Aura Battler Dunbine Blu-ray

I am extremely excited waiting for this! In fact... you could say I've been waiting 30 years for this to be released so I can get my mitts on it. I remember this show being traded on VHS/BETA back in that day (that sound you hear is my creaking joints at 50). Back then we almost never had access to quality copies showing the entire show so some episodes went unseen. Alas, it's the way it was back then.

The story was always enticing, the mecha concepts always blew my mind and the character designs were so well done! (Right down to Chum Fau... who later showed up in L.Gaim!) The models and toys back in the day didn't capture the movement or do them justice. Now it's all coming back and I'm loving it! For the short time, I was on Daisuke.Net before it's collapse I enjoyed getting to watch the ones I had never seen and always enjoying the hand-drawn goodness!

This is a great release for a classic mecha series. As someone who's long wanted to watch all of ABD, this collection is perfect. The quality of this restored version of the series is unbelievable--the colors literally pop off the screen and makes the previous DVD release from years ago look muddy and dark by comparison.

But this is also a series that is so unique--mecha, sword and sorcery, and 1980s Earth--all of these disparate elements somehow fit together in this story. Plus it's a showcase of the talents of Tomino, Kagawa, Miyatake, and the animators of that time.

This is a classic, and deserves to be seen.

I came to own this on DVD, 12 disc set, when discs 11 and 12 were $100 and $150 if you could find them. This is as good as SDF Macross with less interplanetary warfare :) Good story and well worth owing it.

While Dunbine isnt on the same level as SDF Macross, first Gundam or Votoms as far as the characters or story goes, I love it.
Great production values and a unique setting are Dunbine's strong suits.
This is a Tomino show with the same animation director that helmed his Xablungle and Ideon shows.
This show was dubbed in English by the late, great Carl Macek, who the American anime industry own so much too. If you like dubs you will enjoy this one.

The BluRay is five stars perfect. The video in particular is far better than I ever imagined. So sit back an enjoy the excellent palette of pastel knights fighting over, then under, earth in giant bug mechs.

The show does many things well. Characters have realistic motivations and relationships with each other. The premise is solid and fairly original. And most battles feel like a do-or-die situation.
Many trends are carried over from Mobile Suit Gundam. Characters with "Aura" power are this series' Newtypes. A Char-like character, complete with mask, rivals the main protagonist. Even the Black Tristars make an appearance and do the famous "Jet Stream Attack" they used on the Gundam.
But in my opinion, the series fails in the last third or so. No spoilers but it feels like the studio had to stretch out the runtime of the series, so many later episodes do little to progress the story. This leads to all of the loose ends of the story to be tied up in just the last two episodes.
Get it if you like 80's mecha or are a Gundam fan, but maybe not if you hate bad endings.

This is a landmark mecha series by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki "Kill 'em All" Tomino. While over 35 years old, its engaging characters, solid plot, and story that takes an unusual terms multiple times do a lot to differentiate it from the pack. Oh yeah, and there's plenty of mass destruction and notable character deaths - this was one of the series that helped create that "Kill 'em All" moniker after all.

As for the release, it actually looks and sounds better than I expected considering the original source material, and with an entire 49-episode series in the set, it's an amazingly good deal compared to most other contemporary releases.

If old school mecha is your thing, you'd need a good reason to pass this one up.