For the uninitiated, Gunbuster is a six episode OVA released in 1988 by Gainax. Directed by a young Hideaki Anno (director of Neon Genesis Evangelion), the series is about a young girl named Noriko Takaya, who is in a robot academy learning to pilot robots to fight giant Space Monsters who have been attacking distant ships in space. What starts off as giant robots in school becomes a struggle for the survival of man in those six episodes. It doesn't get as absurd as Gurren Lagann, but let's just say that Jupiter gets used for purposes that nobody probably initially intended.

Gunbuster is famous for a couple of things. It was the one of if not the first show to feature lovingly animated bouncing bosoms (known by many as the Gainax Bounce.) It's also one of the few robot shows in my memory that has women as the main characters. Noriko is the show's driving force, as is her senpai Kazumi Amano. I wouldn't say that Noriko and Kazami are necessarily positive female role models, but considering their actions in the show and the year Gunbuster was released, I think they represented the female gender fairly well.

However, being a female pilot in a man's world isn't enough for me to declare Noriko memorable. That has more to do with her character progression. The show starts off with Noriko as the academy scrub who is trying to live up to her father's legacy as an admiral. Her main goal at the academy is to get closer to Kazami, the Onee-sama and ace of the school. Fate places her under the tutelage of Koichiro Ohta, who served under Noriko's father and is the sole survivor of his ship. Ohta's faith in Noriko borders on the insane, as he gambles the fate of the human race multiple times on the daughter of his former admiral.

What really sticks out to me is the how Noriko reacts to the situations that Ohta puts her in with his faith. She starts off very weak-willed and stays that way for much of the show. She acts like most teenagers would realistically act when placed in a big robot in space: utterly terrified. Thing is, despite all the horrible things she faces in the show, when she needs to step up, she's able to do so by following Ohta's philosophy in life.

Anything is possible with hard work and guts.

That philosophy is used fairly often in super robot shows, but I feel that Gunbuster shows it at it's most salient. Noriko never gives up, no matter how crappy a situation she is put in. Even when she fails, she holds true to Ohta's words and pushes through. When she's abandoned by Kazami, she finds another partner to work with. When that partner goes missing in battle, she goes to Ohta and trains her ass off to learn to pilot the experimental weapon, Gunbuster. When the battle ship she's stationed on is going to be rammed into the Space Monster's lead ship...thing..., Noriko puts her life on the line to protect those on the ship.

In the span of six episodes, you see this fairly normal high school girl blossom into a hot-blooded women who will do what she needs to do to save the world she loves so dearly. The choice she makes at the end of the show has left a massive impact on me and all that have seen the show with me. The opening notes of the final song can still bring a manly tear to my eye and the word Okaerinasai will always have another meaning to me. To me, Noriko is proof that anybody can succeed at anything they attempt as long as they put in enough hard work and guts.