Eskimo North

Aura Battler Dunbine is a Yoshiyuki Tomino (creator of Gundam) project from 1983.

It is largely unknown. A mech show with a fairly adult presentation, it simply overshoots the radar of the younger anime fan, who might also be turned off by the "old-school" character designs and drawing, which are nevertheless very high quality.

I'll make some screenshots and post them here later.

Here's the wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_Battler_Dunbine

Here is a clip for those who might like to see what it's like. I hadn't seen it prior to this. You refer to this as "old school", but actually modern by contrast to YU and some of the other stuff I watch.

In 2007 language, anything that was entirely hand animated is "old school" in quotes. Anything before 1980 is Old School without quotes and with caps ;^)

Your sample reflects the rather badly done rip job by AniMecha, with nasty ghosting from the hard-telecine job done on the dvd's. I had good success doing inverse-telecine on the AniMecha rips, and was able to restore them to almost pristine 24fps progressive.

An interesting characteristic of Dunbine (and other action titles of the same period) is the extreme spareness of the animation in static shots, ramping up to amazingly detailed animation in action scenes. Dunbine is a character-driven anime, the mechs were an afterthought of sorts, having been dictated by Bandai as an avenue to toy sales... In a show that could not have appealed very much to young kids.

Most of the stuff I'm into is Old School; probably has something to do with being Old.


I didn't do the sampling, just did a search and found it on the net, thought people might be interested in seeing what it looked like, what the characters sounded like, etc.


I did notice the drawing details were "selective" in static scenes. Some items detailed, some not.

Yeah, I think you're a year older than me... So you're pretty ancient. Me, on the other hand... Maybe I'll start to feel the same way when I'm your age. I have a twelve year old daughter who gets to choose what we watch most of the time. Fortunately she DOES like UY and Captain Harlock. But Sailor Moon (the original, not the dreadful NA version) is still our favorite.

I'm 48, will be 49 in less than two months. My kids, well my older two are moved out and on their own; Eddie at 13 doesn't watch a lot of television and when he does it's often stuff geared towards people older than his age group. Raymond, for a long time lived Pokemon (ugh!) and then Naratu, but lately not much TV either.

UY was really what got me hooked on Anime, though I guess I'll have to admit I watched Speed Racer and some others when I was younger, but YU was really strange enough to really catch my interest and hold it. It's a silly anime, but at the same time imaginative. The characters are fun if not realistic.

Okay, then I'll confess too... 46, 47 in the same "less than two months". Pokemon, ugh. Naruto, ugh (fans of the show are known as "Narutards"... ESPECIALLY if they run with their arms trailing out behind them at an angle - this was an "in joke" of sorts in the show, because this was how people wearing kimono had to run to avoid being blinded by their own sleeves - of course, the Naruto characters don't wear kimono, but they still run in this silly fashion). Funny thing is, one of the worst, Dragonball, was actually very cute and funny in the original first season. But most of that first season was cut from the U.S. release because potty humor in Japan is on a whole other level compared to the U.S., and it might have caused a national scandal.



I'll go out on a limb and recommend Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu, which is silly and imaginative and strange and unpredictable in the same way that the original UY was. I know people who watched it all the way through, sat back, and said: "What the hell was that?!".

What era were these made in? Yep, it's strange.

It's fairly recent. Just a couple years ago. Whenever anybody mentions liking strange, I recommend it. If the person also likes food, I also recommend Yakitate Japan.

BTW, that link is to Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu Deluxe... Which makes it even stranger, since it picks up right where the original show left off. There's also a JWIHNG Final where the whole thing melts down in a sea of weirdness.