Hoping to follow in the footsteps of her father, 16-year-old Noriko Takaya enlists in the Girls' Space Corps to become a spaceship pilot. Secretly, she also plans to avenge the death of her beloved dad, whose spacecraft disappeared years ago after being attacked by fearsome insectlike aliens. As the long-running war against the bugs heats up, Noriko must learn to fly Earth's most powerful weapon, the Gunbuster, in this anime series.