Gunbuster, the first anime from Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno, is getting its first-ever English dub.
The Gunbuster dub, being recorded by Sound Cadence Productions, is the biggest news out of many announcements from the Discotek Media panel at Otakon 2021. The English dub is set to release in 2022. Discotek's other new licenses include the fan service anime Girly Air Force, the second film in the Tomorrow's Joe (Ashita no Joe) boxing anime franchise, the live-action Go Nagai TV adaptation Cutey Honey The Live, the action-adventure anime Saiyuki Reload and the '80s mecha anime Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos.
Discotek also announced Blu-ray rereleases of anime it previously released on DVD, such as Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers (which features a remaster of its English dub Ronin Warriors), Lupin III vs. Detective Conan The Movie (including a new dub featuring the "classic" Lupin III dub cast and the new Case Closed movie dub cast) and Lupin the 3rd: The Mystery of Mamo. The sci-fi anthology film Robot Carnival is getting an Ultra HD Blu-ray release, remastered in 4K with both the 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio presentations. Discotek confirmed its long-in-the-works UHD 4K restoration of the original Project A-Ko movie will be released before the end of the year. It was also announced that the Blu-ray edition of Lupin the Third: Part 5 will be a single release of the whole 24-episode TV series rather than split into two releases as originally announced.
Gunbuster, known as Aim for the Top! (Toppu o Nerae!) in Japan, is a six-episode OVA centering around Noriko Takaya, a girl at Okinawa Girls Space Pilot High School, training to pilot the titular Gunbuster mechs in a war against insectoid space monsters. In a plot inspired by both the Aim for the Ace! tennis manga and the Hollywood blockbuster Top Gun, Takaya and fellow pilot Kazumi Amano venture further and further into space as part of their training and eventually the war, but the further they go into space, the heavier they experience the effects of time dilation. While the series starts off comedic, it becomes more serious by its final episode.
Released in Japan from 1988-1989, Gunbuster was the first major popular hit from the animation studio Gainax, which would revisit elements of its story and style in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann. A spiritual sequel series, Diebuster, was released in 2004 and the compilation movie Gunbuster vs. Diebuster came to theaters in 2006. Bandai Visual USA released a sub-only DVD edition of Gunbuster in the United States in 2007.
Source: Anime News Network
