This Week in Anime

Mecha Anime You May Have Missed

Chris
The most frightening stories are the ones that could happen. So, thanks for this reminder. I'm probably going to want to double-check which zip files I'm sending over to Lynzee this week when we start off talking about a show from "Studio NUT" called "Bullbuster."

Turns out Bullbuster is an educational series in many ways! You see, unlike most mecha anime that is only about the robots, this one focuses on...the logistics and regulations of the giant robot industry!

Several mecha anime have aimed for some sort of "deconstruction" of the genre regarding things like realistic physics applied to these multi-story machines or the psychological horrors that would necessarily come from getting in them to fight giant monsters. But only Bullbuster is brave enough to ask the real questions like "What if giant robot teams had to worry about unapproved overtime or extensive rebranding efforts?"

And honestly? It kind of rules.

It is noticeably better than the model it was replacing, which looks like it was originally designed for shaking nuts out of trees over on a farm.

In several scenes, characters have to repeatedly twist an actual key to get their mech's ignition to turn over. It's great.

When Shoji friggin' Kawamori approves of your transforming robot design, you know you did something right.

Yeah! Despite being one of the medium's formative elements, mecha remains an odd niche genre for anime watchers. There's a recurring belief that mecha, in general, is "dead," although we usually get a cool little robot show like Bullbuster at least once per season. It probably doesn't help when omnipresent flag-bearers like Gundam garner more attention.

Granted, sometimes that attention isn't necessarily for the reasons the company behind that franchise would want...

What did we just say about double-checking which files you uploaded?!

Having just checked out the first episode of the Gundam Build Metaverse anime, it seems...fine. But while the original Build Fighters was nakedly an advertisement (as all Gundam anime are, really), its energy and enthusiasm for the hobby has diminished. There's something deeply ironic about a series that originally peppered itself with cameos of classic Gundam characters now doing that with old characters from within its meta-series.

Still, I'm not going to not laugh at Bandai going all-in on a tech trend in the hopes of finding new avenues of revenue, only to trip face-first into making their toys pirate-able.

It's not like Gundam in general is all out of ideas, as the fresh spins of The Witch From Mercury and enthusiastic reactions to it showed. But given Bandai Namco's now-infamous "interpretation" following that one's end, following it up with this Metaverse thing and a SEED movie, it feels like there's a sense of uncertain aimlessness about this moment in the franchise.

It's too bad since, as we all know, Gundam is the only mecha anime ever!

Synduality was ostensibly a launchpad for a mixed-media franchise that includes manga and an upcoming video game. Which makes it that much more disappointing that it didn't seem to move its needle much. Despite its alleged ambitions, Synduality had a pretty cool, unhurried style that I dug. It reminded me of the enjoyment I got from watching Zoids back in the day, being fun, mostly episodic robot adventures with dipshit teenagers.

Also, as long as we're spotlighting series like these as mecha anime, I must confirm that Synduality is another one with robot designs I like. The heavy customization at the behest of their pilots is a nice touch, and that kind of personalization comes through in the stylization of the cockpit interiors.

Bandai Namco, you heard it from us: Ease off the Gundam NFTs and put out a Synduality toy line. You'd have two whole guaranteed customers!

Meanwhile, talking about shows we futilely tried to talk people into watching inevitably puts me in the mind of my poor, neglected Granbelm. I've spilled plenty of ink trying to sell this show elsewhere, and I will continue so long as it stays stuck as the best-kept secret in both mecha and magical girl anime!

See, it's stuff like that or the terrifying proportions of the Gundam SEED Freedom characters that take up all the time that could be spent gushing about sumptuously animated fights between adorable chibi mechs, or Aoi Yuuki giving a wonderfully unhinged evil performance.

Come on, mecha fans love Super Robot Wars, and if the Granbelm bots got added in there, they wouldn't even have to be adjusted to match the series' chibi aesthetics!

And sometimes, that's still not enough to catch people's eyes, even if you're putting your entire ass into making it work.

I knew for a while I needed to check out BBK/BRNK, given my well-publicized appreciation for Sanzigen's work on BanG Dream! and D4DJ. So, finally having the excuse to jump in, I was amazed to see how capable these CGI workhorses already were with the style in 2016. Even before the giant robots come out, this is a slick-looking show a lot of the time. The story I've seen so far seems a bit heavy on the proper-noun-laden world-building, but it's all in service of outsized vibes that almost put me in the mind of my beloved (and mildly mecha-adjacent) Symphogear.

The point of highlighting these overlooked mecha anime is that most of them are hidden gems, but BBK/BRNK is the truest definition of that yet. Being an original series produced by a studio that would go on to be known mainly for making (still excellent) musical mobile game tie-ins, it proves that mecha series don't need some established pedigree to turn out awesome.

It is a non-franchise mecha series that debuted as a Netflix original. It's a small wonder even the power of Kawamori wasn't enough to put Last Hope over.

Sometimes, storied creators throwing a party for themselves is a more enjoyable reward than any so-called "mainstream success." It's how we wound up with twin giants Goro Taniguchi and Kazuki Nakashima teaming up to cash the blank check written by their reputations in exchange for the wildly imperfect yet still lovable fever dream that was Back Arrow.

I wouldn't have asked for anything else.

It's the one on this list where its status as a "mecha" could most potentially be debated, as Back Arrow's Briheight suits sit somewhere between giant robots and massive Kamen Rider transformations. Still, the spirit of the mecha excess experience of Taniguchi and Nakashima is very much there, alongside all other manner of absurdity. There's a mad science choir who dies partway through and is memorialized in the show's ending sequence. There's a transforming muscle-bound man-god who sextuple-chugs wine through his shoulders. I and four other people watched it in the same season SSSS.Dynazenon was airing, and as far as we were concerned, mecha could not have been more back!

Mark me down as the second signature on that petition. The Gridman and Dynazenon anime are some of the more noticeably successful new mecha shows. That could be due to their connection to the earlier Tsubaraya tokusatsu series. Still, I will go way out on a limb and guess that Studio Trigger's name recognition probably helped the most. Sometimes, an established pedigree can help sway fickle audiences into trying a bite of your new series.

I'm happy to have a show like Bullbuster, even as it's likely doomed by its niche to fall down the seasonal memory hole. The fact that there are still demonstrably new ideas to be mined from mecha as a framework rings more hopeful for the genre than any other also-rans we could point to as proof that the genre isn't dead. Even if that inevitably means that someone else will give another go at integrating it with isekai, despite Knight's & Magic winding up no more well-remembered than almost any other show on this list.

Like a bunch of miniature robots combining to form one giant one, the mecha genre comprises various styles and approaches. As rundowns like this demonstrate, there are so many more than just the big names. And like transforming robots disguising themselves, they can often hide right in plain sight with all the other forgotten seasonal also-rans.

Come on, Crunchyroll, you've finally gotten Gunbuster and GaoGaiGar. Giving us Dragon's Heaven couldn't cost you too much more.