Gurren Lagann–oh, how I love thee. With gigantic robots powered by ‘fighting spirit” and an enemy force often named as ‘furries’, I can only imagine either the internet or hardcore drugs had some influence in your conception.
The series has a full cast of characters that are rather ‘unique’ to say the least–Nia is about as crazy as a bag full of puppies and thumbtacks. Kamina has that ‘never give up’ attitude to the extent that he’d probably believe he could sprout wings and fly if he tried hard enough. Yoko is every lonely teenage Otaku’s late-night fantasy. And Simon, being the main character, is the only one even remotely normal…he gets sad, has confidence problems at times and even gets really horny…fortunately they don’t divulge the no doubt disturbing things that go through his mind every time Yoko accidentally puts her boobs in his face.
There is no shortage clichés in this show, in fact they are often exaggerated beyond absurdity. Like characters pointing at nothing for no real reason, for example;
Where there’s giant robots and disco fingers there is also fan service. Every anime, without fail, consistently has a swimsuit episode. It’s bound to happen, no matter what the content of the show is. It’s as if the writers are bound by law to include atleast one episode focused entirely on fan service in every series. With Yoko’s boobs constantly in Simon’s face I didn’t really think they needed to include a fan service episode, but I guess they hadn’t quite yet reached their quota.
The show isn’t all fan service and absurd insanity–it has it’s serious moments…even if you can count them all on one hand. Beneath all the insanity and fan service the show is actually about the spiral pattern molecular structure that is inherent to all things. Everything in nature has a molecular structure that spins outward and slowly falls apart because of a decrease in gravitational force. Humans in the show being Spiral beings are countered by Anti-Spiral beings to stabilize the spiral energy, however; the outward spin of a spiral is what actually keeps itself close to the central gravitational point. Forcing another reversed spiral against it would actually push the spiral apart faster, which is why the show builds up to an all-out war between the Spiral and Anti-Spiral beings.
All in all Gurren Lagann is an excellent show with an art style rather reminiscent of FLCL. This isn’t one of those ‘sit and relax’ animes, it’s fast-paced and very emotional. The writing is quite good, though the writers like to toy with your heart at times. Near the end of the show they start killing off secondary characters like crazy. There is also a few really major characters that they use to toy with your heart strings, but I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet. I very much recommend anyone that liked FLCL to check this show out as it’s writing and animation style is very similar…it was made by the same people after all. It was a highly entertaining waste of about 10 hours of my life, I have no regrets.
Various Gurren Lagann merchandise can be found online at Play-Asia.
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