Otaking 11

I had just finished watching the crazy anime series Gurren Lagann.



The commercial stills...nuff said.


2007

Stream: Crunchyroll



Now, I have other shows I can review in the mean time but I had to do this one like literally right after I finished watching it because I seem to have opposing views and a bipolar perspective on the show.



Gurren Lagann is the anime about mechas and the powers of will and spirit through the eyes of it's protagonist driller Simon. The world they live in is under the surface of the world where underground caves is prevalent everywhere. Tired of this rough lifestyle, a kid and his "bro" tries to find a way to come off of these proverbial shackles and set foot on a rough journey.



This show in its entirety is all over the place, both being good and bad. I didn't even know who the main protagonist of the story was a couple of episodes in.I actually ended up having a lot of gripes in this series. There is so many areas this anime covers in the 27 episode epic yet I had wished there were more episodes past this. There is somewhat of a pacing issues within a lot of the episodes. At times, the story would be going slow and out of nowhere it goes into hyperspeed in the last 8 minutes of the episode. Also, many parts of the show were very predictable and many of the fights had the same formula tendencies. Every fight is too familiar. Even Vanguard has more unexpected battles. It almost seemed like the Mecha Gurren Lagann, was way too powerful and almost impossible to beat!



I have no idea what to categorize this anime. It's crazy. On one hand it's funny, on another it is serious. It is though, 100% action. As an action anime, this show is good. There is two parts to this series anyways and it's not much of a spoiler but I am going to let you, the viewer, find out yourself. Let's just say I enjoyed the 1st part immensely and when the latter half rolls on, everything goes out the kitchen. The three character relationship between supposedly the main characters of the show, Simon, Yoko, and Kamina, was fine as it was yet the show kept adding more and more characters in the show and disrupted the balance between the three. Suddenly, some characters were being left out of the story in exchange for the sub-sub characters. It was at times frustrating. There is a gaping hole to some characters while some character personalities that changed in the 2nd half seemed like they were changed episode by episode.



Nevertheless, I loved the art style and it's comedic parts. The show itself is full of life! At times I felt a Samurai Champloo vibe but this show is very much original and on it's own. The animations were fluid and the art style definitely gave way to the many laughs you'll encounter on the groups journey. The eccentric characters that invaded the land of the earth are quite the bunch even if they were still a bit generic. Mainly the subtle expression changes and pauses within each jokes makes each gag truly hilarious. There are also a bunch of twists throughout, both good and bad, that keeps you entertained and wanting more!



Then there were many times I wanted the story to head into a different directions and yet it went off to the other side (See couple relationships). I wanted more stories involved within the main characters exclusively to see to through them more intimately rather grouped as a whole bunch. It was quite hilarious at first then it became too serious for it's art style. Way too much concepts were thrown in later making it over 9000 in the scale of holy crap! It is a show about super robots so I guess logic can be dealt away with yet at the same time Neo Genesis Evangelion was a great example. This show had so much potential and unfortunately, it ended up just being good for me but not great.



8.3
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