SEISENSHI DUNBINE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ONA FantasyRean no Tsubasa
OVA FantasySeisenshi Dunbine: New Story of AURA BATTLER Dunbine
OVA AdventureByston Well Monogatari: Garzey no Tsubasa

REVIEWS

• 

  CountZero

  70/100
  A well told story, but with a level of finality that precludes the number of spinoffs it's received.

  It feels weird to call Byston Well, the setting Yoshiyuki Tomino created for Aura Battler Dunbine – a series that many Isekai novels draw their lineage from – as a “joke”. However, arguably no creator has so desperately tried to “make fetch happen” with a setting that Tomino has done with Dunbine – not only with New Aura Battler Dunbine, but also Wings of Rean and Garzey’s Wing. Yet, with the degree of traction the original work obtained, there has to be something there – right?
  Promotional art for Aura Battler Dunbine showing the series cast

  Aura Battler Dunbine follows Sho (or Show, depending on the localization) Zama, a motorcycle racer from modern Tokyo who, right before he has an unfortunate accident with a truck ends up getting summoned to the fantasy world of Byston Well – a land where souls go before they are reincarnated. There he ends up getting caught up in a massive series of fantasy mech wars, between the kingdom of Drake Luft – along with his advisor Shot Weapon – who are trying to take over Byston Well with their magically powered mechs, known as Aura Battlers – along with their magically powered warships.

  Things progressively get worse (this is an ’80s Tomino series, after all), as the war goes on, with the war taking a progressively worse toll on Byston Well itself. This leads to everyone getting straight up kicked out of Byston Well, with their mechs, to “Upper Earth” – meaning our world – where it turns out that Aura weapons are considerably more powerful – an aura blast that had the power of a conventional missle in Byston Well has the power of a nuclear weapon – and the vehicles and equipment are more resiliant, with aura power allowing pilots and captains to generate energy fields for their ships that can allow warships to even withstand repeated attacks with nuclear weapons.

  The first half of the series is basically Sho and the scrappy resistance group he’s fallen in with going from battle to battle against Drake, and only getting the occasional minor victory, before getting pushed back once again. Eventually they put together some allies to wage a serious fight, letting them press the attack – only for everyone to get booted to Earth and ending up on the back foot again. From a viewing perspective it causes the series to feel like it’s spinning its wheels a little bit.

  This is not helped by the fact that while this has better writing for women in the series than most other Tomino shows, that’s… not saying much. It’s not as bad as Gundam Zeta gets with some of that series’ women being wishy-washy with their loyalties, but instead it has real issues with the effectiveness of the women of the series – they never quite pull off their plans effectively as well as the men do – and if they do it also often ends up getting them (and a lot of other people) killed. It’s something we need to consider when talking about the agency of women in fiction – a character having agency – trying to have an impact on their own destiny – is wonderful, but it’s meaningless if they either fail, or the men around them are frequently shown as being more effective then the women are.

  On a better note – the mechanical designs in this show are great – as in “Why aren’t we talking about Dunbine Plastic Models” great. They have this crustacian/insectoid appearance – even the heroic units like the Dunbine or Billbine – that really fits for the setting. Even better, the capital ship designs definitely recognize that “these are powered by magic and fly by magic so we don’t have to obey the laws of aerodynamics in the same way”, so the ships and their bridges and command centers just look cool.

  

  So, the question becomes, why didn’t Dunbine have the same legs that Gundam had? Why hasn’t Byston Well had the myriad spinoffs and sequels that other series has done? I think that’s because the ending of Dunbine is so irrevocably final. Not to put too fine a point on it but:

  There’s no room for sequels and spinoffs because everyone’s dead, and their souls have been purified and sent back to Byston Well. Even when they did a sequel with New Aura Battler Dunbine, they had to have the cast be reincarnations of the old characters, with an contrived excuse to bring in one of the original antagonists to also explain why the Aura Battlers were also back, since all the Aura Battlers and all the Aura Battleships were also destroyed. Everything wrapped up so well here, that you can’t really draw the same sort of narrative connection between the original series and other Byston Well stories. Plus, because the story goes to our world and back again rather than being confined to Byston Well, that means that if you do a story set later (or with someone from a setting more contemporaneous to when the new series was made), this becomes a more difficult decision, considering the… calamatous effects that the series has on our world.

  To be clear, Aura Battler Dunbine is a really good series. But it’s also a series that makes clear that no, Tomino, “Fetch” (by which I mean more Byston Well) was never really on the table, with how you left the story once you were done.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  MC45436G

  90/100
  My favorite isekai, is also the very first one

  If it wasn’t obvious by now, I’m a big fan of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s works. So it isn’t surprising that my favorite isekai in all of anime is the one that he created. While the concept of going to another world has existed in stories long before this genre sub genre was established, this work of Tomino’s is an extremely important one when it comes to the genre’s history with anime. Borrowing some very obscure adaptations of classic literature, Dunbine is considered the very first isekai that received an anime and has many characteristics that are foundational to what we define as an isekai.

  Like many of Tomino’s other series, Dunbine strives to push the boundaries and explore new ideas from its original genre. Before he made it, most of his shows had relatively realistic elements or explored concepts that other mecha haven’t delved too deep into. Aside from his first anime, Triton, and some elements of Raideen, Dunbine is his very first fully fantastical work. It is undoubtedly a Tomino anime from how the plot is structured, the characters are written and the themes it tackles, however it is by far his most unique show at that point.

  Being a Tomino anime, there are the usual directorial traits that are shared among his series. Populating this well made setting is a large cast of diverse characters. If you’re familiar with other anime, these personalities will be very familiar. The ragtag group of heroes from different backgrounds that all work together and travel on a special ship, the many factions of villains and allies that are various shades of gray, the masked rival archetype, and the various antagonists that represent the negative traits of humans. They are all well-written and represent the various ideologies that Tomino normally has in his shows. Like Gundam and Ideon, Dunbine is, at the end of the day, a story about the horrors of war and endless cycle of hatred. They work as well as they do in his other anime but I feel the parts that are unique to this story are more remarkable than those elements.

  While Dunbine was originally written in the 80s, when viewing it through the modern lens of the current state of the genre, it is one of the most unique isekais from that perspective. There are many concepts and ideas that feel so much more fresh compared to the copy and paste formulas of shows we see today. The fantasy world is much more closer to medieval and traditional fantasy stories compared to the usual rpg worlds we see. Taking from his experiences from his previous shows, there are also a lot of elements that are much closer to sci-fi than fantasy in this world. There numerous ideas that are unique to Dunbine that makes it stand out way more among the sea of copy and paste adaptations we get in this genre. It is a true fantasy work that really makes you feel like you’re getting to know a truly exotic world.

  Adding to the uniqueness of Dunbine are the mecha themselves. Aura battlers are some of the most weird yet fascinating designs the mecha genre has seen to that point. They are much more organic and insectoid like. This is a great choice that gives the setting a much more fantastical feel. They are a great intersection between fantasy and the more grounded mechs of the era. Later fantasy mecha would incorporate a much more into the knightly aesthetic, but the way aura battlers were designed gives Dunbine an identity that is exclusive to itself.

  Dunbine is on the darker side of Tomino. The conflict starts off as a civil war, but later grows into a much larger scale as the story progresses. The stakes keep on growing as the number of people dying and tragedies increases. It does have a slower and chaotic start as everything is being introduced and set up, but there are certain turning points that not only widen the scope of the war, but makes the story so much more compelling. I don’t want to spoil it, however, another point that makes Dunbine so much better than most isekai is the interaction between the fantasy world and the normal world.

  Isekai is a genre that I don’t particularly enjoy due to how many works are bland and uninteresting. There is so much potential for interesting compelling stories with unique ideas. Thus, when a creator takes full advantage of this type of story, that work becomes a truly great series. The genre may have peaked at its birth since Dunbine is a show that rightfully explores the concept of characters going to another world. On top of just being a good Tomino anime with all the elements that he is known for, it is just a good fantasy anime in general.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• ANIME

  DramaKidou Senshi Zeta Gundam
• ANIME

  DramaDensetsu Kyojin Ideon
• ANIME

  DramaKidou Senshi Victory Gundam
• ANIME

  AdventureTenkuu no Escaflowne
• ANIME

  Action∀ Gundam
• ANIME

  ActionKidou Senshi Gundam AGE
• ANIME

  ActionBrain Powerd
• OVA

  ActionGenmu Senki Leda
• ANIME

  ActionGATE: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri
• ANIME

  AdventureJuusenki L-Gaim
• ANIME

  MechaSentou Mecha Xabungle
• ANIME

  ActionKnight's & Magic