Anime: Cannon Busters

Cannon Busters is a show that can win almost anyone with its bombastic early episodes. The production values are great, there is variety and creativity in the way setting and missions play out, plus the main characters are essentially paying homage to older anime. Do you want to see Spike (Cowboy Bebop) in a space western setting (Trigun) while accompanied by Pino (Ergo Proxy)? Well, there you have it. Even those who are nagging for more diversity will be pleased to find over half of the characters being black. Purists will also enjoy the lack of sexualization for the main characters, or will be entertained by the abundance of extreme violence.

Unfortunately, there is not much in terms of narrative or proper pacing for maintaining the interest of the average viewer for more than a few episodes. You are just not given much to care about. The adventures the characters go through have many interesting concepts, but are otherwise very short and don’t give the viewer the time to get into them, before they are over and something else happens. The cast of characters is big and even most of the secondaries have their own side story, but the way they go about it is rushed and superficial. It’s like everything starts and ends in half an episode, thus not giving you any time to appreciate what they are doing.

Furthermore, no matter how dangerous the monsters and the villains feel at first, is quickly rendered moot by the overuse of lazy plot armor. The main character dies about 30 times in a span of a dozen episodes, and it means nothing since he is immortal and always instantly heals back to normal no matter what happens to him. The female android that follows him around seems naïve and weak at first, but whenever one of her friends is in danger she turns into a weapon of mass destruction that instantly defeats any opponent. And on top of that, there are the usual convenient last moment saves, where someone jumps out of nowhere to save someone before he dies. The show gives you no reason to believe any of the major ones will die, even when the stuff they go through are supposed to be super deadly for the average Joe.

As if that wasn’t enough, several plot threads just don’t add up. There are retcons throughout the series that change character dynamics and plot threads with no foreshadowing or explanation. An obvious one is the protagonist being willing to abandon the robots in the initial episodes, only to reveal he was using them as bait to get to someone in the last episodes, and this was supposed to be his plan from the start. Another example is the female android, which although constantly turns to a super weapon whenever someone is hurt, such a thing never happened when the kingdom was attacked and the prince was in clear danger. And then there is a red samurai who joins the team for one episode, then leaves with little justification, and then comes back in the finale just because. It’s like they wanted to have plot continuity without actually planning ahead.

As a whole, Cannon Busters repeated the exact same mistakes as the reboot of the Thundercats. The two shows share many similarities in terms of tone, plot, and pacing, and they both fail to keep the interest of a large audience because of the rushed and superficial ways they were handling their plots. It’s a shame, since a lot of effort was put into animating them beautifully, only to be treated like throwaway entertainment because of lazy writing.

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.