Ex-Cyber wrote:Actually Gunbuster's a couple decades too young for that. Mecha anime dates back to the 1960s (we even had it in America then). Anno probably grew up watching it. The "Gainax Bounce" is more of a Gainax cliche in general than a mecha one.PainAmplifier wrote:Gunbuster is old enough that it's probably the *source* of some of those cliche's! I'm not going to claim it created all of them, but things like the 'Gainax Bounce' and 'BustGunner' are some that came to mind pretty much immediately when I saw the topic.
Yes and no to my mind. No in that you can't say Gunbuster invented each cliche, The bounce being one that it definately DID. But yes in the sense that it pretty much acknowledged that certain things were cliched. Whether it did that by parody, emphasis or focus I leave up to the viewer.
I put Gunbuster at the 'Frosting' Layer of the 'cliche cake'. It's obviously not the basis for most of the mecha cliche's, (The ingredients/recipe if you will) and it's too 'new' to be a direct imitator that takes a theme, setting or act and make it a cliche. (The mixing and baking) But on the other hand, you can watch it and say that yes *this* part is a cliche! (The Frosting).
So outside of the cliches that it actually created, we can say that Gunbuster pretty much acted as a the codifier or 'authority' that defined what was actually cliche. As everything before it was either the source of something and through being the first use, couldn't be a cliche yet. Or else it was a copy/imitator and thus wasn't yet a cliche, but rather one of the successors that made it one. And in the end, it's the key show that seperates the shows that created the cliche and the shows that know something is cliche but are using it anyway. Whether it's in homage, in parody or just in an attempt to put a new angle on it, it doesn't matter as you can still look back and see the source (cliche) that it was taken from.
