Bullbuster

An entry in the “real robot” genre of anime, Bullbuster focuses on the members of the vermin extermination company known as Namikome Industries. The pests in question are mutated creatures known as “giant beasts” and Namikome utilizes super powered robots to handle extermination of the beasts in order to allow the residents of Ryugan Island to return to their home. However with the small scale of Namikome’s operations, they also have to be careful with business expenses as far as management of ammunition and maintenance of their robots go.

I suppose I’ll just get the main thing with Bullbuster out of the way first in mentioning ... the title’s mecha elements. Bullbuster goes pretty hard with its “real robot” element with the titular mecha and a few other units used by Namikome Industries being designed to be more practical with their designs instead of the humanoid-like designs that many popular entries within the “real robot” genre like Gundam typically implement. Plus, the action scenes are nothing to write home about with the title’s more realistic implementation of weapons and technology employed by Namikome’s mecha to handle the beasts they are seeking to capture or eliminate instead of anything more flashy and elaborate. The mechas are CG-rendered, but the more practical designs help go well with Bullbuster’s more grounded approach to its storytelling. The only bad part of this element to the series is the rather rough looking rendering and animation of the various giant beasts that would look more at home with a 2000s TV anime with how ugly they look.

The other major element of Bullbuster that sticks out is the office politics in play with the series, harking back to past titles like Patlabor and Dai-Guard that offer this unique focus with a mecha series. In the case of Namikome, the series believably portrays the struggles of a small company with managing their budget and public reputation among the masses as they are financially struggling due to the use of their mecha being a financial strain as far as maintenance and repairs go. Each of the employees have their aspirations and stances with whatever element of Namikome’s operations they are part of, from Kataoka’s efforts to rein in expenses as the company accountant to Tajima trying to keep his employees under control as the company president. Elements of corporate culture also come into play as the origins of the giant beasts are gradually revealed to be linked to some shady corporate activity and exploring the lengths that the corporation in question will go through to mask their true motives and maintain their public reputation.

Characterization isn’t the largest focus of Bullbuster, but it does take some time to focus on the various characters involved with Namikome. Each of them undergo some degree of exploration and development involving their work with the company or how they are personally affected by the giant beast threat, this giving them a bit of dimension and also helping to add more to explore with the office politics explored within the series. The only character I was largely indifferent towards was Okino, whose typical young, idealistic character doesn’t get as much fleshing out compared to his co-workers. While seemingly introduced as the main character of focus at the start of Bullbuster, Okino’s character gradually loses focus as the series puts more focus on exploring his co-workers.

In short, I can see where Bullbuster may not be everyone’s cup of tea within the mecha genre as I’ve heard quite a bit about the indiffernce many had to its premise and the lack of elaborate action scenes involving mecha and mutant monsters. Those wanting something like Gundam or Evangelion with their elaborate action and high drama aren’t likely to enjoy this series. But if you are wanting something that goes hard on the “real robot” element of mecha anime mixed in with exploring office politics a la Patlabor or Dai-Guard, Bullbuster is a solid series that dabbles into those realms with the challenges faced by the members of Namikome and would recommend if you are looking for something different to dabble into within the mecha genre.

From the beginning of the series it is made clear that this anime will be slow, perhaps a little more than other "slice of life", and that what sets it apart is the "seriousness" with which the main story is taken.
Which is basically having an independent company with a low budget. Of course, this company is not ordinary, since its job consists of exterminating pests, pests in the form of Kaijus, with bad CGI, that forced the inhabitants of an island to abandon their homes.
The main characters have a good design along with their well-defined personalities and, in principle, different motivations that make us ignore ... how slow the chapters can be in favor of knowing more about them.
The Mechas are...Rustic and of course, the world seems to be a modern Japan, so the technology together with the company's money does not give more than realistic robots, with the mixed appearance of an excavator and the load lifters seen in works like alien.
But these designs change as the budget increases, leaving those first models for something more similar to what "Tsubame Industries" has shown us with its "Archax" model not long ago.
The plot will advance as the motivations of the members of the company are explored and more about the origin of these Kaijus are discovered.

In summary:
The anime is slow and relaxing, with a plot that, although not original, is rarely seen, with a good cast of characters and a world in which it is easy to get involved.
The CGI seen in the monsters is one of the worst I've seen in a while but the 2D animation, for my taste, is on point.
And until Chapter 10, I can say that it promises, I don't think there is any unexpected revelation or plot that will blow our minds, but if there is something that it will have, it is a love and respect for the work and its characters that is always a joy to see.

Final chapter, definitely a great series, with a closing open to more but that probably won't happen. In the end they used all the characters in the company without less valuing their roles and personalities, and even showing a little, not much, of growth for the youngest members of the company.
As I had written at the time, the respect and affection you have for the characters and the world in which they find themselves brings joy.

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.