[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Gunbuster 2 episode 5: All hail Buster Machine No 7
The midsection of Top o Nerae! 2 left me a little cold but the penultimate instalment delivers so much in terms of characterisation and plot I can’t help but feel impressed. Even before the opening credits roll there is a significant flashback that takes us five years into the past (pic below) and shows a reference to the original series! Honestly, I gave a gasp of “At last!” after my spine had stopped tingling when that turned up. Make no mistake, this is a spectacular episode in more ways than one.
Through a fascinating exposition scene we are given a bit of history and background explanation about the space monsters and the rest. It mentions a region of the solar system named Black Hole Exelio - another spine tingling Top o Nerae! reference to grab the viewer’s attention. There is A LOT to take in here, which might require a repeat viewing of this and all the previous episodes on my part to fully appreciate what’s going on.
This episode deals with the aftermath of the battle with the variable gravity well and as a result feels like the morning after your worst ever night out, only on a cosmic scale. Everyone is reeling from the destruction; some are dead, many are injured and nothing will be the same again. Chiko and Raruku are recovering in hospital (above) and because of the battle’s outcome the TOPLESSes are both feared and despised - they now have to wear ridiculous headgear to keep them from using their Buster Machines.
Raruku feels especially bad about all this: thanks to Nono’s status as the new saviour and a nasty scene featuring Nikolas she feels powerless, redundant and alone. To make matters worse the next battle involves Nono going into battle instead…but the new space monster proves to be be much worse than those previously encountered!
This was one hell of an episode - it is a real shame that, as the subbing group pointed out, “only Gainax knows when that will come out.” which basically means that we’ll have to wait quite a while to see the story finished. There are numerous questions answered, only for it to throw up as many new ones; there is some excellent and much-needed characterisation in Raruku and Nono; not to mention the second half’s battle scene that surpasses those that went before it in terms of sheer over-the-top epic scale. It nearly makes me wonder how I ever doubted Gainax as far as this show’s concerned - but course we still have the ending to come yet!
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