Anime: Bullbuster

Despite probably being one of the least hyped anime in history, I really wanted to watch Bullbuster as soon as I read its premise, because it was about mecha, and because it sounded really retro, immediately making me smile. Unfortunately, besides the meme initial reaction it caused because of the combination of its name and studio, the one behind Deca-Dence, and the second reason why I wanted to watch this, its reception was almost completely negative since the very first episode based on its elements alone, which is sad because it proves that shows like Patlabor or Dai-Guard would be very negatively received today on concept alone.

Granted, Bullbuster has serious issues in its execution, but most of the criticisms towards it come from its elements alone, and not because of its handling of them.

Visually, Nut isn’t a very good studio, and Bullbuster is a very solid proof of that, it looks outdated and uninspired, from its artwork, character designs, five backgrounds being repeated throughout the whole series (water, forest, office, laboratory, restaurant), so-so motions, and crappy CGI monsters, giving it a very mediocre visual presentation as a whole.

The audio is the best part of the anime, even though neither the opening nor the ending nor the background music are remarkable in any way, they do their job just fine, as does the voice acting, which is nothing special either. The sound effects are of inconsistent quality, some are incredible and very immersive, while others are really weak, giving them an average to just good result as a whole.

The premise is about a small company that kills giant monsters with their giant robots on an island, while dealing with issues of funding, bureaucracy, relationships between co-workers, scientists that don’t want to help them or that don’t want to spend money on that, other companies suspecting them, the people that they fight for being disappointed in them, and there’s even some character drama as some of the main ones are directly involved with the starting point of the conflict and the monsters they fight against.

All these elements enrich the plot despite its low stakes and scope, but are also what alienated a lot of the public that went into it for, I guess, a silly comedy based on its name and studio, and received a real mecha type of show that tries to combine all of these elements with different tones.

And that ends up being the main issue of Bullbuster, it doesn’t know how to handle such big mix of many very different elements and tones. There is action and some battle choreography put into it, but at the end of the day every fight is resolved in the exact same way and the so-so motions and the crappy CGI monsters with very uninspired designs for them don’t help one bit. There is some minimum level of mystery about what the monsters are and where they came from but it comes mainly from the people that can find out about it not wanting to do their job properly. There is an attempt of taking the plot seriously, but its progress is slow and its execution leaves a lot to be desired because most of the conflicts come from the characters acting like idiots instead of doing what they should, plus, the comedy prevents from taking seriously anything that happens in the show.

Said comedy is quite goofy and it could be enjoyable in its own, if the series didn’t want to take itself more seriously than it should, there is some character drama but it’s not the best nor the most original thing, it’s something that you can find in any monster movie or show, plus the plot is stopped for a good number of episodes because of it, and the comedy clashes with it, there are also classic naïve and idealistic ideals and ideas that belong more on a super robot than a real robot type of mecha show, here they come off as immature and the cause of problems instead of giving the anime the epic feeling it normally would. Also, despite all the serious issues that the company the characters work for face on a daily basis, each one gets a convenient and naïve solution almost right away, in the same episode or the next one. It’s true that every solution leads to another problem, but that in turn leads to another easy solution, thus any attempt at seriousness and realism is completely ruined.

The revelation, along with the plot twist, of the origin of the monsters is quite good and could have flipped the whole series up until that point, from every inconsistent thing in the writing, to the relationships between companies and even characters, but even that led to nothing special and easy resolutions, and even a finale that feels like sequel-bait.

It doesn’t help that the characters are quite awful. Leaving aside two women, one because she is the only one with a little bit of a backdrop and emotional conflict within the story, and the other one because she is the only one that tries to do things right, everybody else is rather stupid or useless in the plot, if not both things, remains a character archetype throughout the whole anime, acts stupidly and creates conflict in superficial ways because of that, and is overall just not a good person nor an enjoyable character to follow for a whole season.

At the end of the day Bullbuster had an enjoyable first episode in my opinion thanks to being and feeling like a retro real robot comedy in the likes of Patlabor, which was a short silly episodic comedy before it was made into a long episodic slice of life series, and before it was also alternatively turned into a serious crime mystery on separated entries, or Dai-Guard, which had many of the same elements as this anime or Patlabor, but remained mostly a comical take on the usual super robot mecha premise. After that first episode, most of the conflicts in this show came off as superficial because they are all the result of the characters being written like complete idiots and jerks, and any attempt at seriousness is ruined by the bad writing and the poorly timed mixed of action, drama and comedy. Its low rating and negative reception are perfectly understandable, but the reasons behind them are not, since it’s the execution that’s the problem, not the concept alone, as the titles I compared it with proved in the past.