Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann! ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWER!!

Apparently Gurren Lagann will air on Toonami soon, which is great! Truly it is an amazing show, though I believe most people have already seen it, as the show is 7 years old. When it was originally airing, I watched up til the fight with Viral, and dropped it. It didn't stand out in my mind, and I didn't give it a second thought. Eventually though all the cool images of grown up Simon, Kittan dying, and the final robots pulled me back in and I watched all of it and fell in love. Personally, I enjoyed the second half of the series so much more, and I know I am in the minority. The series is a unique one, after watching it you feel like you can do anything. You can do the impossible, see the invisible, ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWER!

From left to right: Kamina, Simon, and Yoko

The series begins with Simon living under ground. Simon is a timid young man whose parents died in an earthquake, and he spends his time digging, and is considered good at his job. Simon, is timid, quiet, and keeps to himself. A series with a lead like this won't go anywhere, so Simon has an older brother figure, Kamina. Kamina is a larger than life type fellow. He doesn't wear a shirt, is covered in tattoos, and is extremely cocky. He runs some sort of psuedo gang, and treats Simon like an older brother. Kamina and Simon attempt to escape their underground village riding pigs ( like Joe!), but are caught by the village leader, and Kamina thrown in jail. Simon goes to break him out, when suddenly they are attacked by a robot from the surface, a Gunman. Yoko, the bust Red Head with a high powered rifle arrives to help, but Simon takes them to see a robot he found, a tiny robot that will be known as Lagann (German for face!). Simon, Yoko, and Kamina defeat the Gunman, and escape to the surface.

    Out on the surface, they join up with the resistance, all of whom are impressed with Simon's new mech. Up til this point, the Gunmen were the tools of the Beastmen, the overloads of the land above the surface. The beast men attack the resistance, and they have a shiny robot that catches Kamina's eye. He kicks the pilot out, and gets his mech, the Gurren in the process. Kamina is the type of guy who makes you believe you can do anything. While out hunting, Kamina meets our first villain, Viral. The two fight hand to hand, but the battle is interrupted by Simon's Lagann. Viral soon shows up in his mech, and Kamina decides that Gurren and Lagann can combine, so he grabs the smaller mech and shoves it on top of his. Surprisingly, it works, and they are able to beat Viral, and steal his Gunman's helmet, for reasons.

    With Kamina at the helm, the resistance becomes the Dai Gurren brigade, and unties the resistance on the surface together to fight the beastmen. The Dai Gurren Brigade gathers enough members and Gunmen to be a credible threat, and decide to take over an enemy battleship. Simon is the important part of this plan, he has deep reserves of spiral power, something only humans can have. This power is what powers Gurren Lagann, and through it he can transfer it to other mechs. The plan is to have Simon jack into the battleship, and take it over. Unfortunately, his powers are tied to his state of mind, which is usually in a fragile state.  This state is shattered when Simon sees Yoko, whom he is crushing on kiss Kamina. The battle the next day goes poorly, until Kamina punches Simon in the face, reawakening his courage. During this battle however, Kamina dies in the famous Ashita no Joe pose after defeating Viral one last time.

  Following Kamina's death, Simon takes to a deep depression. He spends all of his time in a dark room carving statues of Kamina. The morale of the Gurren brigade is at an all time low. When a enemy Ganmen attacks, Simon's anger overloads the mech, and Lagann shoots off to a junkyard. Locked in a chest, Simon find Nia, a  girl about his age, and daughter of the Spiral King, the man who forced all of humanity underground. She's innocent, and has hair like cotton candy. She returns to the ship with Simon,  but his mood is still sour. It takes the whole brigade being kidnapped, and Simon being the one to save them remembering Kamina's words. He recovers, and give the following speech, "Aniki is dead. He's not here anymore! But on my back, and in my heart, he lives on in me! My drill is the one that pieces the heavens! Even if that hole becomes my grave, as long as I break through, I shall be victorious! Who the hell do you think I am?! I'm Simon! I'm not my brother Kamina! I am myself! Simon the digger!" Simon defeats the bad guy, and the day is saved. After defeating a few more big bads, and Viral again, it's time to head to the Tepplin, to confront the Spiral King.

    The fight with the Spiral King is witnessed by Viral, who has since been made immortal to tell the Spiral King's story. The spiral King has his own mech, the Lazengann, and a wealth of spiral power that tops even Simons. The fight goes in his favor, completely decimating the Gurren Lagann. When the Spiral King moves in to finish Simon off personally, Simon takes his Core Drill, the start key to Gurren Lagann, and plunges it in his chest. This kill the Spiral King, but he leaves with a warning, when 1 million monkeys populate the surface, the moon will become the destroyer of the human race. Apparently the Spiral King had been trying to save Humanity from an unknown enemy by forcing humanity underground. Time skip ahead!

    Seven years later, the Dai Gurren Brigade has become the governing body of the human race. Simon is essentially the president of the world, and he proposes to Nia. Nia rejects him, confused by his proposal, but later calls him back after being told what marriage is, and accepts the proposal. The 1 millionth human is born, and the earth is under attack from the sky. The new mass produced suits, the Graparls are no match for this new enemy, so Simon takes to the skies in Gurren Lagann. He's capable of defeating them, but when beaten, the enemy self destructs, causing collateral damage.  Simon is told that people seeing Gurren Lagann in the sky causes panic, so he detaches Lagann from it, and heads off to search for Nia. Nia then is taken over by the enemy, the anit-spiral, and becomes their messenger. She takes over the airwaves, and tells the world that the moon will kill them all within the next few days. Simon returns to the command center and is arrested, and soon but in jail and placed on death row due to public negativity over his vigilante acts. (I know, move faster moon and kill these fucks). Viral is in this jail as well, he had previously been a freedom fighter helping those who wanted to stay underground fight for their choices.  Rossiu, who was Simon's second in command had been building an Ark in secret to save a portion of the human race,and take enough supplies to live for a year. The Ark's onboard computer is powered by The Spiral King's head. The moon looms closer, and all hope seems lost.

  Yoko returns from being a teacher on a small island to bust Simon out of prison. Everyone is in such a panic over the moon, and the important officials are boarding except for the main fighters of the Dai Gurren Brigade, who chose to stay on earth and fight with Simon. Viral decides to pilot the Gurren Lagann with Simon, and the two of them join the battle in space. The anti- spirals wouldn't just let the Ark escape would they ? Simon uses his spiral energy to transform the ark into Arc Gurren Lagann, a monster of a machine and defeats the anti spiral forces. Then he heads inside the moon to stop it descending to earth, but is stopped by Nia. Simon believes she will move, even if she is being controlled by the anti spiral, and plunges his drill into drill into the control mechanism. Nia moves, and when Simon tells her that he will save her, her old personality surface. She smiles, and disappears.The moon transforms into Cathedral Terra, The Spiral King's old ship.

    The Dai Gurren Brigade realizes they must head out to space to save Nia, and the world. They head on born Cathedral Terra, and using Simon's Spiral power, they teleport to near where she should be. It's a trap sent by the anti-spiral, and the ship is pulled into a thick sea that cancels Spiral energy. Undettered, Simon attempts to power up Cathedral Terra, in an attempt to transform the ship into an even bigger robot and destroy the source of the sea. Simon manages to create two spiral missiles, which are then taken by Kittan. He kisses Yoko, and heads off to save the day. He manages to destroy the source, but at the cost of his life. In a Homage, Simon transforms his goggles into a star, the shape of Kittan's Gunman. He manages to transform the Cathedral Terra into Hyper Galaxy Gurren Lagann, and begins to wreck the anti spirals shit. Simon creates a small galaxy inside the Hyper Gurren Lagann due to his excess Spiral energy. When everything seems to be going great, the anti-spiral directly steps in.

    The entire Gurren Brigade is caught in illusions, and unable to escape them. Except of Boota, Simon's pet Mole Rat, and The Spiral King's head. Boota manages to take human form to fight the anti-spiral, but is caught in the delusions. Everyone is saved by the spirit of Kamina, and Simon teleports them to Nia. Nia is being tortured by the anti-spirals, but Simon saves her and the surviving members of the form the largest robot yet, the Galaxy Sized Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to fight the anti spiral. The anti-spiral forms a robot of similar size to inflict absolute despair. The two begin to fight.

TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN!

   
   The anti-spiral dominates the fight, telling the brigade how they were originally spirals, and they locked away their energy to protect the universe, and to police anyone with spiral energy. The anti-spiral's suit begins to reach twoards earth, and this causes the spiral energy in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to surge with energy. Each smaller suit escape from Gurren Lagann, from Chouginga to Arc and is stopped short of the enemy, until Viral in Gurren Throws Lagann at the cockpit. Simon and Nia defeat the anti-spiral, who warns them about over use of spiral power. Simon replies humanity isn't that stupid. The galaxy has been freed, and Spirals from all over the galaxy are now free, and contact the earth. A few days later, Simon and Nia get married, but after the vows are exchanged she disappears.Simon could bring her back, but remarks that reviving the dead will only get in the way of the living. He leaves Lagann's core drill behind, and heads off to be a hobo. 

    There's two Guyrren Lagann compilation movies, both are pretty good. The first adapts the television series straight, but combines the four generals into one super powered robot and that's also the moment when Simon recovers from Kamina's death. The second film extends the final fight with the anti-spiral, now Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is torn apart, becomes a Galaxy sized robot for each of the pilots, and reforms into the Universe sized Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which looks like Kamina, but made of energy. It also shows Simon digging wells for villages in the epilogue. I don't remeber much about the manga adaptions, other than that they were nothign specials, and the adaption of the series can only be found online up to chapter 19. Dropped.

     Gurren Lagann is truly inspiring, it teaches you about believing in yourself, and that  you can accomplish anyhting if you believ in yourself. While this isn't exactly true, it's still a nice message to preach. I didn't watch anime for almost two months when this series ended, because it felt like nothing could come close. Kaiji was the first anime I watched after this due to it being so unique. This series is a love letter to older anime shows, such as Ashita no Joe most obviously, but Getter Robo and G Gundam too. It does it in such a way that it turns it up to 11 and has beautiful visuals and an amazing soundtrack to go with it. Gurren Lagann aired in the time frame for Children's cartoons, this is essentially how Gainax does a Saturday morning cartoon for kids.