Wow I don't even know what to say about these two, they were really something special.

While I was scrolling through Twitter, one post cought my attention. It was quoting some interaction bait asking people to post their favourite anime opening, and the tweet was answering with the diebuster's opening. As soon as I saw and listened to it I knew I had to watch whatever that was: the colors, the movement, the music... it was beatiful, so I quickly added to my watchlist on top priority. Later I found that it was directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki (FLCL), and that it was a sequel to a 6 episode OVA from the 80s directed by Hideaki Anno (Evangelion) that I had never heard about, so I got really excited to see what these two had to offer, and well... I'm really glad that random twitter post showed up on my timeline.

If you haven't watched them yet then please please please please dont't continue reading and go watch them right now. If you don't, you risk on spoiling the chance to experience some of the most special moments I've seen in the anime medium. It would really suck if someone decided to ignore this so please just dont.

If you like mecha and cool mechanical designs, powerful stories, beatiful music, hard science fiction, space yuri, aura farming, or you just like cool girls doing cool things, you NEED to watch Gunbuster && Diebuster, I'm serious.

Ok, now that 🫵 you have seen both of them 🫵 let's start.

Gunbuster

When I finally started it I whatched the first season on one sitting and inmediately became obsesed.

Right at the beginning I liked seeing that the main character was a girl and that the tone was very light (initialy, lol) compared with other mecha shows. I even though that maybe this was going to be some kind of parody of the genre or something in that direction, but I was wrong about that.

In gunbuster we follow our protagonist Noriko. At the start she is an airhead and a bit of a klutz. She is just a regular japanese girl, in fact, throughout the first episode I was expecting it was going to be reavealed that she had some latent talent or something, but not really. She is really bad at piloting these machines and it's not until her training montage and her first fight that we see her being somewhat competent. (I really liked her inazuma kick though). Due to this, I really didn't understand why coach was so sure about taking her to space instead of anybody else better at piloting, I don't know, maybe he really saw something in her back then, maybe he just chose her for being his captain's daughter, or probably a mix of the two, but in the beginning Noriko is just ordinary, and I liked that decision. I think it's really cool having the protagonist be just someone mostly average that has to work hard to achieve the expectations of someone else who sees potencial in them. (coach was righ)

We can see this idea explored further in Anno's future works like in Evangelion, where Shinji is also someone pretty average who is forced to become a hero, but there is a difference between these two situations: in Evangelion Shinji is one of the very few people who can pilot the Eva and that's why he has to do it, but in Gunbuster, anybody else could have ended going into space instead of Noriko and would have done a better job at the beggining, but coach decides to trust (at the time I thought that maybe to much) in Noriko's potential and ability to growth. Noriko does what she has to not because she is the only one who can do it, but because someone believes she can do it.

Having said this I found her very likable since the start. I enjoyed watching her being ambitious and working hard in order to achieve her dream of being in space like her father. The training montage in the beginning was really good too.

The other student chosen by coach is Kazumi, or Onee-sama as Noriko calls her. She works as hard as she is talented, and she is like a mentor to noriko, helping her through her journey. I din't have any particular thoughts on her at the beginning, she was kinda there and that's all.

I also really liked Noriko's friend Kimiko. I thought her design was really cute and she was a good friend to Noriko. So when the story moved to space I was a little sad that we may not see her again (I was not ready...)