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.
