Back in May, the classic anime series Aura Battler Dunbine got some new experimental animation, which was hugely popular. Well, we now have some more.
The previous animation was more of a celebration of the original Dunbine TV series. This new piece (shown below) adds more to that and is clearly trying to flesh this out into something new.
If you are somewhat bewildered as to why an anime like Dunbine is getting this treatment, this is because the various Dunbine toys in recent years have sold incredibly well.
So much so that Bandai Spirits is running out of designs to actually turn into toys, which is likely why in this new piece of animation we see the Dunbine and Billbine wield new weapons and shields.
There’s also a brief hint of an all new aura battler as well, so I am beginning to feel that these “experimental animations” may turn out into something more.
My only concern there is that the original team behind Dunbine, that of Yoshiyuki Tomino, Kazutaka Miyatake and Yutaka Izubuchi, to name but a few, are likely not going to be involved in all of this.
Not to mention that Tomino has tried to revisit Dunbine in the past, and did so with mixed success.
Now, people like Mamoru Nagano were in the running to do designs for Dunbine back in the day, with some of those designs recently seeing the light of day, so I haven’t lost all hope on a new team handling an anime production.
As a lifelong fan of Dunbine, these pieces of experimental animation do have me excited. I just hope they can manifest into something actually decent and faithful to the host work.
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