One of the more interesting mecha anime of recent years is finally over, and Bang Bravern certainly didn’t disappoint.
What with Bang Bravern having a lot in common with Detonator Orgun, I was expecting some kind of time travelling shenanigans at some point.
After all the Evoluder in Detonator Orgun where just humans that had “evolved” in space over millions of years due to the effects of time dilation.
In Bang Bravern though we found out that Smith was actually Bravern all along, sent back in time to save Isami and humanity.
Which was then followed up by Lulu coming back from the future to save Isami from the last of the Deathdrive mecha.
However, as both the past and future had been altered, the final boss was not something anyone expected and resulted in a lot of powering up, golden mecha and a fair bit of screaming.
Also the fact that Superbia turned into a sword for Bravern was a nice touch.
The only criticism I sort of have for the series, is that normally this type of story would have been told over the course of at least 26 episodes. Instead, it does feel a bit rushed and the climax lacked some of the epic build up you’d get in an older super robot show.
It’s still a great anime and I had a lot of fun watching Bang Bravern. It managed to merge real robot and super robot sensibilities, while also channelling the Braves saga at the same time.
That said, despite this knowing mix of genre types, Bang Bravern did squarely end on a very super robot note and I think that makes a decent amount of sense.
It also managed to land a lot of great and pretty silly humor for fans of the mecha genre, so that was something I also appreciated.
As for what comes next, there’s a Blu-ray release planned but I’d love to see more of this show. We still don’t really know much about the aliens that invaded, and that seems like an interesting facet of the overall story that could be explored further.
For now though, it’s nice that a recent and very solid mech anime went out with a suitably brave bang.
You can watch Bang Bravern over on Crunchyroll.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.tv.
Read my Forbes blog here.