Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Movie 1: Gurren-hen

I went to the theatre to watch this without ever watching Gurren Lagann, and I am a fan. I have never watched the show before, but I felt like everything in the movie made sense, and it never really felt like anything was missing which is pretty impressive considering how many episodes of the show were covered. The soundtrack was really good, and the animation quality felt like it was really ahead of its time. I recommend this for people who don't have enough time to watch the entire series. I did not really care for all of the characters, but Simon and Kamina were ... good.

Gurren Lagann the Movie: Childhood's End (2008) is an entertaining and novel recap of the first 13 episodes of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007). GLTMCE is an amazing showcase of animation ability, every scene within the film is stunning, and the animation sequences (while sometimes repetitive) are gorgeous. Scenes that didn't make sense in TTGL are removed and replaced with ones that better explain the lore of the series which is a welcome change. However this is all there is to GLTMCE, since the film covers 13 episodes worth of content in just over two hours the pacing feels off, and the viewer isn't able ... to connect to the characters or watch them interact and grow like they did in the original series. To add to this TTGL was always somewhat repetitive and this is further exacerbated by the condensed format which only focuses on those battle scenes that were the source of the repetitive nature.

If you're a huge fan of TTGL or this film is playing in theaters near you then it is definitely worth checking out. But if you haven't seen TTGL yet, or aren't a huge fan then there's no purpose in watching this film.

*Dub or sub* In this case it's best to go with the sub, the dub is pretty standard: mostly flat in its delivery and the screaming during fights can be pretty cringeworthy.

Gurren Lagann: Childhood's End, is the first Gurren Lagann movie and more or less acts as a recap and retelling of the first half of the plot from the anime combined into one. The movie, as mentioned, mainly serves as a retelling, putting all the major episode plots into a single story which amounts to just under two hours, while the minor elements are either not present or combined into a montage, with one exception by the end. However, depending on how one felt about the main series and their patience level, this can either come off as a blessing or a curse. Themes and ... other elements I mentioned in the main series won't be discussed here to avoid repetition.

Let's start with the good. As mentioned, the movie essentially compacts all of the major scenes of the anime's plot-relevant episodes. As such, if you want a trimmed down version of the main story which could be easily digestible in one sitting, instead of sitting through everything, this could be recommendable. There is also a slightly different ending, and this movie ends at approximately the halfway point of the series.

However, the movie has several unfortunate elements. The first is that as a product of several episodes combining, it needs to mix several plot elements, which require nearly whole episodes to be completely retained. This is pretty bad, as it means that you're essentially watching all the plot elements at once in near their full length runtime, just squished together. This also means important episodes, as well as heartmoving or funny episodes, tend to get skipped over or squished into a montage. In my honest opinion, the movie would be better off if they opted to rewrite the storyline to make the events follow a more compact narrative. As it stands, this is unfortunately just a very large and somewhat disengaging clip show of the series so far. You may be interested in the alternate ending, however. 3/10.