Cannon Busters

6.4(22,943)

MAL Score

Ranked #8483

Popularity #3847

Action
Adventure
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
Mecha

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Aug 15, 2019
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

S.A.M. is a premium, royal-grade friendship droid setting out to find her closest companion: the missing heir to a mighty kingdom now under attack. Her search pulls her into a sprawling world where fantasy and sci-fi collide, and danger is never far away.

Along the way, she’s joined by an eccentric, cast-off maintenance robot and a bold, lethal fugitive. As the unlikely trio travels from one perilous encounter to the next, their quest becomes an adventurous trek across a vivid, treacherous land—driven by loyalty, survival, and the hope of reuniting with the prince.

Otaku Consensus

Cannon Busters lands as a divisive but distinctive 12-episode ride: its Afrocentric sci-fi western identity, brisk wasteland-adventure pacing, and chemistry among the central trio are the elements most often singled out as working. The common criticism is not confusion about what it is trying to be, but that it tries to be too many things at once, with some viewers finding the early action flat and the tone caught between cool genre mash-up and cheeseball excess.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Cannon Busters if you want a high-color road anime that scratches the same itch as Trigun or Outlaw Star, but with more Afrocentric design, more overt fantasy machinery, and a Borderlands-like appetite for guns, bounty hunters, robots, magic, and outlaw swagger. It is best for viewers who enjoy genre pileups without demanding austere worldbuilding: the appeal is in seeing cowboys, knights, super-robot energy, AI characters, and criminal anti-heroes share the same visual language. The 12-episode length also makes it easier to sample than longer adventure series. If you want clean tonal discipline, this may irritate you; if you want an overstuffed sci-fi fantasy western with personality in every design choice, it has a lane few anime occupy.

Key Characters

P
Philly the Kid(VA: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka)
Philly the Kid is the show’s sharp-edged anti-hero presence, the kind of lethal fugitive character fans discuss as either the series’ main source of attitude or its biggest tonal risk.
S
S.A.M.(VA: Hinaki Yano)
S.A.M. turns the familiar power-of-friendship archetype into a literal artificial intelligence concept, giving the series its most sincere counterweight to the gunslinging chaos around her.
C
Casey Turnbuckle(VA: Shiori Izawa)
Casey Turnbuckle brings the scrappy maintenance-robot angle to the main trio, functioning as the mechanical misfit whose presence reinforces the show’s love of cast-off machines.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The production pairs Satelight with Yumeta Company, two Japanese studios behind a series created by LeSean Thomas rather than a standard manga or light-novel source credit. That creator-driven setup is central to why the show feels closer to a global genre remix than a conventional late-2010s TV anime package.
2
Thomas Romain is credited on both original character design and mechanical design, which helps explain the series’ unusually unified blend of humanoid cast design and robot/mecha iconography. The same visual pipeline supports both the outlaw characters and the super-robot-flavored elements.
3
Its genre stack is unusually dense even by adventure-anime standards: AniList tags register Fugitive at 96%, Anti-Hero at 92%, Guns at 84%, Robots at 82%, Artificial Intelligence at 63%, Magic at 56%, and Super Robot at 46%. The lower but still present Ninja and Samurai tags underline how far the mash-up reaches beyond sci-fi western basics.
4
The show’s reception profile is notably polarized: it holds a 6.42/10 MAL score from 22,927 votes and a 62/100 AniList score, while still drawing praise from critics who describe it as a worthwhile Borderlands-style wasteland adventure with plot twists. That split matches the fan discourse: the main cast is often praised, while the surrounding material is criticized as uneven.
5
Its 12 episodes are listed with a single air date, August 15, 2019, giving it the feel of a compact binge-format adventure rather than a week-to-week seasonal build. That release shape suits its encounter-driven, genre-hopping structure.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: LeSean Thomas is credited as the original creator, making Cannon Busters a creator-led anime project rather than a straightforward adaptation credit in the provided production data.
Fun fact 2: Thomas Romain has a dual visual role on the series: original character design and mechanical design. That is a meaningful credit combination for a show where character silhouettes and machines are both major parts of the identity.
Fun fact 3: Weilin Zhang is credited for key animation on the opening, a detail worth noting for animation fans who track individual animators rather than only studio names.
Fun fact 4: The sound side credits Takatoshi Hamano as sound director, while the international ADR credits include Fábio Lucindo and Eduardo Garza, with Garza specifically listed for Latin American Spanish ADR direction.
Fun fact 5: Despite modest aggregate scores, the series has 146 AniList favourites, suggesting a small but real pocket of viewers who connected strongly with its maximalist style.