Bullbuster Ep 7 Review: It’s Time For Goodbye…

Bullbuster ramp up the tension this week both on the action aspect and the drama one. We get the teary conclusion to Arumi’s “Shiro” arc and Namari finally do the face-heel-turn we’ve been expecting. A lot of these have been telegraphed but it is a reasonable development. The show really knows how to rile viewers up for some telenovela drama. And once again, Nagisa showed that she’s best girl.

It turned out that Shiro didn’t die (le gasp)! And it mysteriously came back to life after it stopped breathing. It’s another mystery to stack on top of the current ones about the Giant Beast. I’m thinking that the reason why the mutation happened and how to fix it is going to be extremely cheesy and out of nowhere. With how “little Stuart” mutated, we can infer that something underneath the lake is the cause – which is probably that weird algae thing that Nagisa found in the previous episode. The actual why and how is going to be very convoluted and the anime doesn’t seem interest in providing a believable explanation so I guess we just roll with it.

Also I have to say, leaving a just-deceased-but-came-back-to-life specimen unguarded and unmonitored is kinda careless and…dumb. If it were me, I’d station at least one dude or a camera to monitor it, or even put it back in the cage before. I can see the head researcher being stupid as hell, but I can’t imagine Nagisa being so careless. Maybe the fact that Arumi was devastated by the news kinda caught her off-guard. Arumi having to put Shiro down herself at the end really put a nail in our heart, and the sunset lighting really add to the atmosphere…

Namara once again displayed that he’s the most robotic guy on the Earth. At this point the viewers can probably guess that he “actually” wanted to help and was probably doing some “helpful” things in secret. But the behaviours he showed at work is utterly unacceptable. It really created a clash between his uncaring style and his “redemption” action later on. Even if we found out that he was doing valuable work for the company, the fact that he refuse to perform a very sensible duty because “hurr durr company rules say so” didn’t do him any favors. I guess Bullbuster is really pushing the “Japanese work culture is bad” and “all salarymen are mindless worker bees” to the extreme.

We”, it was revealed at the end that Namari was working on a crowdfunding project to get more funding for the company by revealing the existence of the Giant Beast to the public – which Namidome has been trying to keep a secret since the beginning. This might spark an interesting development for the investigation and extermination progress. We’ll see if Namari can redem himself – especially after making some very inconsiderate comments towards Arumi.

Bullbuster’s plot progression has been great. It’s not too fast and not too slow. It spent time developing the characters’ personality and quirks. And they pretty much successfully expressed the “intent” of the characters as a foil to make a social commentary about Japanese’s workplace culture. The mecha has been a bit of an extra element that act as plot device, but at least the animation is nice and how they operate the mechs is very interesting. One more thing, Nagisa has now officially joined the Namidome team, so the gang’s all here. Looking forward to some full blown intense climax (if they have one planned).

Aaron
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