Tag: Gunbuster

November 19, 2023 · 0 comments

By Andrew Osmond. Many decades before Gunbuster, French director Jean-Luc Godard declared, “All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.” In the 1980s a gang of Japanese geeks declared, all you need for an anime is a girl and a mecha… Okay, make that a girl and tons of mecha, in […]

August 22, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. In a bold move that you could only get away with in the days of video, the final episode of Gunbuster is shot in stark black and white, coming across like an old war movie. Depending on which version you’re watching, you might also miss the sudden switch to widescreen… after all, […]

August 12, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. The title of the fifth episode of Gunbuster derives directly from Robert Heinlein’s 1973 novel Time Enough for Love, which ironically had very little to do with time dilation. It was, in fact an exploration of, among other things, immortality, longevity, incest, polyamory and time travel, but ultimately kept returning to romance […]

August 6, 2023 · 1 comment

By Jonathan Clements. There’s a moment in Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle (2021), early in the film, where his heroine is standing on a giant floating whale loaded with huge speakers, belting out a song as she drifts through a future city. It looks suitably iconic, and I was sure that it was a reference to Macross: […]

July 25, 2023 · 0 comments

By Jonathan Clements. Even though Gunbuster was released across three video cassettes, two episodes a time, its format preserved the two-part structure of TV anime, with a little “eyecatch” bumper at the halfway mark to imply that the show was just about to break for commercials. The chorus of voices that sings “Gunbuster~~~!” in the […]