July 27, 2024

Aura Battler Dunbine

Everything I say here is a spoiler. Either way, watch this show. It's really fun.

Mildly poetic that an isekai ended with another isekai. Show Zama going to byston well, and Cham Fau being sent to earth. Is byston well heaven? Tbh it's hard to tell, but i suppose the mystique of byston well needs to be maintained somehow. Tomino's kill em all tendancies leave a lot to be desired, and the lack of resolution i feel was both intentional and mildy sloppy. Sho didnt even react when Marvel was killed. Shot and Ban lost their fucking marbles in the end. Keen Kiss was killed in the lamest way possible. Cham permenantly stuck on earth having lost everything. And lady Lapana did a mad suicide attack instead of walking down the isle WITH ME. I dont mind a kill em all ending, but it certainly felt a helluva lot more poetic in Zeta Gundam. Cham deserved better. The only death i thought made sense was Rimul(Emily? Emiry???) Luft, she was basically a rouge fighting on her own the ENTIRE time, and even tho people tended to treat her as a chess piece, her childhood innocence is what eventually killed her. She remained based and aligend, and that gets my respect. I also really like Show Zama, coming off of a bunch of mecha anime that star a 14 year old boy that doesn't wanna kill anybody, seeing a hero who starts off from a position of relative maturity and metal stability was a breath of fresh air. Plus he actually has rizz?? Like come on people.

I really do like how they blip back and forth from our world to their world. I think it really plays into the charm of isekai to juxtapose upper earth against byston well, to have normal people react to cham and the other furine, and to have it all dissapear as if it were a dream really leaves the earthlings, and by extention the viewer yearning for something more. Yearning for a better outcome, and yearning to uncover the secrets and intruige of byston well.

Talking about that, i kinda think that the romance of byston well eroded over time and was eventually replaced with the chaos and destruction of war. And I will say this, the romanticization of the escapism was something else. I'd like to compare it to a much tamer, cruder version of what Resonant Arc says that J R R Tolkien was doing in the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring - this is a place to be protected. Not shying away from the scary animals in byston well, the weird incomprehensible geography of an ocean in the sky, and the relationship humans have with them all was something you kinda wanted to see more of. Having these increasingly sci-fi battles happen accross this land was a curiosity, a real novel that I think does a cool job of getting you interested In the beginning, people were in love, and wrapped up in passion to protect their homeland, but by the end, you could tell all the characters' hearts were replaced with a thousand yard stare of doom. And i guess thats par for the course, it is a tomino war show after all, but i think... idk. I wanted more? I wanted the characters to matter a bit more. The building dread of our main characters losing battles for like 20 episodes straight really started to tip me off to where things were going. I suppose they were fated to die, yeah i'll admit that. But it's almost like the war seperated the characters from themselves and their ambitions. Their war fervor tore Show and Marvel away from each other, tore Rimul(Emiry?) and Neil apart, it tore Emily's nasty parents from Byston Well, and many many others. I feel that this was intended. Watching this conclude is like watching somebody carry your favorite meal further and further away until you can barely see them dumping it in the trash.

The woman who rescued Todd... who was that? I thought she was a furine at first, but now i do not know.

Having cham be the only survivor telling the story was a beautifully tragic touch. I stil think she deserved better. Also why couldn't she have an aura battler? There's literally no reason why they could not have built her a little control panel and just mapped those inputs to the regular aura battler's outputs. No reason at all. JUSTICE FOR CHAM!!!!

Ngl tho i think "byston well" is a stupid fucking name for a fantasy world. saying it 20 times per episode doesn't make it less stupid.

It's so cool watching the characters go aura mode or whatever. They just glow and go bashoo~!! I've seen this special effect done before but it's such a cheesy old school look, but it literally never gets old here.

Despite my goofy mixed feelings about how things shook out, this is a really fun show. The characters, villains included are all super entertaining to watch, and I think that everyone should Dunbinemax ASAP. Billions must cross the Aura Road. If Gandelf the Gray set foot in byston well and spok to cham for 5 minutes he'd be like FUCK HOBBITS 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕. all my WIZARDS HATE HOBBITS. We're furinepilled now.


anime