Video Backlog: "Cybuster"

Publisher: Geneon (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles
Length: 26 episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 1999
Currently in Print (as of writing): No

When you look at a Geneon’s catalogue they put out in the US, it’s not hard at all to see when they went broke. Here’s yet another bad release (instead of the usual commercially unsound, but good anime they released like “Master Keaton”), “Cybuster”. This is one substandard show. Back in the last 1990’s, the mega success of “Evangelion” brought about a virtual flood of new anime, and with it “Late Night Anime”, which is as it sounds, anime aired in the wee hours of the night. With so much product, there was a lot of shite. In that environment, you could almost forgive this show for its lameness. But I won’t.

The plot of “Cybuster” deals with a post mega earthquake Tokyo and the efforts by one private company, DC, to restore and clean up the mess that is Tokyo in the year 2040. However the company is a front for two aliens from a planet called, La Guias, which is in an alternative dimension. Our two baddies fell to earth after being put into a nether region between dimensions, sort of a “Superman II” style prisoner disposal kind of arrangement. A spanner in the works arrives in the form of a giant robot. This is actually a robot from La Guias, piloted by a man with the oddly Japanese sounding name of Misaki, sent to investigate odd pieces of debris falling from the sky in La Guias. This is actually the result of micro black hole tests by the leaders of DC in an attempt to return to La Guias which they were banished from. Eventually one of the DC recruits, Ken, your typical teenage ne'er-do-well, end up piloting the robot...

Pretty standard fare for robot anime. There’s elements from Gundam, but the main bulk of the story is a lot like Dunbine. A really bad reverse Dunbine without a soul. What makes it even worse, a lot worse, is the awful animation. It’s pretty dire in most episodes. Aside from most of the characters being off model for most of the time, a lot of bland action sequences and characters who look rather awkward when simply walking or moving, there seems to be a lot of timing issues. More than a few times we see characters talking and their mouths not moving. There’s also a number of very static scenes. More than once I thought my DVD player had frozen up. Another odd thing is it would seem that some of the animation was fixed up using video effects. It looks as if single broadcast quality frames were captured then animation elements like mouths were matted on top to make sequences go a few frames longer. This is really odd and I’ve never seen it done in any other show. It’s noticeable if you’re looking for it, but not too distracting.

Elements of the plot are absurd too. The big one is how the hell a private company, DC, was allowed to build a virtual army of robots without the government knowing for so damn long and how they can get away with hiring mercenaries who hassle civilians and fire RPGs into their houses. The period were DC went from benign clean up company to evil orgibsation was pretty daft too. Then you have the little things like why did Ken feel the need to still hide Cybuster under a deep lake when he already had a hidden hanger? The sub plot with the mercenaries discovering the hidden base was odd too. Why did they seem to forget about it in the very next episode? I could go on for a couple more paragraphs about the absurdity of various plot points, but I don’t want to waste too much more time on this show. Some of the designs, though a bit generic, did look good and the show was decent in spots. However it was pretty bad overall. It manages to get a 5 out of 10 from me.

Remaining Backlog: 25 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).