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Basara is an epic tale about Sarasa who replaces her twin brother; prophesized to be the boy of destiny and unite Japan; after he falls in battle. That in itself is more or less a cliched setup for a show, but Basara pulls it off incredibly well.

The whole first volume deals with Sarasa's taking up of Tatara's name. After that, things get pretty deep. Each volume (of 7 that I have read thus far) seemingly add another layer of complexity to the story. I much more than a simple "Unite Japan after an Apocalypse" type story, which has much to do with its ... amazing characterization and their drive.

The characters are plentiful, and wonderfully diverse. Even stock characters somehow breath uniqueness either do to an interesting back story or the party around them in which they interact with. But for me, the best part about the characters is that both good and bad characters are given the same treatment. A character who is truly evil is few and far between. Most of the"bad guys" are just following a different path than Tatara is in order to unite Japan. Nonetheless they are provided with a full backstory early on along with their motives and relationships and inner thoughts being revealed which really makes them feel human rather than an arbitrary obstacle or goal. This makes it hard to root for "good" or "evil" to triumph, as well as adds pain when either actually does. However there are some truly evil characters in the story thus far, and I truly hate them; loathe them even, as I suspect was intended.

New characters never stop entering the picture, and old characters dissapear, reappear, and die often, keeping things fresh and really unpredictable. Not so unpredictable though that an event comes off as alien or out of place, or that deus ex machina is being used. Just unpredictable enough to be lead around by the manga-ka's story.

The only part of Basara I can really find fault in is the art. I am not going to complain about style or character design because, really, it is quite wonderful. There are just many pages in each book where I have no idea what I am looking at. The most recent example I can name comes in volume 7, where a whale leaps out of the water. I wouldn't have been able to identified it as a whale if the speech bubbles hadn't said so. To be honest, I didn't even see anything, I only saw a wave. But after really close inspection, there was a whale, it just happened to have the exact same shading as the water. It may just be that Viz messed up in printing Basara, but whatever the reason is, there are a few moments per book where I have to strain myself in order to understand whats happening.

But with that being the only real problem at least for me) I can safely recommend this manga to anybody who enjoys fantasy or adventure stories. I am sure you wont be disappointed.

Quite possibly the best show in years. Though at the same time it can be pretty hard to recommend. To enjoy the show you need to be open to extreme expletives and adult theme/humor.

Story:
A calm man who dreams of being a musician becomes the lead singer for a rising Metal phenomenon. I found the story to be pretty original and quite a good setup for some amazing comedy. Its not the best story in the world, but they certainly do a lot with 12 episodes.

Art:
Clearly not the best art, but it never intended to be. Instead they went for more of a ... "Manga Recreation" style utilizing interesting screen proportions as if it were a comic.

Sound:
Despite is heavy dependence on Metal music, if you are not into Metal music (I certainly am not) you will probably enjoy the soundtrack more than if you did. Most of the show is a parody for the metal genre (and actually most music genres to be honest) The songs are all humorous and enjoyable which is pretty hard to accomplish with so many music genres incorporated. The voice acting is also spot-on.

Character:
All of the characters are pretty well fleshed out and vastly different from each other. Even characters that only appear for a single episode have a lot going for them. This can be attributed to the series' quick delivery of jokes to keep things fresh, insane, and hilarious.

Enjoyment:
As I said earlier, possibly one of the best shows in awhile, and easilly the funniest anime I have seen period. If any show has the potential to knock you out of your chair with laughter, this would be it; assuming you are a fan of the type of humor they employ.

Overall:
This was pretty much perfection for me, as far as comedies go.
I want more episodes. 10/10

First and foremost, I should mention this is my first review for MAL.
Secondly, I am surprised it took me so long to see this Anime through to completion.

The story itself was well done. While the actual content can be summarized to "Giant Robot destroys an army of aliens," it is multitudes deeper than that. But just as important as the content itself, the pacing to this Anime is wonderful. It zips right along with just about nothing that seems like it could have been omitted, and yet never felt too fast. It was the perfect length to keep myself fully engrossed into the plot. ...

What really made the plot matter was its wonderful depiction of the characters it entangled. They were all well detailed, and I felt no character was robbed of screen-time despite the shows brevity. Again, like the plot, I also felt no character wasn't needed as well. Even the weakest of characters get returning air-time, and prove to be an adequate drive for the main-characters to perform their duty.

The art is outstanding for the 80's, in typical Gainix fashion no less. Even the direction taken in the final episode ended up being amazing to actually watch in motion. However, the sound, while good, seemed to have some balancing issues with the BGM. The voices were amazing, and the VAs conveyed a lot of emotion in their performance, but at very stressful times they seemed to overly shadow the BGM and even sometimes the SFX as well.

Overall, I'd say Gunbuster is easily one of my favorite Mecha Anime ever produced. If you are even in the least bit interested in this show, I'd say give it a shot. Its short enough that you can spend a single rainy night finishing it, like I just did today.

Anyways, thanks for reading my review of Gunbuster!