Trivia / GunBuster

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• Breakthrough Hit: GunBuster was the first hit that made Hideaki Anno and Studio Gainax into Household Names worldwide, along with Kohei Tanaka.
• Content Leak: Discotek's English voice cast for GunBuster was inadvertently leaked hours before the official announcement on July 30, 2022.
• Creator Backlash: Not towards the series itself, but GunBuster's design. Anno gave it a single eye because he thought it was unique, but he later decided it was a mistake because it didn't keep the robot recognizable when in shadows (Super Robot Wars, in particular, sometimes has to do a bit of "creative" lighting to get around this). This is why EVA-01 was drawn with two glowing, white eyes on a gloomy purple body.
• The Danza: Noriko Takaya shares the same given name with her voice actress, Noriko Hidaka.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: There was a brief period during the Turn of the Millennium and throughout The New '10s where GunBuster wasn't available in North America, before Discotek Media released it on Blu-ray in 2023.
• Late Export for You: Discotek's 2023 Blu-Ray release includes an English dub by Sound Cadence Studios.
• Playing Against Type: Norio Wakamoto hadn't actually been typecast at this point his career, so it's not surprising that Coach Ohta lacks any of the villainous Large Ham traits that the actor has since become so famous for. It helps that, naturally, Wakamoto was also a lot younger when he played this role.
• Science Marches On: In the show, the Solar System has several planets beyond the orbit of Pluto, including one that is called Jupiter 2. Sol is also part of a binary system, with the other star, Nemesis, being half a lightyear away.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The OVA series contains a "homage" that sounds extremely similar to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire theme song. This got to the point where the 5.1 sound remix has it replaced.
• What Could Have Been: Hideaki Anno revealed in a 2019 interview that he had tried to get Gainax to sign over the rights to the GunBuster IP (as well as the FLCL IP) to him and Studio Khara in exchange for a million-class loan to help the struggling studio away from the edge of bankruptcy. Anno's plans were to let his protégé, Kazuya Tsurumaki, develop new installments for both shows, but much to his outspoken annoyance, Gainax instead straight up duped him and moved the rights to a shell company simply to avoid upholding their end of the bargain. Somewhat hilariously, his first pick did end up developing Diebuster.

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