Cannon Busters

the best thing about this show is that its an original universe but don't bother wasting your time, mediocre at best really a compilation of other previous animes like trigun, cowboy bebop, etc.

Story: 2/10 No real direction just a cliché adventure about finding a lost person/city to save someone/something. Full of holes and non-connecting points

Art: 6/10 the art is decent its really impossible to have bad art nowadays especially with a netflix budget, art isn't a make or break for this anime its just kind of "good enough" to sustain the visual appeal

Sound:6/10 the sound is very similar to the art ... description its good enough to maintain appeal but it isnt high quality to the point where is rememberable. it just matches and adds some points of emphasis in particular scenes/episodes

Characters: 4/10 What are the characters in this show they are so unequivocally bad, they're so generic to the point that the main characters could have been secondary characters and the character development they have from first episode to last is predictable its brings to mind that the creator clearly spent more time creating the universe it was set in rather than making rememberable characters.

Overall: 4.5/10 There is way better things to watch this season, its a show you put on late at night and can fall asleep to if you really cant find anything to watch. story and characters are very poor. Its sad a show like this can even get picked up.

i would say the biggest issue this series has is everything related to Botica. The adventure with Billy is great, the plot of Botica is meh but The tone shift is really jarring and clash massively with everything else. Also the transitions are bad. Everytime it cuts back to Botica it doesn't feels organic and you can't distinguish the flahback from the part in current time...
Also at first the botica story was done only when Sam slept, which meant it was her dreaming about it (Kasey said it too) but the POV wasn't hers. They showed you parts of the story she couldn't have ... seen since she wasn't there... So how exactly is it still part of her dream, and you can't say it wasn't a part of it from the begining since everytime we cutted bat to it she was knocked out. The series even did 10 seconds cut to present events just to have her be knocked out again and get back to the Botica story.
Also at the end they completely abandon that idea and just cutted to Botica without any warning. The clash of tones is so jarring that even the music shift from jazzy to sinister and it really doesn't fit. Even the present stuff starts not being great at some point... Episode 4 in a nutshell : Billy is stupid and even while being literaly 1 meter away from Nine can't understand that the guy is here to find informations and kill someone else, not him... Even though Nine screams it... Then we have that really forced team up at the end and for a pac of beer Nine comes along with them.... That could have been funny and nice if the whole episode wasn't so damn forced.....


The design and the back ground music are great You can see the mix of different countries talent in it. There are some really nice sakuga moment (eventhough sometimes yu can't tell what's happening) and overall the animation is decent. Too bad the rest couldn't keep up.



Story : 4
Art : 8
Sound : 7
Characters : 6
Enjoyment : 6
Overall : 6

Story - 1/10 - It moves characters from place to place, but it uses some plot development techniques that are so appalling/annoying that it becomes a huge detriment to the whole show

Characters - 6/10 - characters are a really mixed bag in this anime, we have Sam, Philly, Bessie and Casey who are fun to watch but then we're swapped to the prince/Odin/bad guy who are basically ruining whatever good will the rest of the protagonists have managed to create

Sound - 8/10 - I really like the opening theme, shoot me

Overall - somewhere between 5-6/10. While the dumb story and some of the plot devices ... definitely fail miserably I have watched the show because it ENTERTAINED me. Just give it a go and check whether you like it enough to sit in front of the screen or if it makes you uncomfortable

A mediocre gunslinger anime we've all seen before, except this MC is rather annoying and has no character development. Featuring mostly POC! It's really nice to see, would love to see more of this through all animes. Watched on netflix between different shows and was enjoyed. Rest of reviews are spot on, but I wanted to support black creators and it wasn't bad enough for me to drop. Sam is my favourite. Action and CGI mix is well done, and OP//ED are great. Sadly for having a cool bull mech transformer car it sure doesn't do much the whole length of the anime though :(

Cannon Busters sometimes has awkward un-anime-like pacing. Most of the show's jokes fall flat that you are left wondering if you're supposed to laugh at the joke itself or the attempt. Its main character Philly's character is written well with a tragic backstory which are the roots of his self-hate and personality. But it is almost as if the writers said "fuck it" with the rest of the squad initially.

Characters stay the same. Development is hinted at in the finale with one of the main characters, but is swiftly thrown into the trash due to a cliche amnesia character trait. The ... only character who really develops is the prince, who is a supporting character.

The art is okay, there are some good action scenes and the CGI is bearable at first, but is stupid in the finale.

The music is okay as well, there is no actual "theme" it seems as if they just got their hands on whatever music they thought sounded good, and could have access to. It is by no means original.

I'm fine with a cliche story about an adventure with a goal as long as it is executed with finesse, the direction is original, and the story is memorable. If you have all of these you can't be below an 8 in my books. But, as with everything, easier said than done.

5/10 don't waste your time on this it barely qualifies as a Cowboy Bebop spinoff.

I went into this show blindly, hoping to like it. This show should have been much better.

ART: 6.5/10

Pretty good at times, pretty standard at times. I like the designs of Sam and Casey the best. Backgrounds look good, and the animation is great at times. Awful design awards go to the main villain, floating claw lady, Russia white hair woman, and vitiligo girl.

SOUND 5/10

Something about cowboys + robots + anime just screams Nujabees or J-Dilla type music. Something with soul and rhythm. None of that was here. I know that's something up to personal preference, but even so, the soundtrack was very ... unmemorable and felt kinda quiet and lacking impact during intense scenes. Not horrible, not amazing— but I guess that’s kinda worse in a way.

WOLRD 3/10

One of the worst things in this show, other than the story, is the world building. Nothing in this world feels coherent or logical. There are no established rules in this world, or a pecking order of sorts. We see royal castles, samurai, cowboys, robots, magic, furries, discount Zalem from Gunnm— all kinds of shit. In this regard, it feels like Space Dandy, the difference being it actually WORKS there, because they are hopping galaxies, dimensions, and planets— NOT driving across state borders.

How does anything in Cannon Busters fit together? All of this is happening on one world. It would be nice to have a sense of scale, or progress, or some kind of hint as to how this world functions, but apparently Philly and crew can just fucking drive anywhere they want, because all these conflicting areas are right next to each-other, connected by simple roads.

The world feels like random set pieces strewn together, with an emphasis on cowboys. It doesn't help that we never really see these different kinds of worlds overlap in some major way. Where were the cowboy knights, furry samurais, western themed castles? They are utilizing all of these themes, yet they never combine them to create new and interesting ideas. It’s just goes to waste.

CHARACTERS/STORY 2/10

I'm a fan of cute, dumb, friendly robots, so I am giving Sam and Casey a slight pass. It still would have been nice to get more character development on them, as the only thing we know about either of them, is that it’s very easy to convince Casey to go commit Sudoku, and that Sam is the Prince’s protector.

Everyone else however, not so much. No one is interesting. At all.

Am I really supposed to give two hoots about the prince? lmao

The bad guy in the show, Ifor’Got-hisname, is so awful, so generic. He’s like the villain in Justice League. This show did not need ANY of his scenes. Honestly, just cut out all the scenes with the royalty, or big bads. Change the whole plot. Make Sam need Philly’s help with some kind of Mcguffin retrieval job, or have Philly steal Sam and Casey or something.

ANYTHING but the royalty plot. Please.


Verdict: 4.5-5/10

The show was kinda enjoyable at times, but eh, you could watch much better stuff. This season finished, but it just left me saying, "That's it?”.

I'm not sure if this is getting a second season, but to sum up my thoughts, I think Philly the Kid said it best during the final episode:

"You mean I'm supposed to go after the same damn kid all over again— only this time with even more idiots I can't stand, annoying the crap out of me? Yeah, no thanks."

[TL;DR: Too many ideas stuffed into a lackluster story. Looks good, sounds good, the action is great, but falls short on characters, story and the execution. Short and interesting enough to binge, but nothing remarkable.]

I had high hopes for Cannon Busters, it looked good in the trailer, but it seems that was all there is to it. The main issue is, it wants to be too many things at once and falls apart on the execution. The art style and the animation is nice, the action is great, the world looks interesting and it all looks and sounds good, but it's all shine and no ... substance.

There are just way too many gimmicks stuffed into Cannon Busters: A coin-operated Chevy that can turn into a giant combat mech. A super-naive android girl that can turn into a shapeshifting death machine. The comic relief service bot, the drunken ninja, the valiant knight, the dark mage with immense power, oh and the protagonist is a guy who just can't die. All this stuffed into a world full of cyberpunk augmented thugs, magical kingoms, futuristic floating cities, wild-west saloons, and on and on. It's a sensory overload just trying to make sense of it all.

It feels like they tried to cram 5-6 anime worth of ideas into one, and failed miserably. One-by-one all these ideas are GOOD, and could've been turned into cool stories...separately. However, having them all jammed in here just makes the whole thing a shallow, confusing mess. The short 12 episode runtime doesn't help either, as they didn't have time to flesh out basically any of the characters or the multitude of interconnecting storylines. The pace is frantic, we get new characters, stories and flashbacks slapped in our faces at breakneck speed, but with little to no context. Too bad, since there is mileage in all of these gimmicks and if done right, Cannon Busters could still be salvaged, but I'm not sure about the direction the creators took with this one.

All-in-all, I enjoyed Cannon Busters for what it is: an interesting but lackluster action anime to binge on a boring afternoon.

I can only recommend this under one circumstance: if you specifically want to see something mediocre on a lazy day when you feel a bit too tired to watch something good.

Do you know the feeling? That you have these actually good shows lined up, but you also have a headache, not enough sleep for a few nights and you feel that it would be a waste to see something good on a day when you're not really primed to enjoy it?

That was kinda how I felt today, and it lead me to sit through this entire show.

And I really didn't hate my time spent, ... it was dumb and fun (though not *that* fun).

The characters are rather one-note and predictable, though Philly was honestly more difficult to like than I expected. Sam was a big nothing most of the time, but had some decent comedic moments. Casey is predictably adorable.

All in all, there's nothing much to say except that the show is a rather mediocre affair, and unless you are specifically looking for something like that I wouldn't give it the time of day.

I did like the opening song.

Out of 100 Nobles watching…
65 were impressed.
15 coughed up blood at the sight of the terrible CG
15 got bored of the generic and slow plot
5 had trouble immersing themselves with these characters

Cannon Busters is an original Netflix animation adaptation of a graphic novel of the same name by the studio Satelight. An anime adaptation being made from an American graphic novel is already pretty notable, but when the author of that source material is LeSean Thomas who worked on projects I loved like The Boondocks, Black Dynamite, and The Legend of Korra (okay maybe love is strong for Korra) I had high hopes for this ... project.

Cannon Busters has some good bits, but I found the show rather overwhelmed in its own mediocrity. Character designs were very solid in most places and goofy as hell in others. Philly the Kid, S.A.M., Casey Turnbuckle, 9ine and others all had pretty solid designs, but a few characters like Odin the royal bodyguard had the head the size of a softball on top of the Incredible Hulk’s body and that just looks goofy. Our main antagonist Locke just came off as strange and feeling out of place design-wise. He really felt like some generic villain from a different genre squatting on in on this show.

The animation on this project looked pretty good in a lot of places, but the show was really bogged down in most action sequences with it’s jarring use of low-grade CG. Sora Yori and other shows get away with a bit of light CG but when the main action sequence on the foreground of your scene is clunky low frame count garbage it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. A wise man once said that “no genre has suffered more at the hands of modern CGI than mecha anime.” and that is really exampled here.

One of the main characters Philly the Kid had some good character dynamics in regards to his relationship with the other main cast and it gave a bit of a unique angle to the shows revenge plot, but otherwise the overarching story was so bland and generic I had a had time really investing in it.

I feel like the show tried to do the kind of stand-alone episodic adventure type of shtick and it performed okay with the repair droid Casey Turnbuckle’s stand alone episode breaking out of the rest of the shows mold to present the viewer with some high grade feels. My advice however would be instead of sitting through 8 episodes of mediocrity for that payoff please just watch Space Dandy and get that sort of masterfully orchestrated narrative pretty much every episode.

On the topic of Casey Turnbuckle, her character is an absolute delight and I love her even if she couldn’t save her show. Shiori added yet another cutesy character to her repertoire with Casey, but as with her performance with Nanachi in Made in Abyss, Izawa really stole the show. Hinaki Yano had her debut (from what I could find on MAL) with her role as S.A.M and despite how I feel about the show she did a great job and I hope she gets more roles soon. Lastly the OP and ED were at least unique. They were very different from regular anime and felt a bit out of pace but they weren’t bad tracks.

Cannon Busters was okay it just doesn’t present the viewer with anything new in an already massively oversaturated genre. Satelight has a large body of work with a few shows that underperformed like Mouretsu Pirate’s. I’m afraid Cannon Busters is just another face in a sea of decent-not-great anime.

For those who remember, in 1998, there was Trigun. In this animated series, we followed "Vash the stampede", a tall blond guy with full hair, over 100 years old according to rumors. During his adventures through a post apocalyptic world with western sauce, Vash will fight many battles because of the bounty that weighs on his head and his unfortunate tendency to meddle in everything. He will also meet Meryl and Milly, two young women a little naive but determined to follow our protagonist.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Trigun yet, it may not be the best animated but it’s still very nice.

So let’s go back ... to Cannon Busters, 2004 and recently animated/updated. In this new anime, "Philly the kid" is our anti-hero and it’s up to him to make us discover a post apo universe with western sauce. It is a guy with hair provided (but brown this time), immortal according to the gossip and who will lead many fights because of the bounty on his head etc... On the way, he will meet two female-looking bots named Sam and Casey.

I think you understand... Even if the background is indeed different from that of Trigun, the whole basic context seems to be consistent with the work of 1998. We unfortunately keep the same flaws: not enough worked characters, problems swept away by explosions and difficulties to immerse themselves.
For the animation, the soundtrack and the quality of the animation, I don’t have much to say, it stays clean without being incredible either.
However, the animation is not finished, so it can still change and grow in the right direction. To follow.