Top wo Nerae! Kagaku Kouza

Chibis jumping up and down, talking about hard core scientific facts is the last thing to expect..if this wasn't Anno's work.

This little extra paves the way nicely for the series both for factual and fictional background. It's a clever way to keep the series tidy of unending explanations and surely saves space in its short running time.

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These short episodes came with the original videos and star Amano and Noriko as they educate the viewer on the science and history of their universe. Episodes are devoted to the science behind warping, the Space Monsters, and other topics with the average two minute running time utilized well. The scientific explanations can get surprisingly dense, but following them isn't exactly rewarding as some or all of what it says is going to be fictional. Still, the care that has gone into these explanations is admirable and makes the Gunbuster world more respectable. Hideaki Anno would go on to combine super robot and real robot ... concepts in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

These shorts didn't make me like Gunbuster any more than I did before but they're worth a watch and have a few silly moments.

Cute little omake shorts that are, as usual, easily skippable, but are still a neat little time if you like the idea of telling some jokes with the characters from the main story. The bulk of these ones are fake science lectures with the characters playing straight-man and the fool together. I didn't think any were particularly clever until the "Shin" ones that released several years after the first two volumes of "Gunbuster" came out. In the very last one, there is a delightful shout-out to "Sailor Moon" that feels like a payoff for 90s anime culture generally as well as a running gag from ... these shorts. I dug it.