Why was Diebuster so much worse than Gunbuster?

Not really worse but it's a totally different kind of show. It's kind of how I wish a lot of sequels could be, where almost everything is completely new and only the essential themes of the original remain but at the same time you risk fucking that up and having a pointless work at best and souring the original at worst. And Diebuster is very heavily just decent_________

Because it was FLCL2 instead of Gunbuster 2.

gunbuster is weird but nearly great. it has this way of frogboiling you into its world with goofy mecha tropes and titty physics, and then once you find yourself caring about the characters, ambushing you with more grounded melancholy. you feel the inescapable march of time, a true weight, and it only ratchets up from there. hope in the face of sci-fi meditations on mortality, it really works.
diebuster could have been fun if it wasn't competing with this. instead, it comes off as obnoxious and braindead. it should have just been its own show.

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It felt goofier. Gunbuster had GUTS, HARD WORK and COACH

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>Gunbuster doesnt know if it wants to be a high school drama, a terror series, a silly mecha, or hard scify one

It did all pretty well thank you very much.

It's a fun series for sure.
Disagreed on Diebuster but you put well into words how Gunbuster ropes you in.

Diebuster is a much more unified and cohesive piece of media. Everything from the visuals, mecha designs, and even naming of the characters and ideas works together to tell one story with a central theme and several slight variations. The execution is not as good as gunbuster's last 3 episodes but I think it is better overall.

Ah ah ah ah

I kind of doubt it, first one was slow and boring as shit while the girls basically just did normal exercise for what felt like ages.

Gunbuster was essentially Anno commenting on anime and otaku culture at the time. He was annoyed by OVAs becoming increasingly more pandering, absurd and removed from real life so he sets out to do some parody/pastiche ramping up all these tropes exponentially (moe girls in inappropriate settings, fanservice, references, etc) to highlight their absurdity. Of course, the show eventually grew into a more serious storyline, but the subtext regarding otaku culture was still there (for example, the time dilation thing with the protagonists staying young piloting robots and meeting their old friends, now proper grown ups with family and children, an obvious allegory to the otaku 's arrested development and a common element in Anno's filmography).

Diebuster was set out to do the same, 2 decades later. So, how was anime like, and Gainax especially, like in the mid 00s? Much less "real" and grounded, much more emotionally driven and cartoony, "randumb" comedies like FLCL and Excel Saga were at their peak, and so forth. The setting itself of the story reflected the change of the anime industry landscape: humanity was in the decline, reduced to a tiny area of the galaxy after massive losses, similarly to the anime industry after the economic crisis and its dying OVA market. And the otaku commentary of course was barely even subtext at this point and more full on text. The buster machines literally comes with their action figures sets wrapped in plastic. Casio is the stereotypical otaku manchild forced to get a real job once he stops being coddled. And so forth.

It's weird how these are popular series but almost nobody seems to have a clue what they are about.

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It's not, maybe you're just a nostalgicfag.

I thought FLCL was niche

What's the story behind Diebuster and TTGL? I remember reading about they both stemmed from the same concept and being part of why the trigger team split or something, maybe
I'm misremembering but never got to dig more into it, any loremasters?

Diebuster's "criticism" doesn't work as well then, because it's trying to criticize something Gainax themselves pioneered. Gunbuster was parodying a popular Tennis manga at the time. I don't see it as a "parody" of FLCL, I just see FLCL because it's the same fucking studio.