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Gunbuster
トップをねらえ！
1988 · TV series · 28 min episodes · 2 seasons
AnimationScience FictionFantasyActionAdventureWar
In the near future, humanity has taken its first steps towards journeying into the far reaches of the galaxy. Upon doing so they discover a huge race of insectoid aliens known as "Space Monsters." These aliens seem dedicated to the eradication of mankind as they near closer and closer to discovering Earth. In response, humanity develops giant fighting robots piloted by hand-picked youth from around the world. Shortly after the discovery of the aliens, Noriko Takaya, the daughter of a famous deceased space captain, enters a training school despite her questionable talents as a pilot. There, she meets her polar opposite, the beautiful and talented Kazumi Amano, and is unexpectedly made to work together with her as they attempt to overcome the trauma of war as well as their own emotions.
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3 comments on Hacker News
The funny thing is, the studio claims last episode of Gunbuster was done black&white on purpose - in fact, that black&white was more expensive the way they did it than otherwise.
Unfortunately I suspect that outside of the people directly involved we won't ever hear properly. The rumours flew around since early 1990s, and there is the part that Gunbuster was originally supposed to be a TV series (AFAIK), and as result the plot was extremely compressed into those 6 episodes that we got ultimately.
And it's not like the studio was not known otherwise for wild swings even when they didn't run out of money... (anyone remembers how Mahoromatic ended?)
Gunbuster ran out of money to pay colorists by the end of the series, which was only 4 episodes. Evangelion also clearly ran out of budget by the end of the series, and that was after some blatant cost saving scenes repeatedly appearing in the show, like very very long elevator rides where nobody moves and the only action is a floor counter ticking down, or watching the counter on a Walkman slowly tick by. Almost taunting the audience with the counters on the obvious padding scenes.
My observations are based on when I went in 2011, by which point Apple was beginning to establish itself as a fashion brand.
Apple computers did attract a small enthusiastic user base in Japan before it became a fashion brand -- and again, the traces of this are visible in anime as well! In Pretty Samy, the OS Tenchi and his friends prefer is called "Pineapple Mach 8", in reference to Mac OS 8. In the psychological thriller Perfect Blue, main character Mima is seen being shown how to use a Mac to get online by her manager, Rumi. And my favorite example: one of the books seen on Noriko's shelf in the first episode of Gunbuster is called "Wozniak talks about the Mac".
The Amiga, by contrast, was almost invisible to the Japanese as far as I can tell. One exception was Fumito Ueda, an Amiga fan who would go on to develop games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for Sony. Perhaps that is why his games have that haunting aesthetic quality, similar to Amiga favorites like Another World and Shadow of the Beast.