Cannon Busters

I decided to watch this show for the August 2019 Anime Watching Challenge because I needed to watch a fantasy anime. As an African, I always love to see black characters represented in anime and I was sold once I found out that the creator was black as well. I know that's not a great way to build a watchlist, but I had to support a brother.

Art: 8/10
The character designs are all unique, which helps if you're like me and can't remember names. I especially applaud this show for its flawless integration of 3D with 2D designs. The sparse use of 3D really served ... it well. There was also some great background art, creating a scenic setting that matches a show of this genre.

Sound: 6/10
I don't have anything to say about the sound design. Nothing particularly stood out to me. I will say that they had an awesome intro song though. I literally never skipped the intro on Netflix and even as I grew frustrated with the show, I would always appreciate this ultimate bop. Will definitely add to playlist. I wish the tempo was even more upbeat though.

This is the last positive thing I will say about the show. If you are a huge fan, please stop reading because I'm about to rip this anime to shreds.

Story: 3/10
Character: 1/10
Enjoyment: 2/10

I'll group these 3 together just because they're all intertwined. I have no idea how this show was allowed to be made. I'm genuinely confused. It starts out alright with us meeting the main characters. I was intrigued since I'm a sucker for shows in which the main characters adventure together through different lands while meeting interesting characters along the way. The show is definitely this type of anime but it had major flaws that made me unable to appreciate any of that.

The main issue is the lack of character development. The only way the premise of a group of characters traveling together works if you actually like the characters. Not only did I not like them, I didn't know anything about them. After the first few episodes, I expected us to see subtle characteristics that reflect their personalities and outlook on life. The show was more concerned with making Philly look as "cool" as possible rather than actually showing us how he came to have this unfazed, unenthusiastic attitude as well as the effect his loneliness has on him. They really gave us 5 seconds of his backstory in episode 11 and expected us to feel anything for the guy.

They also made him so overpowered that there were absolutely no stakes in every fight he was in. It's not a good sign when your viewer is hoping that the main character gets actually killed or heavily injured.

The 2 bots were purposely written as naive idiots just so the writers can dump exposition on the viewer with the pretense of Philly having to explain every detail of the world they themselves live in. This is cheap and makes me feel like the writers just didn't give enough of a f*** to ingrain details in the scenes for the viewer to pick up on themselves. Other than the 5 minutes in ep8 that I felt pity for Casey and the first few episodes where we learn about Sam's relationship with the Prince, I didn't actually care for any of the characters in this show.

This is sad because instead of doing this episodic bulls***, they could have spent time diving deep into these characters to reveal what makes them tick, what motivates them, what makes them themselves. But the writer decided that it was more vital to the story to show how cooky and zany the different towns of the universe are. I DONT CAAAARRREEEE! Give me heart, give me passion, give me something to make me want to root for these characters instead of spending nearly 6 hours of my life watching the most hollow characters do absolutely nothing and finally being thrown into a battle. They should have been building up to the final fight, instilling anticipation in the viewer with each episode. Instead, we had no idea how far away they were from their destination and had no actual confirmation that Philly was indeed taking them there. Because I still can't come up with any legitimate reason why he would. He could have just roamed around and gone where he wanted to go while lying to his companions so as to keep Casey with him as his handyman. I fact, taking them where they wanted to go would only lead to Casey leaving with Sam and Philly being left without a handyman. There is more reason for him to keep them away from their destination! THIS IS SIMMMMMMPLLLEEE TO FIGGGGURRREE OUUUT! The people ivolved in this show could have taken 1 second to flesh out this part and made this show make sense. But no! They have cool transformer cars. They don't need decent writing!

And to top it all off, they came back to spit in my face with the sh**show that was the last 2 episodes. I genuinely feel disrespected. The writers gave absolutely no f***s and decided they'd throw all reason out the window. Because of the lack of character development, the viewer was forced to assume each character's motivations for doing what they were doing. But the writers wanted to "surprise" us, so they wrote the final 2 episodes in which none of the things the characters did made any sense and you were forced to watch the most chaotic fight scenes, not knowing who was on who's side. I truly felt like I had missed an entire season of content between episode 10 and 11 because the random s*** that was happening had no rhyme or reason.

I think this is it for me. I don't know if accurately describe how much of a waste of time this show was. I can't understand how anyone could come out of this wanting a second season. The entire show was clearly a setup for the next season, but I genuinely hope it doesn't happen for the sake of my sanity.

I know this review was pretty dramatic but I just want to say that if you did enjoy it, good for you. We all have different tastes, but this was just my take on this show.

There is a reason animes do not try to throw ALL the tropes into one show. It creates a giant mess. While there are some interesting character designs, what really counts, characters and story, are poorly done, ruining whatever this show had to offer.

To give you an idea of what I mean by all the tropes here's the synopsis: a couple of happy go lucky androids from a fantasy kingdom team up with an immortal outlaw who owns a giant Pink Cadillac that can transform into a giant Minotaur Robot. Their goal, to reach the prince that one of the androids was programmed to ... the best friend of. Oh, and said android is one of those chosen one stereotypes. Add in a crazy team of assassins chasing them, and even a drunken master, and you get the point. The writer simply wanted to put ALL the things he liked about anime into one work.

When the show is at it's best is when it just goes nuts. All these crazy characters could run around doing god only knows what, and it can work. This lends itself to a more episodic format, which I wish they could have committed to. Unfortunately, the story is only kind of episodic, with a very week through story woven within it. The tone is not consistent, being wacky one episode, and then dealing with darker themes the next. The entire prince arc is a drag. Just a total mess of a narrative that has a rather weak conclusion, most likely because I could care less about any of the characters.

This show is going for over the top, I get it. That means damn near all the characters are going to be one note, hyper flat cliches. This works fine in something like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure because they do a good job of making the good guys awesome, and the bad guys dicks. Here, I didn't like a single character that we're supposed to be rooting for. Sam and Casey are very annoying, and Philly is a selfish prick. The prince is a spoiled brat. The rest of the cast are totally forgettable. The bad guys, well, they're pretty much just bad for the sake of being bad guys. The big bad has a little backstory, but a very cliche one. Buy the time it gets to the final battle, there are side fights between characters you really know very little about, and have zero investment into.

Technically, this show was competently executed. The animation and sound are executed to the point where they didn't detract, nor elevate the show. While some to the character designs look like rip offs, (Philly is way too reminiscent of Spike) some to the character designs are pretty cool. Especially the team of assassins that we barely get to know. I'll give them points for that.

Cannon Busters was never going to be some deep show that we'd talk about years later, but it had the potential to be a fun romp with crazy characters. Unfortunately the weak story, and poor unlikable characters leave this one as a miss. Basically a show to fall asleep to, little more.

Its story and even its characters are derivative of other anime such as Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Trigun, and Michiko to Hatchin but lacks the charm of what made Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Trigun good. I was surprised that Shinichiro Watanabe didn't even touch this show. Many things about this show take cues from few of the previously mentioned anime that he was involved with, from the characters, to the story, to the genre, to the art style (which was silly at some points), to even the music sounds like Cowboy Bebop's jazz soundtrack. If you've seen these anime, you would've already seen Cannon ... Busters, you're not missing out on much.

Philly the Kid is like a combination of Spike, Mugen and Vash down to the afro. He's a bounty traveling with two girls which causes violence to follow them (Vash) and he has a cynical, sarcastic sense of humor (Spike) but unlike Spike, those traits make him more annoying than charming. Like, I think Spike had more sense than he did, Philly is just a butthole.

Samberry A.K.A. Sam is friendly and naive to a fault, which can even get her in trouble. I don't mind her being a friendship type robot but she clearly has the guts to hurt people when they hurt her friends yet sometimes she doesn't take a hint when people treat her and her friends wrongly or appear to have hidden evil traits, she just thinks everything is a game.

Casey is like Ed in her childlike, sweet, tech-savvy personality but somehow manages to be even more annoying than Ed. She's a Charmy Bee-sounding robot who's constantly blabbing her mouth about everything, she has no personality flaws, and has a stubborn obsession with anything technology.

Sometimes I don't blame Philly, if I was around two dense robots, a Mary-sue who thinks that everyone is her friend and another who talks like a freaking 8 year old, while I'm trying to survive in a world that is so different from their naive minds, I would get annoyed too.

Even the secondary characters are mediocre. Prince Kelby seemed like a nice guy with a sweet relationship with Sam who for some reason turned into a cold, jerkish guy and his relationship with Sam ended up being... I don't want to spoil it. And the worst character of them all, 9ine (probably a reference to the singer) is your typical amoral, rude anime character who drinks to an unhealthy amount.

There's rarely any memorable songs in there. The only song that's catchy is Showdown, which is definitely the most memorable song out of the whole show. And the ending theme, Regardless, while not as memorable still sounds good.

I don't think this anime is as awful as some people make it out to be as there are several good things about it. It has some funny parts, even a few witty dialogue moments and the beginning and ending were interesting. The way the show sets up the characters were interesting, we have a friendship robot, an outdated robot who wants to be upgraded, and an immortal who has tattoos of the amount of times he dies. And the last two episodes had more tension and even character stakes which is unfortunately rare in this series as the characters are quite two-dimensional. I didn't expect it to be renewed due to mixed reviews but here's hoping that the second season will have as good of a story as the last few episodes or else I'm skipping it. It's disappointing that this was written and directed by the guy that co-directed The Boondocks and I was happy to see an anime with a predominantly black cast.

Cannon Busters gets a 4.8 out of 10.

I tried to watch this thing, I really did. But once you go through half the series with the characters being as shallow as a small puddle, you don't really have much to go through the series on. A decent example would be imagine someone tried to remake Trigun with mediocrity dripping in every single department. There isn't a single thing that makes you like the characters. At best you could call them one dimensional, at best. The story is barely able to hold itself together - I mean imagine this one episode, a group of people in the desert who skin people alive. You ... get visuals with skinned human bodies hanging like slaughtered cattle and the team behind this gem make it as interesting as grass growing.

It's not like I didn't want to like this anime, I did. It's hard to get English subbed anime on Netflix in my region. But my god, who exactly did the team think their target demographic was when they were making this? How low can your standards be if you chose to like this one.

Give it a miss. And to anyone looking to repeat this, if you're gonna copy Trigun with no imagination whatsoever, please don't. Spare us fans.

At first, this appears to be a fairly unique anime with a wacky plot and cool art. Unfortunately, cool art is about the best thing that I can say about this anime. The plot goes all over the place, the world building is surface level, and every single characters is annoying, main characters and one-episode-only characters alike. I'm not sure when was the last time I watched an anime that failed to make even a single character endearing to me in some way. And the last bit of my complaint: I'm not surprised to learn that the anime is an adaptation of an American comic ... series. I'm happy for the writer, but the thing is, when I'm looking for anime, I'm usually at least partially doing so because I've gotten tired of the edgy vulgarity that plagues a lot of American media, or I'm simply looking for something different. This anime doesn't hit the spot. I don't think I'd recommend this anime to anyone, though, even if they were looking for something a bit more American, because the plot and the characters just fall flat.

This show originally hooked me because of the dynamite into song, but man that is the only good thing about it


the show feels like a crappy nickelodeon cartoon that tried at some points to be edgy and dark but just misses the mark in every way

the characters are dull and annoying and seem extremely childish for the post apocalyptic world that they have been born into.

Everything in the show is extremely predictable! every plot twist character arc episode rescue all of it

I would avoid watching this anime at all costs because there are far better options out there

The kindest word I can use to describe this series is..mediocre.

It was about the halfway point when I realized I was watching something that gave me no joy. I stopped for awhile after that and then came back to finish it just to say I had. None of the characters are interesting. The story is a mess leaving anything of purpose at the wayside.

There is no substance here. In fact I can't even think of more to say, but this review thing is forcing me to write more about an anime that has little to say about it.

Jeez… has no one seen Cowboy Bebop?! This is such a blatant rip on it and Gurren Lagan!
It struggles to find its footing and throws all the tired tropes in right away. Its not a very unique idea and just seems a rehash of so much from better Anime.
It doesn’t do much for character development and the fighting resembles something like Voltron fighting the beast of the week.
It’s got a mix of humor, action, and funky over the top characters.
It’s one of those forgettable shows that you’ll run across years from now and scratch your head trying to remember.
I gave it ... 2 episodes and that was enough for me.


Animation 5
Music 4
Action 6
Characters 3
Plot 3

--SPOILER FREE--

Walmart Cowboy Bebop? I think so!

Coming from Yasuke's creator LeSean Thomas. Cannon Busters was vastly better than his follow up Yasuke but still was a poor series overall. The premise is always there but the delivery has failed twice; As someone who likes the premise and ideas of Thomas's work I can only hope his next and third project is peak.

--STORY--
5/10

We follow Philly the Kid, a guy who is a mix of Spike and Vash with the supernatural power of infinite lives. He meets Casey and S.A.M. two robots who are running from pursuers but are honestly clueless about it in a sense. They ... run into Philly and it follows the format of Samurai Champloo of three people going on adventures episode to episode running into multiple issues along the way. While this is all underway the trio is trying to find S.A.M.'s best friend along this journey to save her and her best friends kingdom.

The story truthfully was a snooze fest, I felt myself struggling to stay engaged the entire time; it felt like a cheap ripoff rather than a true original story.

--ART--
8/10

This is Cannon Busters best quality. The designs and animation were fun and colorful. The colors, animation, and designs were the only things keeping me engaged.

--SOUND--
6/10

Again, very basic nothing to wild. Voice actors both sub and dub were mediocre. The intro and outro weren't good either, this is something I hope Thomas can greatly improve on his next project.

--CHARACTER--
3/10

Terrible. Philly is Spike and Vash's worst qualities put into an annoying poorly written character. S.A.M., Casey, and 9ine are also forgettable. S.A.M. is an obnoxious, loud, robot with short term memory. 9ine is just an old guy who used to be strong and tags along for virtually no real reason. Casey did have some funny moments but that is just due to Casey either being a brick or smartass.

--ENJOYMENT--
3/10

There are a few shows I have enjoyed this little and finished. That being said, I absolutely hated this show even more than Yasuke. Yasuke had some enjoyability even though it was one of the worst adapted animes in recent time. Cannon Busters on the other hand had no redeeming qualities other than it having a good color scheme and mediocre animation.

--OVERALL--
4/10

I can't even classify this show as mid. It was just purely unenjoyable, it needed better writing, fights, story and characters for me to consider it even mid.

If you do choose to watch Cannon Busters, just prepare for a slow burn bad Cowboy Bebop rip-off.

A time killer, to be honest.

This anime came out of the blue for me. I didn't know what it was about, didn't know about the story, art, character development, anything of the sort. And I kinda like it because of that. However, it has its meh moments, and its okay moments.

Throughout the series, it was strange and meh. It didn't get as good as other anime I've watched and its fight scenes needed a bit more work from what I can remember.

The art was okay. It is not the best though. It was meh, like the series. I didn't exactly like it. ...

The character development, from what I can remember, was meh, it wasn't too bad. I didn't exactly like it.

What it needs is, in essence, another season. I'd watch it, and if I still don't like it, I won't bother with the seasons after that.

Overall, it's a time killer and was meh.