Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Simon and Kamina were born and raised in a deep, underground village, hidden from the fabled surface. Kamina is a free-spirited loose cannon bent on making a name for himself, while Simon is a timid young boy with no real aspirations. One day while excavating the earth, Simon stumbles upon a mysterious object that turns out to be the ignition key to an ancient artifact of war, which the duo dubs Lagann. Using their new weapon, Simon and Kamina fend off a surprise attack from the surface with the help of Yoko Littner, a hot-blooded redhead wielding a massive gun who wanders the world above.

In the aftermath of the battle, the sky is now in plain view, prompting Simon and Kamina to set off on a journey alongside Yoko to explore the wastelands of the surface. Soon, they join the fight against the "Beastmen," humanoid creatures that terrorize the remnants of humanity in powerful robots called "Gunmen." Although they face some challenges and setbacks, the trio bravely fights these new enemies alongside other survivors to reclaim the surface, while slowly unraveling a galaxy-sized mystery.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kamina Main

Konishi, Katsuyuki Japanese

Simon Main

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Littner, Yoko Main

Inoue, Marina Japanese

Teppelin, Nia Main

Fukui, Yukari Japanese

Viral Supporting

Hiyama, Nobuyuki Japanese

Bachika, Kittan Supporting

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Boota Supporting

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Lordgenome Supporting

Ikeda, Narushi Japanese

Littner, Leeron Supporting

Onosaka, Masaya Japanese

Adai, Rossiu Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Kamagata, Eiichi Producer

Takeda, Yasuhiro Producer

Akai, Takami Producer

Shiraishi, Naoko Producer, Production Manager

Reviews

Jun 11, 2024

ggloll

Recommended

Row Row fight the power.

Humanity has seen and faced too many oppressions from the beginning of an era. But never let that oppression oppress us to an extent long time, we the humanity from the spirit of our hearts never want to be caged and we want to taste liberty. We have seen this in our history or in the present time oppressors never last long and fall towards the foot of liberty at the end. The revolution will guide us our way through the dark, and bring the change to let us design our next decade.

This show ignites our hearts to make us ... feel it's ok to revolt from those who oppressed us and rob our freedoms, our beliefs, and our true selves. Even tho It's easy to speak about liberty, but keeping and fighting for liberty to stay it ain't going to be easy without doing nothing, this fight could give us scars but the taste of freedom is closer than before.

This show is the true embodiment of wanting to be free from the chains of control, and the true selves we want to believe that will bring us the collective to the right path in our journey to keep us away from the chains of oppression and towards the path to freedom.

Drill your way towards your believes that Libera me from the Hell!!

Row Row fight the power.
Row Row fight the power.
Row Row fight the power.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 25, 2024

theD00mGuy

Mixed Feelings

Damn had potential but ending sure left a sour taste. Don't watch it if you see it in any satisfying ending list etc. Plotwise it doesn't really evolve and the epilogue was .....

The artstyle and music were pretty good but the fights themselves brought the experience down. The only good parts were the transformation and the ultimate attack. The rest of the fights it was like watching a cartoon in television. I tried not neatpicking as much as possible but after some point I just accepted I am not gonna enjoy most of the fights in this show, at least not in their entirety.

The character ... cast was pretty generic and they were too gimmicky too try and associate with. On first few episodes especially I felt like they were trying different gimmicks for each of the main characters. Some of the developments were forced too quickly and some others shouldn't exist in the first place.

Main reason I am putting this on mixed feelings is that I didn't despise this. It had potential and the designs and soundtrack really created some great moments. The thing is it's more of a dumb fun anime, where you have to close your brain and just enjoy but for some reason I just couldn't and was left dissapointed with the ending and the epilogue. The ending was pretty much generic and expected and the epilogue was unnecessarily cruel, it wasn't something that bad but it was on the negative side for no reason. (insert existentialism)

Overthought a show about mechs too much and now I don't even know how to rate this (placeholder). I would suggest this for some people and for others not. This is my first review and its for this fking show ffs.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 13, 2024

Ryan_the_Bread

Not Recommended

Well-written

This is the tale of a man who has felt clinically insane for the past week or so. Even after combing through numerous online forums and studying dozens of glowing reviews, he still cannot reconcile how Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is as revered as it is. To strengthen his grasp on reality, he feels the need to write an overwhelmingly negative review.

Yeah, I didn’t like Gurren Lagann. At all. Feel free to call me a slur on my profile. My curiosity was sparked when I happened upon a video essay about how Gurren Lagann “answers” Evangelion. With me adoring Eva, this being from the same ... studio (R.I.P. Gainax) and it seeming like it was going to tackle some of the same themes... Well, I was excited to say the least. My expectations seemed to be justified too, as I saw hordes of fans online claim that TTGL “changed my life” or “was integral to my growth as a person/artist/whatever.” I truly believed I was in for something transcendent...

...Instead, I received a story that was about on par with what I used to come up with for my Transformers when I was 9, a world so uninterested with its own lore that it’s borderline insulting, comedy that’s about as funny as hearing that your dog’s just been run over, characters that ran the gambit from just annoying to legitimately loathsome, and themes so broad, boisterous and disconnected from reality that you’d have to be a sociopath to genuinely connect with them.

Spoilers ahead, I suppose. I feel like I can safely put the people reading this review into 2 categories:

1 – You also didn’t enjoy the show and are just looking for thoughts that align with your own.

2 – You love the show and are bewildered/angry that I very much don’t.

For the former, you’re not alone! For the latter, go ahead and use the “confusing” button as a virtual middle finger.

First, a few (the few) positives: The OP actually bangs, as do the eyecatches, and the mechs actually sometimes somewhat manage to look like something approaching “cool”... Alright, now for the rest.

The entire visual design of the show is just incredibly lame to me. Maybe in another life I could come to appreciate Gurren Lagann’s chest piece just being a huge pair of sunglasses or find amusement in the mech whose tits are eyes, but it all feels like it’s trying way too hard. It’s like what the world’s least endearing 5 year-old would think is “awesome.” Then the smaller mechs, the “Gunmen,” all look like MODOK except somehow less cool.

Then when these things finally get to fighting... Ooh boy. Picture Diebuster by way of Looney Tunes. It’s astounding that Gainax only managed to get WORSE at mecha action throughout the years. Forget the simple, but brutally effective and insanely cathartic action from Gunbuster. Never mind the heft and intensity that Evangelion brought. Disregard the sheer energy that FLCL had; it’s all gone. The mechs in TTGL move with almost no sense of weight and, barring a few exceptions, the fights completely lack any interesting choreography. Battles are largely decided by whoever can punch/drill the hardest, fire the flashiest beam, or scream the loudest.

That’s one thing, but there’s also no sense of escalation to these fights – I’m serious. Sure, the SCALE obviously increases, but the climax FEELS no more loud, intense, or grand than a fight that happened 20 episodes prior. When every single battle is this exhausting, obnoxious, balls to the walls clash of titans then you shouldn’t be surprised when the ultra-mega super ACTUAL climax loses all of its weight.

If an asspull is defined as “a hastily fabricated explanation or contrived plot twist,” then TTGL is guilty of asspullage x1000. This can be forgiven/overlooked in moderation, but tension evaporates when it happens as much as it does here. Unless this is literally the first piece of fiction you’ve ever consumed, there’s no reason why Simon and friends overcoming the present, seemingly insurmountable, obstacle should ever surprise you.

Shit just happens because it needs to for the story to continue. After Simon and co. escape/overcome danger due to, essentially, divine intervention (A.K.A. the hand of the writer conspiring in their favor) the story, world, characters, and stakes become almost impossible to take seriously, much less become genuinely invested in.

A lot of people say that you can’t take the show too seriously and that it’s best to just “turn off your brain and enjoy.” I think that’s a well-intentioned, but ultimately bullshit philosophy. Even if I’m not meant to take things “too seriously,” that doesn’t mean the show gets away with everything just being abject absurdity all the time. There still needs to be at least some sense of internal logic. Going back to the scenarios I’d come up with for my Transformers when I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine making a manuscript out of them and then refuting any criticism like “this doesn’t make any fucking sense” with a “WEll iT’s NoT SuPPoSEd tO!”

FLCL also “doesn’t make any sense” to a lot of people. The difference is that FLCL’s tongue in cheek all the way through. TTGL, despite what a lot of people say, wants to be taken at least PARTIALLY serious. This makes the overall tone and mood feel, at best, schizophrenic and, at worst, incredibly irritating. Without fail, there’s always a cutaway during a huge important battle to some fucking dickheads on Gurren Lagann’s command deck doing/saying some painfully unfunny things. I’m not saying that TTGL needed to be totally grounded, and I don’t think it needed to be a total piss-take like FLCL either. What I am saying is that it needed to not be both at the SAME time, ALL the time.

Before you think I’m overexaggerating, think about how this presentation affects the characters/themes. I totally get Shinji NOT wanting to pilot an Eva, because the Angels are legitimately horrifying and facing them is always portrayed as an ultra-violent, chaotic, and extremely dangerous affair. Fuck that. The few times Simon’s scared to pilot Gurren Lagann though? Well, maybe I’d buy it/care if the fighting wasn’t always such a cartoonish spectacle. Imagine Elmer Fudd being legitimately scared of Bugs Bunny and it NOT being played for laughs.

Speaking of Simon... I wouldn’t say he’s a bad protagonist necessarily, but he’s about as bog-standard of a “HOO-RAH! I WILL WIN! I FIGHT FOR ALL THAT’S GOOD!” anime MC as you can get. He has just enough of an arc for it to COUNT as “character development,” but I’d never say it was all that compelling. He goes from “kind of a wimp” to basically Kamina 2.0, which is fine. I guess. 5/10.

I fucking abhor Kamina though. Think of the most obnoxious motivational speaker you can imagine, replace all of their more practical advice with “manliness” laden nonsense, and give them some tragic 2000s tribal tattoos and boom, you’ve got Kamina. He’s like if a Woody doll, when you pulled the string on his back, instead of saying something mildly Western-themed and amusing, just yelled “GRIT THOSE TEETH!” “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!” “BELIEVE IN THE ME THAT BELIEVES IN YOU!”

Utter nonsense. He was never not annoying as fuck to me and I’m glad he’s dead.

Yoko’s just there for the pointless fan service, Rossiu has, like, REVERSE development for dumb reasons, Nia’s basically Rei Ayanami but twice as clueless and a fraction as interesting, and then there’s the rest of the ensemble who aren’t even worth describing. A bunch of them are killed just prior to the endgame and it’s hilarious that the show thought their deaths would extract any emotion out of me.

Alright, now to talk about the themes. Going back to how this supposedly “answers” Evangelion, I think about it like this: The theme of Evangelion, crudely put, is “nooo don’t kill yourself your so sexy aha.” The theme of Gurren Lagann, put a little less crudely, is “believe in yourself (or the me that believes in you whatever) and you can accomplish anything.” Now, despite how I presented that, both messages are rooted in a love for humanity and our ability to overcome the obstacles put in our way.

Eva gets this across by showing you the depths of human suffering, numerous compelling and relatable reasons as to WHY a lot of people experience said suffering, how we can open up pathways to overcome that suffering, and, ultimately, the beauty of learning to love yourself so that you can establish meaningful and fulfilling connections with others. Despite all the bad, as Yui says in End of Evangelion: “Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be happy.”

With that, Gurren Lagann “answers” Evangelion in the same way that a crippling meth addiction “answers” obesity. Whereas Eva’s message felt sage, empathetic, and grounded, TTGL’s thematic messaging feels reckless, shallow, and dangerously divorced from reality. If you think “just be happy” is genuinely good advice for a person in the throes of grief or depression, then I imagine you love TTGL and think it’s “peak.”

I don’t like to impose anything upon people who like something I don’t or vice versa, genuinely, but I’m truly baffled as to how people think TTGL’s message is anything deeper/worth more analysis than the “Hang in there!” cat poster that adorned many a cubicle wall in the 2000s.

A common thread I see is that people love TTGL’s portrayal of “humanity.” Say what you will about Eva, if you thought it was too dour or whatever, but at least it displayed a wide array of human emotions and sensations in order to get the message across that humanity and our connections to one another are invaluable.

TTGL is about as representative of “humanity” as professional porn is of sex. My point is, it’s not all just beautiful people with crazy proportions going at it in spectacular and ridiculous positions. Ugly people fuck too. Sometimes sex is uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s a messy and unfulfilling affair. Gurren Lagann only represents the “best” of humanity - our sexiest qualities; our fighting spirit (spirals anyone?), our ability to overcome seemingly unconquerable foes, our ability to work together for the greater good, etc. Therefore, any attempt at a commentary on “humanity” as a whole just feels false and hollow. It's easy to cherry pick our best attributes and ignore the rest, but that only really leaves you with half of the picture.

Let’s bring it back to reality for a moment. “Kick logic out the window and do the impossible!” You know why that always works for Simon? Because he has a bunch of writers making SURE it always works. Any hairbrained and suicidally brazen scheme he has, no matter HOW poorly considered, will go off without a hitch because the universe will always contrive a scenario in which it has to. This reasoning, in real life, if you’re sane, will get you killed. Or, and bear with me on this one, will lead to a successful Presidential campaign.

Seriously, former President and current felon Donald Trump used that same type of thinking to get to the White House. He, like Kamina, thought/thinks that life can just be brute forced. How privileged, right? I know it’s supposed to be taken more like “fight for your dreams and never give up,” but it seems like no consideration was ever given to HOW this message was put across. TTGL gains nothing by being so reductive.

I don’t want to sound like I’m against optimism as a concept, because I’m not. It’s just that “KICK LOGIC OUT AND DO THE IMPOSSIBLE!” is so broad as a concept, and truly applicable to so few things in reality, that it loses potency as a message. Nice for Simon to parrot that from Kamina when the universe itself seems to be actively fighting in his corner. “Fools rush in” is a common idiom for a reason. Contrary to what TTGL tells you, it’s better to think things through and carefully consider all of your options. A tactical retreat, so you can live to fight another day, is sometimes best.

It's pointless, though, because the characters in Gurren Lagann seldom truly struggle. I’ve struggled more on the toilet than Simon did killing God. Fuck, dude, Dragon Ball is infinitely better at getting the “never give up” mentality across because Goku and co. actually STRUGGLE for wins. They train their asses off and lose sometimes, sure, but those losses only make the eventual triumph sweeter. It’s not impactful when, for the hundredth time, Simon LITERALLY JUST WILLS HIS WAY TO WINNING. I GET WHAT YOU’RE SAYING GURREN LAGANN, BUT IT’S SO LAME.

Humanity combining their energy/willpower to defeat a universal threat? Been there, Spirit Bombed that. Another thing, you know how in Dragon Ball they’ll constantly use the Dragon Balls to bring back fallen comrades/civilian casualties/the Earth? Because obviously you would, they died prematurely and unjustly. Gurren Lagann’s writing sucks so hard that they had to contrive a (self-inflicted) reason for Simon, who possesses power equivalent to, if not greater than, the Dragon Balls, to experience loss.

You know what’d be crazy? If you had the choice to bring back the victims of, like, 9/11 or something and just didn’t because you don’t want to mess with “fate.” I feel like a lot of people, myself included, would rightly ask what the fuck your problem was. Simon, dude, Nia didn’t die of old age you fucking moron; she had plenty of life left to live. Oh, you don’t want to play God? Didn’t you just KILL him? Fucking whatever, man.

What an absolute chore to watch. Stupid looking mechs, shallow and irritating characters, a story so filled with holes that Flex Seal couldn’t fix it, “humor” I couldn’t find funny if you paid/jerked me off to, battles that were more sleep-inducing than electrifying, and themes that feel like they came from a mind to which the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” sounds like genuinely constructive advice and NOT a sarcastic colloquialism. There is not a single front on which I feel TTGL did ANYTHING well, least of all “exceptional” or “hype” or “peak.”

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

- Nia is literally what Rei was created to hazard against. The subservient “doll” girlfriend is not a healthy or attainable thing - except for here of course, where Simon just adores her and it’s actually totally normal.

- If your own characters are bored by a mission briefing, why include the mission briefing at all?

- The first half of the series ends like it forgot they had another 12 episodes to go. Pacing is turbo fucked.

- Genuinely laughable that people consider this to be a deconstruction of the mecha genre. If anything it’s a deconstruction of a deconstruction, which means it just circles back around to being generic.

Scores:
Art (5/10)
Music (5/10)
Characters (1/10)
Story (2/10)
Objective (2/10)
Subjective (1/10)

Just watch Gunbuster and Diebuster - they’re this but good (Diebuster less so). Hell, Darling in the FranXX is better than this drivel and its fans aren’t nearly as pretentious or zealous.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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