Gurren Lagann is Not the Anti-Evangelion

This post was delayed for a while as I struggled with the way to put my thoughts to paper regarding the reasons why I avoided Gurren Lagann, and my rebuttal to those who believe certain things about it. I can't avoid the fact that no matter how much I enjoyed Gurren Lagann, there was a time when I avoided the series because of the attitude of its fandom. It's embarrassing to have let myself be affected in that way, especially when I discovered that the series didn't embody the attitudes others thought it did.

Many, many other nerds viewed Gurren Lagann as, by turns: an attempt to bring manliness back to the mecha genre; an antidote to the angst that apparently pervaded the mecha genre; an antidote to Neon Genesis Evangelion; Simon as an antidote to Shinji Ikari. And so on.

Hence, a perfect storm: I am naturally suspicious of anyone who thinks "manliness" is under siege, I am against fans acting as though they are owed an antidote to anything they didn't like, and I damn love Evangelion and Shinji Ikari, both of which have become something of sacred cows for me over the years. Not enough for me to think they should be sacred to others, but enough so that they are deeply engraved into my brain, and anything that is purported to be an attack on them would give me pause in checking out.

And, after watching Gurren Lagann in full, my impression is Gainax was just making the series they wanted to make, something possessing no deeper agenda than to be crazy-fun. I can see how Gurren Lagann could have become those certain things to fans watching, but I don't think it was the intention of the creators for it to be these things, nor do certain interpretations stand up when you look at the series closely.

Kamina and several other characters may rant about "manliness", but it's not some kind of broader statement by the creators about the mecha genre or modern society. Instead, the writers are just echoing sentiments from other boys' adventure shows without really thinking about them, or about the contradiction when there are several female characters involved in combat, proving there's nothing exclusively male about perseverance in the face of adversity.

I'm really glad Gurren Lagann never went any deeper with that focus on "manliness" because, well, "manliness" is a bunch of bull. The first thing I think when I think "manliness" is posturing, loudness, and excessive concern with one's reputation. How else can you put it? I don't believe that "manliness" is just a way to describe the ½ of  positive human traits that belong only to men, because there's no set of values just good for one gender. Nor is it a set of rules for men to follow to be a decent human being, for that also needs no special name.

Actually, worrying over the "manliness" of current robot cartoons sounds just like code for worrying about manliness in culture, which is also ridiculous. There is a HUGE culture of pushing male insecurity about being "manly" enough, and pretending the opposite is willful blindness. I don't want that crap in my animu.

I also haven't watched every mecha show ever made, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe there is such a pall of angst on the genre that someone conceived a deliberate response to it. Like all media and genre, I'd imagine the popularity of certain motifs comes in cycles, with nothing dominating for any notable length of time. From my end, angst is hardly a cancer that is killing mecha anime.

Also, since Gurren Lagann is all about being in your face, if it wanted to be about reclaiming a "lost" manliness/be the killer of the mecha genre's chronic angst, it would tell viewers very loudly. But Gurren Lagann doesn't play that game. It just tells a fun story, and doesn't have an agenda.

It would also be very hard for a series to turn out this good if its genesis was showing up other cartoons rather than telling its own story. For this reason, Gurren Lagann is probably a series created out of sheer love of mecha action, not out of any hate for anything. It wants to create something for itself, not to look down on another thing. It's particularly ludicrous to think Gainax would want to create an "antidote" to Neon Genesis Evangelion, a work that put the studio on the map and continues to make them gobs of cash.

The argument is that the characters of Gurren Lagann push forward in the face of despair, while the characters of Evangelion freeze, or earn nothing when they try to fight. This is one of the more developed arguments I've seen. But the plot of Gurren Lagann is completely different from Evangelion's, and the characters are never placed in any similar situations. A very general difference in series-wide "character" between the two shows does not make their relationship oppositional. Gurren Lagann would have had to have a glut of very similar situations to Evangelion's that turn into their opposites in order to prove itself a rebuttal.

The truth instead is that Gurren Lagann derives several story elements from Evangelion, but these end up with similar outcomes. For example, the Anti-Spiral race is revealed to have shut itself away in a mindless collective to avoid gathering too much destructive energy, and this is positioned as the thematically wrong thing to do, standing in stark contrast to the heroes' individuality and life.

However, this shutting away is not analogous to the final actions of Evangelion's main characters, but instead to those of SEELE. The status of the Anti-Sprial sounds a lot like Evangelion's Instrumentality, and Instrumentality was also positioned as the "wrong" thing within its series, the product of the nominal antagonists, and what Shinji eventually breaks from. It might not be as clear or as glamorous as the way Simon breaks from the Anti-Spirals, but it is more similar than different. Hell, both sequences include a "Normal Life AU Interlude" that the characters escape from, reinforcing the similarity rather than opposition between the two series.

Evangelion also wasn't all 'bout despair to begin with, so when Team Gurren defies the Anti-Spiral, they are doing so in the name of Gurren Lagann's own themes, not to attack what would be a strawman version of Evangelion. Gurren Lagann echoes Evangelion, not to judge Evangelion, but because productions from the same studio would inevitably share motifs and elements in common.

Simon being intended as the anti-Shinji I don't buy, either, and for pretty much the same reasons I don't see Gurren Lagann as designed to be an antidote to Evangelion: both characters have far too little in common. They both come from the same "reluctant hero" wellspring, but if Simon was intended to be an anti-Shinji, there would be a lot more parallels than just timidity/insecurity and a vague physical resemblance.

For example, when we first meet Simon, he has already grown up with Kamina as a positive influence in his life, and is an orphan, while Shinji has initially no one at all, before his bastard of a father calls him back. Already the two characters start off in different situations which have a deep effect on how they already act. Starting from those different points, Simon and Shinji are just vaguely similar character types who happen to go in different directions. That Simon looks a bit like Shinji is just Gainax copying itself again, and copying without a value judgement involved.

This is all not to forget that the idea of series/characters needing an "antidote" is ridiculous. Since no one involved with Gurren Lagann has expressed disdain for Evangelion, the idea of an "antidote" for the series being needed seems to have sprung from fans' dislike. Not enjoying the original works are fine, but being arrogant enough to say that the creators must surely have hated things as much as they did, and so this later work must be a "rebuttal", is really petty. For the third time, why would Gainax even bother or care?

I don't know why I let the fandom effect me the way it did, when it's so obvious in hindsight that Gainax had no reason to attack its own. Gurren Lagann obviously won't surpass Neon Genesis Evangelion in my estimation, but it's still a good show. I haven't connected as deeply emotionally with Gurren Lagann as I have with Evangelion, and the flaws I mentioned before do bring the series down. But it was hellishly fun to watch

Big Damn Gurren Lagann, or, Drills, Everywhere Drills

Gurren Lagann: The "Normal" Review

I'm going to review this series in two parts: one will be a standard review (standard to my "squishy" style anyway), and the other to address fandom's interpretation of the themes of the series, interpretations that unconsciously put me off the show at first. The standard review begins now, including great big spoilers:

Gurren Lagann is awesome. It's not just awesome because of the wondrous spirit of perseverance that infuses it, though that's part of it: GL is awesome because it is also hilarious, bizarre, and surprisingly competent when it goes dramatic. That's not to say the series is flawless, but it is fun, and often pleasantly surprising.

Young, timid Simon is a tunnel driller for an underground village. His best friend  is his "Bro", Kamina, a larger-than-life man with sunglasses as pointy as his chest is bare. Kamina is determined to be the hero of his own story, and it starts with getting to the surface he knows is up there.

However, said surface is ruled by the Spiral King and his Beastmen (and women), animal people with varying degrees of humanoid appearance, who roam the world in their mechanical Gunmen. Simon however, has discovered an empty Gunman and a drill-like key that can make it run, and after Kamina claims another one for himself, the two combine to form Gurren Lagann, a drill-packing tower of mechanical might. Together with their allies they just might save the world, but the nature of that world is more complex than it appears at first….

That's the premise, but the series can't be summarized without acknowledging that more than halfway through, Gurren Lagann becomes an almost completely different series. The cast and themes are still there, but they have aged seven years and the story becomes darker and more solemn. The cast understands now why humans were forced underground: the "Anti-Spiral" race watches worlds and when the inhabitants evolve by acquiring too much "Spiral Power" through technological progress and a large population, the Anti-Spirals attack. Their ultimate goal is to defeat the heroes through causing "despair".

The transition to the second arc is not entirely smooth, and it is the first time I really feel a Gainax show switches horses in midstream: the studio's series have been accused of doing it regularly, but I felt all other examples hung together, drawing so much from the earlier episodes there wasn't that big a shift. Gurren Lagann's change isn't enough to wreck the series, since the darker parts are well-done on their own, just that it's a jarring translation that takes some adjusting to.

Especially since the early parts of the series are so damn funny. We're meant to believe in Kamina as a symbol of power, but the series likes to take the piss out of him with mistakes and pratfalls, so that he doesn't become insufferable. Gurren Lagann is, in the first eighteen episodes, just having a lot of fun with itself. Like a lot of anime, it doesn't have an ironic bone in its body, but just does silly things because it wants to. You can't tell me a robot throwing giant metal sunglasses at enemies, and eventually a cosmic-sized robot throwing GALAXIES like buzzsaws, both of them brimming with phallic symbols, isn't hilarious on some level.

And then you have the characters, many of whom are a little more complex than they could have been. Kamina is actually a nice person, rather than just a macho asshole: he genuinely wants to see Simon grow stronger, and credits Simon as the real source of the team's strength. Pretty much all of the female characters are fanservicey in various ways, but Yoko, Nina, and the Black Sisters still manage to feel like "real" people. Nina in particular has a surprising amount of self-determination for a character that could easily have been just a vapid love interest, introduced so that Simon didn't have to suffer too long after seeing that Yoko loved someone else. Leeron is almost every bad comedic gay stereotype ever, but he's a brilliant scientist and mechanic, so it ..kind of balances out. Rossiu is another standout, developing from a fairly generic sidekick to a strong but rigid leader that goes through a dark period.

Kamina also dies early in the series, before the episodes hit the double digits. It's not surprising: the series starts out being told from Simon's viewpoint, so he was already the protagonist, and for all Kamina's behaviour, one never forgets he is a secondary character. And it's also not surprising Simon is the protagonist, because it's usually more compelling for a story start with a character that needs to do some growing, versus a character who's already got everything together.

However, there's not much that's particularly original about Simon's emotional arc: he starts out small and timid, but becomes a man that fights and wins against greater odds than Kamina has ever faced. Simon is at his most compelling when he's showing that strength, showing that he will never give up, because viewers know he "earned" it through hardship and emotional transformation.  Once the "high" of seeing Simon stand up to cosmic forces is past, however, one realizes that he hasn't become all that distinct from Kamina anymore.

That might be the point, but there were hints earlier that Simon is successful in part because he is his own person, and it's disappointing to see that fall by the wayside, that "being his own person" is apparently defined by just standing on his own two feet without Kamina, and not in finding his own  unique way of solving problems.

The ending is…odd. I can buy Nina dying as a consequence of the characters achieving their larger goals, and her dying at the wedding that Simon put on even though he knew her time was almost up makes for a wonderfully bittersweet conclusion. However, Simon deciding afterwards to become a lone wanderer doesn't sit right. He's certainly not leaving because of angst, but it seems contrary to the series' spirit for Simon not to stick around. Is he afraid of gaining too much power and becoming like Lordgenome? Or is he just too awesome for a mundane existence now? There are no strong reasons given, and it's that which brings the finale down.

The animation and artwork reminds me a lot of another Gainax production, FLCL: a rubbery, twisting style packed with absurd-looking designs, and this doesn't disappear once the series gets darker.

The setting and concepts of the series make it further stand out, consisting of the underground cities, the wasted Earth, the Beastmen, funky hybrid animals the concept of "Spiral Energy" and "Anti-Spirals"…the series just looks weird and different and if not unique, definitely with its own stamp. 

The Gunmen are usually walking heads with arms and legs, and many look strangely cute and Digimon-ish. The Beastmen designs run the gamut to anthropomorphic animals to the nearly human, without being connected to power levels or (thankfully) gender.  This lack of consistency is justifiable as part of the weird nature of Gurren Lagann, and I'm also just glad it isn't packed with "sexy" girl Beastmen and "monstrous" boy Beastmen. In fact, the most important Beastman character is Viral ("Veeral") a guy who looks almost human except for eyes, fangs, and monster-hands. Cool.

So, while Gurren Lagann is far from perfect, it is still a joy to watch. Wonderfully weird in concept and execution, (mostly) driven by pulse-pounding inspirational thinking, and surprisingly dramatic when it tries, Gurren Lagann deserves the praise it gets.