January was a minor milestone for fans of giant robots. For the first time ever, the two-movie adaptation of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann received a U.S. theatrical screening. The first movie-- a compilation of the first half of the anime-- aired the week of the 16th and the second one-- notably more original than the first-- followed the week after. These showings were significant: prior to this, the movies had only existed in expensive blu-ray collections and barely-seeded torrents. They certainly were significant to me, at the very least. It had been quite some time since I last gave much thought to Gurren Lagann at all, so I quickly made these movies a priority in my schedule once I heard the news. Gurren Lagann is a show I continue to hold in a very special spot in my heart, and release of these movies had me start thinking about why that is.
Looking retrospectively, it is perhaps the most obvious thing in the world that I hold this show in exceptionally high regard. As a young kid, I grew up on a lot of big mech action shows and franchises. I was a huge Bioncle fan; watched a(n un)healthy amount of Michael Bay Transformers movies; gulped down the yearly Power Rangers installment with a side of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go. The bag of tricks was on the table, so I thought. I was well saturated with the concepts of love, teamwork and friendship and the way their powers combined paved the way to victory.
"Perhaps too well saturated," I said to myself, jaded and cold at the world, sitting in my early middle school homeroom.
I can't talk about this stuff when I play hang out with my friends any more. I couldn't be caught
dead interacting with that bright and shiny, music blaring, engine whirring stuff fifth graders watched.
I had to establish my more mature taste inmedia: Shadow the Hedgehog, Maximum Ride and Five Nights at Freddy's.
Besides, I had my fill of all that colorful stuff when I was younger. I obviously had seen everything Saturday morning
cartoons had to offer, western or otherwise.
However, I had not yet seen Gurren Lagann.
It took a decent amount of legwork for this show to enter my awareness. It started in the comments of Jontron's video about King's Quest V, with people insulting each other by saying they probably watched "this degenerate show by Aniplex". I had never heard of this "aniplex" before, but it sure sounded similar to something TeamFourStar would say in one of their DBZA episodes. So began a Google goose chase through many a webring until I stumbled upon some version of proto Crunchyroll or KissAnime, don't remember which. Then and only then did I see this foreign "Aniplex" associated with a series of twenty seven bright, shiny thumbnails decorated in blues, crimsons and golds. I stood no chance; no amount of Sonic Adventure 2 Shadow AMVs could pull me away, no matter how hard I tried. Thus, I poked my head through that little window on my computer screen and fell down, down, down into the underground Giha Village.
The first episode of Gurren Lagann develops a strong sense of confinement and restriction. Giha Village is small, dangerous and claustrophobic, bound by a low stone ceiling. The placement deep within the earth offers no stability, as semifrequent earthquakes cause cave-ins and the tragedies associated with that. The village chief is imposing and domineering, he himself chained to a food and energy supply that never quite seems enough to feel comfortable with. This is a setting defined by its limits. It is confining and leaves no room for anything but bodies.
This is the environment our main character Simon was born and raised in. Simon's parents had passed some time prior to the show in an earthquake, leaving him alone as the runt of the village. Simon's only talent in the eyes of others is his capacity for digging, for burrowing ever further beneath the village and putting as much distance as he can between him and everyone else. Both physically and emotionally, Simon begins the story at the lowest possible point he could be. Yet, as the obvious idiom goes, when you're at rock bottom, the only direction left is upward.
The end of the first episode establishes that upward is exactly where the story is going to go. The rock ceiling shatters under the weight of a giant bull-headed mecha cloaked in the only natural light the village has seen in its existence. With the help of Kamina, his adoptive blood brother and only source of positive reinforcement, and Yoko, a freedom fighter from the surface, Simon pilots a drill-bound mech, spiraling upward into the air and high into the heavens above. They are left turning round and round, viewing every inch of a barren earth from high up in the stratosphere, cloaked in a sky of equal parts sunlight and stars. They are in every sense on top of the world.
This is the lowest point the cast will ever be at for the remaining twenty six episodes. The story is a perpetual feedback loop whose energy source is the cast's drive to see what lies beyond the next horizon. This boundless energy takes them to the ends of the earth, up to the moon and stars, beyond our solar system and outside the universe. And yet in those highest of highs there always remains ground beneath these characters' feet. These mechs are driven by people: by their inadequacy and guilt; by their desire to assert themselves; by their friendship, their brotherhood, their love. It is this balance that sets Gurren Lagann upon its pedestal for me. This combination of man and machine and the means in which they continually spiral around each other throughout the narrative that cements Gurren Lagann as an all-timer.
It should be no surprise that the following year of middle school was viewed soley through rose-tinted, diagonally cut shades.
I was absolutely obsessed in that special way that can only occur in middle school when learning what anime is for the
first time. I had a
pair of Kamina's shades that I would bring to the play date hang out; I mained Rumble in League of
Legends solely because one of
his skins was a reference; I even made a cape
in the fashion of Team Dai-Gurren. Yeah, it was that kind of "embarass the relatives" obsession. It meant I was doing
it right.
Time moved as it always does, though, and I made my way up through the public education system with Gurren Lagann trailing ever behind. It certainly set a taste for the kinds of things I'd get invested into, if the tab on plastic model robots over therewas any clue, but it didn't stay with me in the manner it first hit me. As I grew up and matured, I developed a more tempered outlook that contrasted against the bright-eyed unfailing optimism the show preached. I still tilted my head upwards, just not to the same heights as I did when I was 12 and 13. This naturally gave me some slight apprehension when I was driving to the movie premieres just a few months ago. I very well could be driving to the funeral of a childhood classic of mine.
Final verdict? Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is and will forever continue to be the single most motivating piece of media I ever engage with. I really have no articulate way to describe it other than saying it fucking rocks. My revisitation of it through these movies left me cognizant of the drill-shaped hole in my heart reserved for the show. No matter how distanced in age I get from it, the undeniable feeling of hope and promise the show preaches will continue to draw me into its infectous aura. The show is an adrenaline-filled testament to what people are capable of when they believe in others and themselves. It is a show that dares you to ask who the hell do you think you are to worry about what comes next and demands that you see the best in yourself, because everyone else can already see that. You can do yourself no greater service than taking the time to watch it.
Row, row, fight the power.