Remakes are a funny thing. Balls it up and you're left with pointless re-varnishing at best, and expensive fan-fiction at worst. Get it right and you've got Battlestar Galactica '04.
Though not strictly a remake, most of the fans of Diebuster's prequel will fervently wish it was, and thus invoke canonical bastardization as a get-out clause. Unfortunately, Diebuster lurks between Aim for the Top! Gunbuster's penultimate and final scenes like cuts of Jar-Jar Binks spliced into the candy-coated climax of Return of the Jedi. Both belong to the same fictional universe, but, while Diebuster transcribes vast chunks of plot and theme from its predecessor, it's wildly at variance in execution, corrupting, like the vast majority of fan-fiction, the innocent, wide-eyed purity of a much-loved genre classic into something weird and vaguely grubby.
The original Gunbuster was, in the main, a tragi-rom-com (heavy emphasis on tragi and rom, not so much with the com) replete with Gainax's trademark whinetrospection. This was decorated with a whimsical filigree of almost-real astrophysics (the OVA's major dramatic hook being the effects of time dilation involved in interstellar travel, similar to Joe Haldeman's The Forever War), and interspersed with dumb, flashy nonsense; super robot nerdgasms in which the absurdly powerful Gunbuster battles literally millions of aliens, employing flamboyant weapons and techniques that rely heavily on the volume with which the attack's name is vocalised.
Nonetheless, it remains a favourite slice of mecha anime, and it certainly has something that Diebuster sorely lacks. If the original Gunbuster required that one suspended one's disbelief in order to accommodate such bat-shit concepts as the titular super robot using a built-in Bat-cape to deflect alien death lasers or a finale which involves turning the planet Jupiter into a gigantic bomb, its sequel requires you to dangle it from a perilously thin thread. In one scene, the main protagonist commands swarms of Buster Machines with her cowlick; in another, one of her comrades employs a psychic attack that transforms a fleet of spaceships into killer sperm. You wish I was joking.
The story is effectively identical to its prequel. Delete where appropriate: wannabe space pilot/ditzy robot girl Noriko/Nono forms a semi-Sapphic obsession with truculent ace Kazumi/Lal'C, embarking on klutzy misadventures until becoming abruptly skilful/powerful for reasons not adequately explored, eventually piloting/transforming into the titular mecha and saving the universe. Entire scenes are all but Xeroxed from Gunbuster. The action scenes (which, let's be honest, are pretty impressive in the wow-lookit-the-purdy-lasers mien) are similarly padded out with the cast of indomitable superheroes bemoaning their sorry state of near-omnipotent perfection, or embarrassing both themselves and the viewer with moments of spectacularly inappropriate fanservice. Chalk an attempted rape scene up as one of the most baffling inclusions in recent anime history - amid so much fluff, it's like watching a chainsaw decapitation in the middle of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.
Diebuster is precisely what would result from an experiment involving the Gunbuster DVD, a classroom full of 13-year-olds, Attention Deficit Disorder, and six gallons of Coca-Cola. Giant robots? Hell, yeah! But what if there were, like, dozens of them, each with their own totally kickin' special moves! Evangelion was cool, so let's make the already-improbable robots biomechanical!! Oh, and the pilots? The ones in Gunbuster were okay, but wouldn't they be so much better if they had magic powers?!?! Cite a rebuttal against the po-facedness of recent mecha anime as an excuse for this if you will, but recall that GaoGaiGar did the same thing 15 years earlier, and didn't take itself half as seriously as Diebuster does.
Most Gunbuster fans won't get much further than Diebuster's first episode, but if you're inclined to persevere there are minor treasures within. The mecha design - especially that of Lal'C's Dix-Neuf - is impressive and thoroughly original, the animation is top-notch, the colors vibrant enough to sear the eye, and the faithfully reworked music is lovely, but these few plus points don't come close to redeeming the OVA. Depressingly, the analogy of hyper-active kids with crayons is infinitely preferable to the truth: Diebuster is nothing but a soulless cash-in, a 20th anniversary money-rake, confusing Gunbuster's daft sense of wonder with FLCL-esque insanity and gurgling mahō shōjo tropes.
Gainax deserve an Inazuma Kick to the testicular region for allowing this sort of rubbish to leak out. However, they don't appear to care, as Neon Genesis: Evangelion - Hideaki Anno's license to print money - is also getting a new lick of paint (the trailers for Rebuild... look excruciating). Proof that you can have too much of a good thing - especially if those responsible for prolonging its lifespan can't quite remember what made it good in the first place.
Though not strictly a remake, most of the fans of Diebuster's prequel will fervently wish it was, and thus invoke canonical bastardization as a get-out clause. Unfortunately, Diebuster lurks between Aim for the Top! Gunbuster's penultimate and final scenes like cuts of Jar-Jar Binks spliced into the candy-coated climax of Return of the Jedi. Both belong to the same fictional universe, but, while Diebuster transcribes vast chunks of plot and theme from its predecessor, it's wildly at variance in execution, corrupting, like the vast majority of fan-fiction, the innocent, wide-eyed purity of a much-loved genre classic into something weird and vaguely grubby.
The original Gunbuster was, in the main, a tragi-rom-com (heavy emphasis on tragi and rom, not so much with the com) replete with Gainax's trademark whinetrospection. This was decorated with a whimsical filigree of almost-real astrophysics (the OVA's major dramatic hook being the effects of time dilation involved in interstellar travel, similar to Joe Haldeman's The Forever War), and interspersed with dumb, flashy nonsense; super robot nerdgasms in which the absurdly powerful Gunbuster battles literally millions of aliens, employing flamboyant weapons and techniques that rely heavily on the volume with which the attack's name is vocalised.
Nonetheless, it remains a favourite slice of mecha anime, and it certainly has something that Diebuster sorely lacks. If the original Gunbuster required that one suspended one's disbelief in order to accommodate such bat-shit concepts as the titular super robot using a built-in Bat-cape to deflect alien death lasers or a finale which involves turning the planet Jupiter into a gigantic bomb, its sequel requires you to dangle it from a perilously thin thread. In one scene, the main protagonist commands swarms of Buster Machines with her cowlick; in another, one of her comrades employs a psychic attack that transforms a fleet of spaceships into killer sperm. You wish I was joking.
The story is effectively identical to its prequel. Delete where appropriate: wannabe space pilot/ditzy robot girl Noriko/Nono forms a semi-Sapphic obsession with truculent ace Kazumi/Lal'C, embarking on klutzy misadventures until becoming abruptly skilful/powerful for reasons not adequately explored, eventually piloting/transforming into the titular mecha and saving the universe. Entire scenes are all but Xeroxed from Gunbuster. The action scenes (which, let's be honest, are pretty impressive in the wow-lookit-the-purdy-lasers mien) are similarly padded out with the cast of indomitable superheroes bemoaning their sorry state of near-omnipotent perfection, or embarrassing both themselves and the viewer with moments of spectacularly inappropriate fanservice. Chalk an attempted rape scene up as one of the most baffling inclusions in recent anime history - amid so much fluff, it's like watching a chainsaw decapitation in the middle of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine.
Diebuster is precisely what would result from an experiment involving the Gunbuster DVD, a classroom full of 13-year-olds, Attention Deficit Disorder, and six gallons of Coca-Cola. Giant robots? Hell, yeah! But what if there were, like, dozens of them, each with their own totally kickin' special moves! Evangelion was cool, so let's make the already-improbable robots biomechanical!! Oh, and the pilots? The ones in Gunbuster were okay, but wouldn't they be so much better if they had magic powers?!?! Cite a rebuttal against the po-facedness of recent mecha anime as an excuse for this if you will, but recall that GaoGaiGar did the same thing 15 years earlier, and didn't take itself half as seriously as Diebuster does.
Most Gunbuster fans won't get much further than Diebuster's first episode, but if you're inclined to persevere there are minor treasures within. The mecha design - especially that of Lal'C's Dix-Neuf - is impressive and thoroughly original, the animation is top-notch, the colors vibrant enough to sear the eye, and the faithfully reworked music is lovely, but these few plus points don't come close to redeeming the OVA. Depressingly, the analogy of hyper-active kids with crayons is infinitely preferable to the truth: Diebuster is nothing but a soulless cash-in, a 20th anniversary money-rake, confusing Gunbuster's daft sense of wonder with FLCL-esque insanity and gurgling mahō shōjo tropes.
Gainax deserve an Inazuma Kick to the testicular region for allowing this sort of rubbish to leak out. However, they don't appear to care, as Neon Genesis: Evangelion - Hideaki Anno's license to print money - is also getting a new lick of paint (the trailers for Rebuild... look excruciating). Proof that you can have too much of a good thing - especially if those responsible for prolonging its lifespan can't quite remember what made it good in the first place.
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