Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Reviews

Hi. I know it's not a review but I have a problem. When I first searched for this anime I couldn't see the episodes. I made an account but I still can't see the episodes please help me. I don't know what the problem might be.

(I set the overall to 1 because the only way to save this is to give an overall number.)

 

This anime Is one of my all time favorites. The unique storyline was exexuted flawlessly! The Characters Were Awesome and are one of my favorite aspects of the show. The world was captivating and the Timeline Was stupendous! I recommend this anime for all who love anime as this is one of the greatest!

This is by far the most entertaining, and life changing anime I’ve ever watch. 👌

I'm aware that people get scared off by text-walls, so here's a short one for you text-wall phobics:

Story: Good first half, humorous parodies with good plot twist and recovery story; horrible second half, full of Gundam and DBZ nonsense.

Animation: Top-notch

Sound: Decent and varied.

Characters: Too many characters no one cares about, a couple of likable ones, but little development overall.

Overall: Lost sight of itself midway through; tried and failed to be something it's not.

 

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Introduction:

At time of typing, TTGL has already been showered with enough praise and hype to sink a small island; so when I arrived late to the party, my head had already been filled with all sorts of expectations of this series, which may have colored my opinion upon viewing. Nevertheless, I shall press on to point out some of the more glaring problems I had with this much-loved series, in spite of the potential flak that it would invite.

 

Story:

I'll say this much for TTGL, they really surprised me by how much ground they covered in 27 episodes. The series can be split into 4 arcs, though it can also be thought of as 2 large ones. If only the series had ended after the first half, I would've been a lot kinder to it. The first arc started out as a whacked-out, energized introduction to the world and story goal, and ended with a great big plot twist that set the tone for the second arc: dark and angsty, where the characters of the show had to rise out of their emotional funk, and ride on into the sunset of an epic final battle, which concluded with one of the better boss fights I've witnessed in anime.....yeah. Also, the early half's writing had that One Piece-like tendency to defy almost any plot-related expectations you might have, which I found really great.

The whole charm of TTGL's battles is that they are absolutely ludicrous, which the show is fully aware of, and carries them out with a good sense of parody; proudly announcing that he who produces the biggest drill, guts, and loudest vocalization of constipation will ultimately win no matter the odds. The main mini-mecha 'Lagann' embodied this principle well. After all, who could take a battle involving that thing seriously? A head with limbs, and a tendency to flap its gums during its pilot's more outrageous rantings?

But then in the second half, the series veers off parody lane and onto the street where politics, drama and SRS BSNS reside. Repercussions of the first arc begin to hit home and bring the series back down the to Earth from its high-flying zanyness. The acclaimed FMA did this well, but TTGL, in doing so, lost that spark of parody and humour that was the sole saving grace of its over-the-top battles and antics. It was like a comedian in a Superman outfit and a piece of poo on his head stopped ragging on superhero ludicrosity and started to do some serious preaching about politics and the economic situation. While still wearing that ridiculous outfit. Even that analogy comes across funnier and less boring than TTGL's latter half.

The second half felt like a Gundam/Code Geass series mixed together with the story of Mass Effect; the battles of the copy-pasted grunts, lots of death, drama, politics, and a conspiracy involving aliens and the suppression of mankind's uber awesomeness. The main mecha kept going through these DBZ-esque transformations and increases in power to deal with the obstacles the writers had to come up with in order to generate some form of danger. It went a little like "Obstacle? I struggle for a minute.... THEN I POWER UP!!!" repeatedly. Back in their starting World of Parody™, this would've been alright. But in Serious Mode™, and sitting on grounds that every Gundam series I've seen to-date has trodden on with the exact same tropes, I spent the last few episodes with my hands glued to my face so I wouldn't take a hammer to my head.

...oh, and spoiler alert: the last battle has old enemies team up with the good guys to battle a mysterious other-worldly power that endangers them all. [sarcasm] How in the whole biddy wide world did they come up with a concept as original as that? [/sarcasm]

Gosh that was long. And I even left out the nitpicking of plot holes, which the first half had a few, and the second had A BLEEPIN' LOT OF!!

 

Animation:

Wow, still here? I'll try and make this brief. Apart from 1 or 2 episodes where the animation dropped noticeably (episode 4 looked like Beck at its worst), the animation quality is top-notch. The first half experimented and played around with varying stylistic elements which bordered on Studio4C, a definite plus for me. The second half dropped the experimental stuff and took on a much more clean cut look, together with some good ol' GAINAX 3D animation, and only a few copy-pasted scenes, which is a much-welcome change to the Gundam norm. In short, if the show were a real person, it would turn heads and cause accidents just walking down the street.

 

Sound:

Again, like the animation, there was a deliberate change from first to second half of the series. The first half had a more rough and open soundtrack, with genres like big band, jazz, and country making an appearance. The excitement-inducing jpop songs are present throughout, as is the hip-hop chorus of "Fight the Power!", which fits well with the overall theme on both ends. It played a significantly less-prominent role compared to the animation though..

The two female leads' voice actresses sounded uncharacteristic and rigid during their debut episodes, but eventually got their act together for the remainder of the series. Other than that, the rest of the voicing staff did their job well, and are worth only this paltry mention.

 

Characters:

Ah yes. The characters. Where do I begin? The main three protagonists consist of your run-of-the-mill weak-willed, but gifted young boy, an eccentric loud-mouth leader type, and a set of slightly covered up knockers. Up 'til the end of the first arc, I can safely say that only the eccentric managed any sort of character development, and the other 2 could've dropped off the story completely, and I wouldn't have cared. Later on, a princess-type love interest is introduced, who was mildly interesting, but only in comparison to the rest.

The series on a whole suffers from an abundance of characters that appear, drop a word or two in-line with their character profiles sheets, then disappear into the woodworks like so many termites playing Whack-A-Mole. Very few endeared themselves to me, so when a couple were married and/or killed off in an attempt to tug heartstrings, I didn't look up from my engaging little bowl of porridge. It had itty-wittle bits-o green in it!

The latter half of the series had many characters develop a more mature attitude that helped drive the drama and politics. I guess this would've be good, but since they had barely established their initial personality, I failed to care.

[Incoming Rant]

Oh, and Yoko, the red-headed set of jubblies that's been proudly tacked on this series is easily the most bland, generic, inconsistent and unlikable female I've come across in recent times. Don't let the over-exposed double Ds fool you.. Her character couldn't be flatter if we dropped a herd of elephants on her. Anyone who proudly prances around in enough cloth to make a handkerchief and lets young boys nuzzle their chests without so much as blinking has no business suddenly becoming self-conscious when she feels people staring at her. I know funbags sell, but the least you could do is to disguise it with an actual believable character. I could rattle on and deconstruct this waste of screen space, but I'll settle for one more gripe: it is NOT humorous for her to go all Naru-Narusegawa when what little she pastes on her body comes flying off. When there's no attachment to the characters, it doesn't work, and somewhere in the world, a dolphin gets set alight and tossed into barrel of gasoline whenever that happens. Please save the dolphins and stop this nonsense.

 

Wrap up:

My bottom line is that TTGL was ruined by a bad decision to change the tone of the series at the half-way mark. While the decision could be defended in a few ways, such as the characters maturing, and taking the series to different territories, the show forgot itself along the way. It started out as a challenge to mecha and adventure series' that take themselves seriously while their characters fart lightning and bacon, but ended up cutting itself a slice of that same srs bsns pie, and spent the remainder of its screentime expelling watery stool.

Story - 8.5

Series started out well. Simon and Karima have been living life underground, pretty much having no significance in their lives. Then one day, Simon finds a machine, which starts his journey. His village gets attacked by a large mecha called "gunmen"and meets a girl named Yoko. After they defeat the baddy, they decide to explore the surface and discover the mysteries of life ( or something like that).

The first portion of the series I did enjoy much. As the group explores the surface, they fight against more gunmen and recuits allies to form the 'gurren brigade'. The main conflict that covers half of the series is pretty straight forward. the strong gurren brigade tries to fight against a boss called genome. Up until this point, the story had a unique enough flavor to attract the casual crowd. The biggest problem i can think of is the overall flow of the story. At the halfway point, there is a time jump of 7 years into the future that deals with the outcome of the first half of the series. While I do enjoy animes that has these types of development, i wonder if Gurren Lagann flowed through correctly. After the time jump, the series takes on a political world. While i still enjoyed this portion, it still felt a little out of place. It is at this point that the characters realize that there is an "out of the world" power that threatens earth. From then on, the story just gets weirder as the info is revealed to the characters. I tried to keep this vague to prevent spoilers. in short, the series goes from:

slight ecchi/mecha/adventure/slight humor

to political world/daily life/mecha

to mecha/ suspense/ WTF/ epic/ drama/ slight ecchi (yeah, it came back for a bit)

 

Animation - 7.5

I'm not sure if its the player that i watched these episodes, but it seemed blurry. Often in the fight scenes, the frame stops for a split second. Didn't really take any points off for that, but i am just noting it just in case if its my computer that causing the lag. But the graphics did seem relatively smooth but bland for most of the series, but there was still the blurry parts. This was the case especially for fight scenes. At some points, i did not know what was happening.

Sound - 7.5

Do not really recall the music played throughout. None of the music really stuck out to me besides 2 of them. One song i think i recognize from a well known artist, and a battle theme that plays during an epic powerup moment (Ten wo Tsuke). I found myself replaying a scene a few times when Gurran Lagann powers up. The music had really fit the mood and increased the epicness of the battle. But because it was only 2 songs that i noticed, the score recieved average

Characters - 9

Probably the best part of the series for me. There was plenty of characters with distinct personalities. It was easy to connect with at least one of the characters. And I actually cared about some of them before it was over.

Conclude - 8.5

The first half of the series (say 16 episodes), was enjoyable. It was above average in terms of story. I admit, this show really had its moments. By the end, the viewer would experience a range of emotions. At first, i did put this series off, because it didnt seem interesting enough (even though i knew of the popularity). Did it meet my expectation? yeah, it was up there, the first half at least. the second half definitely threw me off a bit with the change of tone and development. Still, i can see why people enjoyed this. It did feel engaging sometimes.