trumpetthief said: This show absolutely amazed me. Although a big complaint I've heard about the show is how the Garlock Simon (seen at the very beginning of the series) never went around the universe blowing stuff up with an evolved Boota, an idea that I feel was addressed perfectly by the show's creators (this has been addressed by many other people already). The ending sealed the show, for me, as the greatest anime I have ever seen. The rest is all my opinion so please don't take it as anything other than that.
Now, at the end, while it is debatable whether Nia could've been "saved without being revived" or not, I feel as though the creators wanted to make her a character who basically was dead, but was managing to live on through sheer will alone. I do not feel as though Simon was resigned when she died, and that he had "given up" . In fact, I felt as though his character was the strongest it had ever been. A big part of the show was moving on through loss, and managing to take on the impossible. However, when the dilemma of spiral power was revealed to Simon in the final episodes by the anti-spiral, you could tell that he wanted to make sure the spiral nemesis would never happen. He reaffirmed this by telling the anti-spiral, after the final battle, that "humans aren't so foolish". I believe that saving Nia, or anything similar to that, would've gone against the promise that Simon made to the Anti Spirals. When he walked off, I saw him as a true hero. When Kamina died, Simon was broken and unwilling to do much. However, at the disappearance of Nia, he went off with a smile, and continued to wander around the earth as a TRUE hero- one without the glamour and fame (which is why I love how Kamina's statue was knocked down- him being a hero only to members of Team Dai-Gurren at that point).
The final time skip (one that I absolutely loved, while others found it questionable) had a particularly emotional moment for me. Seeing Simon, the wanderer, who was presumably going around the world inspiring others and telling his story, goes up to a small boy and helps him use a drill. He then tells the boy that he can go to space, because the lights in the sky are stars. As many have already stated, I believe that this was how the story was meant to end. It wasn't a scrapped ending, and although the beginning did give an incentive to watch the show, I believe that the beginning and the end were meant to parallel eachother. Garlock Simon destroying the whole Universe with his spiral power (taking on the Galactic Government), while the humble Simon we saw in the story inspires someone, in the same way that Kamina inspired him, tells a child that he can make it to the stars, stars "where their spiral friends are waiting". I found it striking that Garlock Simon says they are going to take on a galactic government, while Simon at the end says that they have friends in space. I don't feel as though it was a scrapped plan at all, rather, humanity using power for the good of connecting with others around the universe, rather than fighting.
One last thing, which doesn't really tie in too much to what I said before, but I have always believed it. Kamina and Simon had two qualities that were mutual: putting others before themselves. Kamina's dream was to not only find his dad on the surface, but to free humanity from being stuck underground. He finds his dead father not far away from the village, and ends up getting fatally injured in a battle for a mere battleship (only calling it mere because Gurren Lagann's scale goes up exponentially). Kamina then uses his final moments to inspire Simon, knowing that Simon would need it, forgetting about any big grand dreams he had.
In a similar, and yet strikingly different way, it would be pretty clear that Simon would love to have spent the rest of his life with Nia. However, instead of being resigned to the loss, he accepts it with a smile and wanders off, allowing others to take the spotlight, and Simon having the peace of mind of knowing that he made sure that the power of the spiral would not be misused and corrupted, at least by him.
Regardless, in my opinion, this was just an amazing show and it really hit a chord with me. I have seen other super robot shows, and quite a few other anime, and to be totally honest, I loved this show for the emotion it evoked: the touching moments, the absolutely badass moments, the hilarious moments, and everything in between. Although some may say that Kamina was a stereotypical loudmouth and nothing more, I just have to disagree. Little touches like him boasting about SIMON's accomplishents more than his own, and how much he cared about his little buddy, really meant a lot to me. At first I thought all of his epic speeches were just all talk and no substance, until I saw the amount of courage and passion he had in his final battle. It solidified everything he said, regardless of it being bravado.
Just as much, I loved the rest of the cast for being (at least to me) surprisingly deep characters. As a metaphor for evolution of life and the evolution of the super robot genre (:P), I just loved this show, and found it to be extremely deep :) Much love
Great comments on the series that I will always <3!
DizzyX said: Let's all just happily assume what we want to assume. In my world, Simon travels to Yoko's island and spirals her every so often. Yay!
lol! qft |