The classic isekai mecha anime Aura Battler Dunbine has received a nice new bit of experimental animation and fans are ecstatic.
While you may not think Dunbine is all that popular, in Japan it’s still huge. Written and directed by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino and with amazing and genre defining mecha designs by Kazutaka Miyatake and Yutaka Izubuchi, Dunbine is a fascinating series.
Dunbine is also nicely self-contained, with much of the main story covered entirely in the original 1983 anime series. While there were a few spin-off OVAs and things like Garzey’s Wing and The Wings of Rean, it’s the main series that has garnered such a huge following in Japan.
So much so that a four-decade old mecha anime is still churning out lots of new model kits and toys of the various mecha from the series. The latter toys are also insanely popular in Japan and sell-out constantly.
As for this new piece of experimental anime (show below), it’s done by a studio called Kamikaze Douga, who are currently working on Sand Land. It uses a solid mix of traditional 2D animation merged with 3D CG for the mecha. This is pretty commonplace in mecha anime these days, but it’s done decently here.
This is also part of the new Sunrise Robot Laboratory brand, so it’s not clear what will follow on from this. All I can say is that at the time of writing, this new piece of animation has amassed over 428 thousand views since it went up yesterday. That’s huge and the view count will no doubt get even bigger over the coming week.
Either way, Dunbine is still as popular as ever and it will be interesting to see what will come of this.
If you haven’t watched Aura Battler Dunbine, then there is an excellent remastered Blu-ray release that’s worth a look.
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