Gunbuster, known in Japan as , is a Japanese original video animation (OVA) series produced by Bandai Visual, Victor Entertainment, and Gainax. It was released from October 1988 to July 1989. It was the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, best known as the creator and director of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The title is a combination of the titles of classic tennis manga and anime Aim for the Ace! and hit action drama film Top Gun, whose plots inspired Gunbusters.
The series focuses on a teenage girl named Noriko Takaya, who grows to be a master mecha pilot alongside her senior and inspiration, Kazumi Amano, and helps defend Earth from large extraterrestrials called . To celebrate Gainax's 20th anniversary, a sequel to Gunbuster, Diebuster (or Gunbuster 2), was released as an OVA. The sequel features new characters and mecha but retains the format and many of the concepts of the original series.
The anime has had several releases on home video since it was first released. It received an English dub in 2022. It has also had soundtrack albums, a manga series, and merchandise such as toys, model kits, and video games. Characters and technology appeared in crossover video games such as games in the Super Robot Wars series and two Neon Genesis Evangelion video games. It received mostly positive reviews and won the Seiun Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1990.
Plot In 2015, a space expedition fleet led by Admiral Yuzo Takaya is destroyed by space monsters. Six years later, Takaya's daughter Noriko, a freshman student, enlists in the in Okinawa. She is selected with senior student Kazumi Amano to represent Japan in an upcoming space expedition. When the students know Noriko is the daughter of Yuzo and that Coach Koichiro Ohta was one of the survivors of the 2015 space attack, Noriko is subjected to bullying and harassment. Ohta, however, believes Noriko has the same potential as Kazumi, and through , she strives to become the best Machine Weapon pilot and take control of the experimental giant robot to help Earth win the war against the space monsters. Senior student Reiko Kashiwara challenges Noriko to a Machine Weapon duel, but Noriko defeats Kashiwara. Noriko, Kazumi, and Ohta fly off to the Silver Star orbital base.
Noriko, Kazumi, and Ohta meet Captain Tatsumi Tashiro and Soviet pilot Jung Freud. Kazumi and Jung duel with each other until the duo and Noriko find the remains of a space monster, triggering memories of Noriko's father's death. When the Silver Star detects an unidentified object speeding near Neptune's orbit, Ohta has Noriko and Kazumi investigate the object, later discovered to be Luxion, as part of their sub-light-speed training. Noriko unsuccessfully tries to search for her father. She, Ohta, and Kazumi return to the Silver Star, with six months having passed in the space battleship Exelions non-relativistic frame, and its construction having just been finished.
On the Exelion, Noriko meets American pilot Smith Toren and develops feelings for him. Noriko pairs up with Smith on her first battle against space monsters after Kazumi dissolves their partnership out of fear for Noriko's safety. Smith is killed, and Noriko feels bad for being unable to help him. She begs Ohta to train her further to prove herself to Kazumi.
Jung challenges Noriko to a duel, but Noriko breaks down when space reminds her of Smith's death. On the Exelion fleet's way back to Earth, space monsters attack it. Tashiro orders the Exelion to perform a kamikaze run on the enemy flagship, but Noriko launches in the uncompleted Gunbuster to deal with the alien threat. Noriko single-handedly destroys the flagship, allowing the Exelion to return to Earth.
Ten years pass, Noriko and Kazumi graduate high school, and the Top Squadron disbands. Ohta sends Noriko and Kazumi to escort the decommissioned Exelion to the center of the space monsters' gathering and detonate its degeneracy reactor. Kazumi breaks down, as Ohta has been diagnosed with space radiation syndrome and has less than six months to live. Noriko and Kazumi combine their ships to form Gunbuster to protect the Exelion from oncoming attacks. They retreat before the Exelion explodes, creating a black hole that takes out the entire space monster army and parts of the Solar System. Gunbuster returns to Earth more than six months later, and Kazumi discovers that Ohta is still alive.
Sixteen years later, Kazumi pays her respects to Ohta after he dies. She goes to Hawaii to see an officer for Project Carneades. She warps to Sagittarius A* to rendezvous with the Eltreum fleet to deliver Buster Machine 3, which is the planet Jupiter compressed into a bomb powerful enough to destroy the space monsters' star system. The fleet and Gunbuster protect the bomb from waves of space monster fleets. The bomb is activated, but fails to detonate, as heavy damage during the battle reduced its energy output to 98%. Noriko and Kazumi go into the bomb and use Gunbuster's main degeneracy reactor to trigger its detonation. The Eltreum fleet warps back to Earth, leaving Gunbuster behind as it outruns the bomb's massive explosion. Gunbuster escapes the black hole and returns to the Solar System on July 6, 14,292. Noriko and Kazumi see that the Earth is dark, but a light pattern appears, saying: . Noriko and Kazumi eject from Gunbuster and fall back onto Earth.
Episode list
Characters
Noriko enlists in the Okinawa Girls' Space Pilot High School to follow in the footsteps of her father, Yuzo. Because Yuzo was the captain of the Luxion fleet that was attacked by the , Noriko has been nicknamed the by other students at the Space Pilot High School, who accuse her of nepotism. She is further subjected to bullying when Koichiro "Coach" Ohta selects her with senior student Kazumi Amano to represent Japan as part of the Top Squadron program. When Ohta convinces her that she has the same potential as Kazumi, Noriko undergoes intense training to improve her piloting skills and prove her peers wrong before venturing to space with Kazumi. Noriko was named after the wife of Gainax storyboard artist Shinji Higuchi.
Nicknamed the by her peers, Kazumi is the top Machine Weapon pilot of the Okinawa Girls' Space Pilot High School. She quickly becomes friends with Noriko but questions Ohta's decision to pair her with the freshman Noriko. Kazumi was named after Kazumi Okada (née Amano), who was the wife of Gainax CEO Toshio Okada at the time.
The Machine Weapon coach of the Okinawa Girls' Space Pilot High School and head of the Gunbuster development program. Ohta was a survivor of the space monsters' attack on the Luxion fleet, having lost sight in his right eye and sustained injuries to his right leg that require him to use a cane. He is always seen wearing aviator sunglasses to conceal the scar across his right eye. Because Captain Yuzo Takaya helped him escape during the attack, Ohta selects Noriko and trains her as a debt of honor to the captain. Ohta was named after manga artist , whose real name is Kōichirō Ōta. The cane Ohta uses is an homage to Dan Moroboshi, based on his appearance in the 1974 TV series Ultraman Leo.
A Machine Weapon pilot based on the Soviet Union's moon base, Jung Freud develops a fierce rivalry with Kazumi over their piloting skills. Her name is derived from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud.
Captain of the space naval ship . After the decommissioned Exelion is detonated to destroy a massive space monster fleet outside the Solar System, Tashiro becomes admiral of the new flagship . He was named after , president of animation studio Group TAC.
Tashiro's second-in-command aboard the Exelion. His real name is never mentioned throughout the series.
An American Machine Weapon pilot, Smith, meets Noriko after they are dared by their respective dormitories to wander around the Exelion during warp. Smith and Noriko initially do not get along with each other due to differing personalities, but after Kazumi dissolves her partnership with Noriko out of fear for Noriko's safety, Noriko and Smith become partners. During the Top Squadron's first sortie at the Leaf 64 star system, Smith is killed, leaving Noriko with the guilt of not being able to help him during battle. Smith was named after Canadian translator Toren Smith.
Noriko's best friend at the high school. By the time Noriko returns to Earth, Kimiko is married and has a daughter. Kimiko was named after the wife of Gainax animator Takami Akai.
Kimiko's daughter. When Noriko first meets her, Takami is three years old. By 2048, she is a senior student at the high school.
Kazumi's classmate and the second-best Machine Weapon pilot in the Okinawa Girls' Space Pilot High School. Kashiwara is so furious over Ohta's decision to pair Noriko with Kazumi that she challenges Noriko to a duel. Despite being more experienced, Kashiwara loses the duel after Noriko executes the . By 2032, Kashiwara becomes the school's coach and eventually the principal by 2048.
Noriko's father and admiral of the ship . He was killed when the space monsters attacked his fleet at the Perseus Arm.
Production Gunbuster is Hideaki Anno's directorial debut. Because Gainax originally intended to make Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise and break up, but Wings of Honnêamise consequently performed poorly, Gainax made Gunbuster to help recuperate the losses from Wings of Honnêamise. Taking into account the same work's bad reputation of simply being shown to anime fans, this work has works originally planned by Haruhiko Mikimoto, who worked on Super Dimension Fortress Macross and was popular for beautiful girl characters. The title appears to begin as a parody of the anime Aim for the Ace! and the film Top Gun, is a homage to Shōwa era anime and tokusatsu, and completely changes in a clearly approachable style. The plots of Aim for the Ace! and Top Gun inspired the plot of Gunbuster.
This work starts as a parody at the core, but later, the story has serious content, getting concepts from Joe Haldeman's science fiction novel The Forever War, actively inserting time dilation. The sixth and last episode is shot in black-and-white and has the last scene show minimal coloring. In the remastered version, that part is black-and-white. Regarding planning for the last step, Anno and Okada said, "If that is it, it is good".
The characters' names come from staff members and people with whom Gainax was closely involved. The protagonist Noriko Takaya is named after this work's art staff member . Koichiro Ohta is named after Toshio Okada's friend and manga artist Nao Minda's real name.
Themes One theme of Gunbuster is personal relationships. Noriko, characterized as a plucky and emotional girl, looks up to Kazumi, her mature and confident senior. She also has a friendship with Kimiko, but Kimiko ages normally on Earth as opposed to Noriko's slower aging in space because of time dilation.
The feeling of the world aging faster than Noriko instills a sense of loss. In Gunbuster, when a character approaches the speed of light in space, time slows down for that character. Aspirations and relationships become lost because of the priority to rescue humanity in space. Most science fiction stories do not address this problem, and Gunbuster shows the consequences of this dilemma.
The importance of hard work and will resonates in Gunbuster, as it starts with this theme and continues throughout the series. Although Noriko makes mistakes in the series, she deals with the weight of the consequences of these mistakes, along with the weight of trauma, in her interactions with other characters and grows as a character. Because of how rigorously Ohta trains Noriko, she grows into a master pilot.
Music