MASSIVE, THROBBING MEGA-THREAD OF MACHO-MANLY DISCUSSION!!! [Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]

[J!!]

We're introduced to a world where the community all lives underground until one day a robot monster bursts into the place chased by a barely dressed girl so that a kid and his idiot friend with a katana can get their own robot to fight back. You can't get more anime than that.



Gurren Lagann continues as our heroes face the two newly arrived giant robots and work on ways to kick their asses. Against all reason, they succeed. That could describe most episodes, actually.



Having stolen a giant robot to use against the beast-men, Kamina makes ready with an even more absurd plan. This again works, proving the universe has a sense of morbid curiosity.



Gurren Lagann returns as our starving heroes schlep on towards the source of the attacks, only to run across a family of survivors fighting the beast men as well.



Gurren Lagann takes a trip below to another subterranean village, but instead of not letting people head to the surface, they force them to go there.



Gurren Lagann takes a break from battling beast men to explore Kamina's overlap of idiocy and obsessive need to see bare breasts.



The source of the attacking beast men is found to be an impossible-to-defeat monstrosity. So Kamina plans to defeat it. That's all it takes, really.



At Kamina's insistence, they plan to seize control of the gigantic Gunman weapon complex. Things could go better.


I'll be updating this post with new links as new videos come out.
Note 2: Also I'm aware most of these haven't been re-uploaded yet, Hopefully, Chuck will fix that soon.

[J!!]

i'll just start off by saying that i absolutely motherfucking love this show, and thanks to chuck for introducing it to me. i love the animation, the voicework, the characters, the humor, and every last one of the stupid visual-innuendo gags. and i especially love that they all have a thematic relevance to the larger story.



it's a cliche that a meek & mild hero will start off in the shadow of a popular & charismatic douche-bag; an avatar for the unfairness of the mundane world (see: flash thompson, etc). if douche-bag is ever actually nice to the hero, it's inevitably some twisted prank to further cement that unfairness (see: carrie, etc). and eventually, just as the hero will eventually prove his true awesomeness, the douche-bag will expose his true patheticness (see: biff tannen, etc.).

what really caught my attention with gurren lagann is that it starts off looking exactly like the same old cliche: a quiet low self-esteem protagonist getting disrespected by the local meangirls runs into a loud & boisterous popular-guy, who ropes him into his scheme. surely this is some cruel trick & poor simon is gonna be the fall-guy. only, when they get caught, that doesn't happen; Kamina is actually the only one who doesn't punk-out or knuckle-under to authority. and then the earthquake starts, and he's the only one who doesn't run in fear, even showing a shocking degree of sensitivity to simon's fear. when a giant robot appears, he puts himself between it and the village, with nearly suicidal courage. but when the opportunity comes to pilot a robot of his own, he refuses to take that glory away from simon, no matter how much simon begs him to.

as much as he's a damned idiot (which the show enjoys reminding us), for once bravado is not a facade to mask cowardice, nor charisma mask for cruelty. there's a reason his catchphrase is "Just who the hell do you think I am?". Kamina is the man that all those other jock-douche bullies pretend to be. that's who Kamina is, down to the core.

Kamina is.

[Mickey_Rat15]

The mecha tech on this show follows the Galactic Empire/First Order design philosophy, there is always a ridiculously bigger Star Destroyer/Death Star out there.

[Admiral X]

I'm actually kind of wanting to give this series another watch again.

[Chaos Sepher]

FFS Chuck, PLEASE don't make us wait too long for Episode 8!

[Lizuka]

I really should get around to watching Gurren Lagann at some point. Love Kill la Kill but just never made the time for it.

[Yukaphile]

Only in Gurren Lagann could you get a giant mecha whose drill is larger than the observable universe, lol.

[J!!]

I have nothing much to add to what Chuck's already said about ep8, except that I love how such a goofy show was willing to suddenly take such a dark turn.

There are few things I respect in a work quite so much as a willingness to just kick it's audience square in the balls.

[Hearthstone23]

IIRC Kamina actually died and willed himself back to avenge his own death making the second Jesus of the Week

[Nevix]

IIRC Kamina actually died and willed himself back to avenge his own death making the second Jesus of the Week

It's actually established that Spiral Energy can temporarily repair equipment during a battle, only to have the equipment fall apart after the fight ends.

So, yes. Almost exactly that is what happened. Kamina kept himself going with Spiral Energy, even though he was dying, to make sure that Simon and the others won the fight.

I have nothing much to add to what Chuck's already said about ep8, except that I love how such a goofy show was willing to suddenly take such a dark turn.

There are few things I respect in a work quite so much as a willingness to just kick it's audience square in the balls.

Poor Kamina. He was too awesome to live! So he must live on in our hearts.

The mecha tech on this show follows the Galactic Empire/First Order design philosophy, there is always a ridiculously bigger Star Destroyer/Death Star out there.

No, Gurren Lagann makes ALL other series blush, for NOTHING compared with the true heights its mecha reach in the final episodes.