Story: 10 (Outstanding)
The story is deceptively simple yet simply hits all the right notes where it needs to. Kamina and Simon are diggers living in an underground village. Their job is to dig - digging is the lifeblood of the village, it's what allows the village to expand and grow in population. But it's not the kind of life Kamina wants. Kamina wants to kick logic to the curb and drill through the heavens, just like his long-believed to be dead dad who, as the rumors go, actually makes it to the surface. The desire to drill to the surface is Kamina's one great ambition in life, an ambition that earns him the ire of the rest of the village, and he frequently has to be tempered by his adoptive brother Simon.
Then one day, Simon stumbles upon a strange, drill-like object buried underneath the dirt. He races over to show Kamina, who tells him that the strange object rightly belongs to Simon and shall forever belong to him. Soon afterwards, Simon stumbles upon an even stranger object - it looks like a giant head! Once again he races to tell Kamina, but before he can show him a giant mechanical beast crashes through the heavens and onto the village, along with the beautiful "surface girl" Yoko.
And all of this and more happens in just the first episode!
The plot evolves quickly and is very fast pace, and soon an expanding team headed by Kamina, Simon, Yoko and a field of friends and former enemies soon find themselves staring down what may very well be the complete annihilation of the entire universe!
Art: 10 (Outstanding)
The art is just terrific, and does much to carry on the incredible fast pace of the series. Simple when it needs to be, detailed when it needs to be, the featureless plains of a desert earth contrasts with a vast, detailed and colorful sky to bring the viewer into the desolate world these characters reside in. The character designs themselves may very well go down in history as some of the best remembered and most celebrated, at times looking more like an animated superhero comic book than a shonen anime. The mecha is fantastic too - very distinct with the main body of most mecha being dominated by a face (indeed, halfway through the anime everything, and I mean everything the humans and beastmen build seems to have a face for unexplained reasons, which only adds to the charm) and the Gurren Lagann itself will probably go down as an icon of mecha alongside EVA-01, Ray Armuro's Gundam and the VFS-1 Valkyrie.
Sound: 10 (Outstanding)
...is perhaps the least that can be said about the sound of Gurren Lagann. The OST is probably filled to the brim with the most memorable music in all of humanity's existence, from the OP Sora ino Days to all three EDs (including Happy Endings, which accompanied only a single episode, the appropriate and unusually well done compilation episode). Perhaps the most legendary of them all is Libra Me aka ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH!, which is now known far and wide to even those who have never heard of Gurren Lagann thanks to its memetic power.
Character: 10 (Outstanding)
The characters of Gurren Lagann are an interesting lot - some are memorable because of their singular motivations and two-dimensions, such as Kamina and his sole ambition to be the best living specimen he can possibly be, a notion so strong it cannot help but infect everyone around him and even his enemies. Other characters are actually very well mapped out and surprisingly deep, such as Simon, who is conflicted by his own insecurities and his aspirations to be just like Kamina. Even Boota, Simon's mute pet pigmole, gets a lot of character development, especially in regards to an incredible, jaw-dropping twist near the end. The bad guys show up as amazing characters as well, especially Viral, who surprisingly only tries to do what he believes is good and useful, and Lord Genome, whose character development turns out to be one of the many developing twists in the series.
Enjoyment: 10 (Outstanding)
As you may have already gathered by now, there is nothing not to like in Gurren Lagann even for those who hate mecha anime. Nary a single second is boring, and the action and story is a non-stop whirlwind.
With all that said, it comes as no surprise that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann gets a final score of:
10 - Outstanding
Really, nothing more needs to be said.
