Bullbuster - Wait, is that how you pronounce ballbuster? Oops, sorry, wrong spelling. It's BULL-buster, not BALL-buster.
The one show this season that I was so shell-shocked by its absurdly low rating (which it clearly does not deserve), brought on by the sheer number of very few people watching it. It's a rather unassuming anime called Bullbuster. Kadokawa's mixed-media franchise, which started out shikas a concept book in 2017, later receiving Hiroyuki Nanao's 3-volume novel that's illustrated by Eisaku Kubonouchi, the original character designer for Carole & Tuesday. This then, leads us to the return of the NUT: the studio responsible for Youjo Senki: The Saga ... of Tanya the Evil, studio NUT is back after a rather lengthy hiatus (if you don't count the mediocre FLCL variants) doing what it knows best, though it may come at the cost of being too niche of a product to sell to the general public.
For reference, Bullbuster's story about a company's "rags-to-riches" journey through business acclimation and acquisition through cost-cutting measures, resources, and the like. It's a rather novel concept that has been done in anime before, but not to this degree of affinity as compared to the real-life counterpart. If you're at least 20 years old and older and have experienced the ins and outs of working at jobs full-time (like I am), this show is clearly geared for you.
Meet Tetsuro Okino. The mech designer and pilot from his home company, Kanie Technologies, develops a rather robust (but still in the works) giant robot that would help a company take advantage of its resourcefulness, which he dubs Bullbuster. And it's a rather dire need for companies to employ these robots to do their job, because in a dystopian future, the fictional Ryugan Island off the coast of Japan, once a home for its small population of islanders, will one day, become the site for the manifestation of giant beasts. So much so that the infestation has caused too much of a problem for its people that they had to be evacuated out immediately, leaving the island in a state of poison-like rotting disrepair, with its people wanting to know the reason for these sudden giant beasts appearing out of nowhere, wrecking people's homes and lives. And it's the job of pest control companies like Namidome Industries, who are assigned to do that part of the extermination of these Kaiju giant beasts through the robots leased to them, finding Tetsuro and immediately warranting his transfer over to Namidome to help teach its pilots on Bullbuster's operations to effectiveness.
There is just one problem: the pest control company looks grand on the outside, but on the inside, it reeks of unkempt mismanagement and a dangerously low cash flow from its rather small staff team, who constantly will chew Tetsuro from the inside out, teaching him about constraints because of its careful and meticulous investment in Bullbuster. You have the company's president, Koji Tajima; the general affairs a.k.a HR manager Miyuki Shirogane; the accountant, Kintaro Kataoka; and its lone pilots, Ginnosuke Muto and Arumi Nikaido, who have been piloting their company's own robot Bullrover, which is in heavy need of servicing. With Tetsuro's entrance alongside his next generation mecha robot, Namidome, from the get-go, there is some serious heavyweight lifting to do managing Tetsuro and both robots, with Bullbuster being the way to go to turn a profit for the visually near-bankruptcy small company while keeping their relations with the islanders tight-lipped so as to ensure the job is being done to their satisfaction.
If you have a hinge of business acumen, you'll know that companies like Namidome need further backing for their job purposes from bigger companies who would finance their efforts, so long as the terms and conditions of contracts are not broken, and this leads us to their biggest sponsor: Shiota Chemical. Led by its president, Washizu Shikauchi, both Namidome and Shiota work together to eradicate the giant beasts from Ryugan Island, and for the most part, it's Namidome's work to ensure that Shiota (through its Bio department, led by Mitsuru Inomata) gets the intel they need to crack the case and return Ryugan Island to its people, such as in the case with one of their brightest stars: their intern, Shuichi Namari, who, like Tetsuro, is loaned to Namidome as an exchange for their partnership on the investigation of the Giant Beasts. And some of you might already have surmised that since Shiota Chem gives a chunk of change to Namidome, they are still the ones responsible for releasing factual cases. Though going by the usual "money is the root of all evil" route, they can also manipulate its people and others into thinking that their efforts will bring about better change while hiding the glaring truth that their company is responsible in the first place by way of cover-ups. It's "Business as Usual", and what the small, weightless company has to go through weighing between the islanders and Shiota, Namidome is literally running a very tight mechanical rope to discern what is right and wrong on a business level.
For one, Tetsuro is rather unlikable, as he is a go-getter who suffers easily under pressure to boost his ego and think that he is right in most typical arguments. And as if Namidome's staff themselves are another story, Tajima is a scaredy cat for making the wrong decisions; Kataoka is the ever-so-stringent accountant who weighs every weaponry use like its money invested and inquires to do more with less; Muto is simply the old traditional bulldog; and Arumi is a very closed-up girl. This mix of characters simply does no favour in giving people a chance for their redemption, much as it is that they have to learn the hard way when they have to make decisions ranging from crisis aversions to near-salvage. I hate to say this, but the characters are one of the low points of the show, being too similar to a rag-tag team of people who clash with issues and suffer by themselves, then mysteriously bond together on a consensus when things are forced against their will. I'd chalk this up to bad character writing based on the original novel, like it was written by someone who had to work with more but understood less.
Studio NUT's production is also rather decent, though with the ever-so-present 3DCG models of the Giant Beasts, I'd allure that it really doesn't look as bad as you might think. With the experience taken from Summer 2020's Deca-Dence, Bullbuster is as similar as it can get with the mecha theme, and with the (mostly miss) director Hiroyasu Aoki, the show could have benefited from a better director than someone who's done more storyboarding than being in the director and series composer's chairs. But it is what it is, and that's the least of my complaints about the show.
The best aspect of the show is the music itself. The OST, like the rest of the show, is also decent, though nothing noteworthy at best that I can remember. But the anime's theme songs, they really (and I mean, REALLY) deliver. From what I can tell, this is Anisong cover artist NORISTRY's debut (despite being composed by Tom-H@ck, who is usually paired with Masayoshi Ooishi as OxT), and it's a criminally underrated song that deserves more attention as one of the best OP songs of the season. And as usual with all Kadokawa-related stuff, there is Konomi Suzuki coming back with her new song, which sounds great. In a rather ironic twist against the current pandering to the mainstream, both the OP and ED songs (to me) are unironically banger pairings; this is an OST that I can listen to endlessly on repeat.
At the end of the day, Bullbuster does know its target audience, which, as mentioned, is quite the niche product as it is, serving the adult working classes of young and old to enhance its appeal and relatability. But while it's too bad that that market is quite small, which may seem like a missed opportunity, it's certainly not worthy of MAL's woeful and abysmal 6.0-score levels of bad...that ironically is a misunderstanding as well to the general public who may be a pinch interested in the show that's quite frankly, solid as heck, despite its many glaring problems.
All the show needs are people who can relate to or understand its themes, mecha or otherwise, on a level of experienced business infotainment. That somebody who just gets it.
Alternative Titles Japanese: ブルバスター Information Type: TV Episodes: 12 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Oct 4, 2023 to Dec 20, 2023 Premiered: Fall 2023 Broadcast: Wednesdays at 21:00 (JST) Licensors: None found, add some Studios: Nut Source: Mixed media Duration: 23 min. per ep. Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older Statistics Score: 6.181 (scored by 3,684 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #89522 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #5908 Members: 12,121 Favorites: 19 Available AtResources |
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