Imagine a world populated by elemental slave-beasts–poor, tortured animals–their dignity ground underfoot by ten-year-old tyrants. A race of brutes, their agency captured and snuffed out as the pubescent taskmasters force them into solitary confinement. Rare and burdened breaths of “freedom” come few and far between–only when the despotic youths deign to release them into a dystopian battlefield laced with pain and misery.
What do you get when you dice up a side of Gunbuster, a filet of FLCL, a quarter pound of Gurren Lagann, dollop in some Love Live! Sunshine!!, drop the mess into a blender, and press the “crush” button? A cloyingly sweet puree known as Aim for the Top 2: Diebuster.
Tenchi Muyo! (the show with sexy girls on Toonami)–the gateway to the ecchi side of the animesphere. Transport your mind to the year 2000–the year Cartoon Network threatened to turn the youths into polygamists.
First-time director Hideaki Anno and his ragtag band of proto-otaku created Gunbuster to prove, once and for all, that no one had more geek cred than them. They succeeded.
