abbreviated here, diminishing their impact and importance. That said, the sense of loss that permeates Gunbuster — thanks to time dilation, our plucky young heroine remains the same age as she traverses the galaxy battling a monstrous alien foe; meanwhile, all of her friends back home on Earth continue growing old — proves quite affecting, and I’ll admit to getting a little choked up at the very end. The fact that the closing theme borrows elements from “Intermezzo” from Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana only adds to that effect. Also, Gunbuster’s climax employs some of the same artistic abstraction that director Hideaki Anno would later employ to great effect in his most famous work, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

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