Thursday, January 03, 2008

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann



I have just sat down and watched all 27 eps of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Now watching a series all in one go means ether one of two things grabbing hold of the ep's and holding on to them till its all finished with (I don't think I could ever do that I would have to watch them after getting them no mater what it was.), or waiting and hoping that there are still good sources to get all the ep's from in one go when the show is over and done with and every one else has watched it.

I find there are other advantages and disadvantages, the main two for me being, you get to watch the show with perfect continuity you don't miss any thing your not trying to remember stuff from months ago, all those complicated plot lines and you only tend to watch one animé at a time. On the other hand you don't half get board of watching the same intro and ending far to many times in one go and I tend to skip the end so I tend to miss the funny jokes at the end after the titles in stuff like Bleach, but no grate loss for me.

I digress back to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Or translated to English, "Break-Through Heaven Gurren Lagann" or more loosely "Heaven Shattering Gurren Lagann". Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, written by Kazuki Nakashima, animated by Gainax and co-produced by Aniplex and Konami.

The serious starts of underground where all humans are forced to live in some post apocalyptic future. Mankind is forced to live in small villages dug out of the ground and is forbidden to go to the surface, The villagers are forced to spend their time digging out more space due to frequent earthquakes.

This Is where we find our two male hero characters,

Simon, Voiced by: Tetsuya Kakihara , Takayuki Sugo

Simon is a fourteen year-old digger from Giha village. Although he is initially looked down because of it, Simon excels at drilling through the underground, while the drill itself quickly becomes his trademark symbol.


& Kamina, Voiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese),

Kamina is a young man from Giha village who dreams of leaving the village and go to the surface, which he saw as a child. He's very passionate about his goals, expressing his wishes through energetic speeches, which seems to affect all those who hear him.



Simon through his role as digger stumbles upon at first a key and then large robot face. Before he can tell any one however there is a giant earth quake and a giant robot called Gunmen drops into the village when the earth above collapses and it starts to destroy everything in site.

It's prity much standard fair from there, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is your standard fighting robot anime. Thou it some how manges to make the characters the centre of the plot and the robots mearley tools (thou I must admit at the end in the last ep it gets a bit silly with a robot so big its classed as a sub universe but don't let that put you off it) The story is very well written and the characters very well developed with lots of back story for the main hero's.

I am going to highly recommend Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and give it 7 out of 10, my only complaints being that it probably could have been 2 to 3 eps shorter and those last view eps did seam a bit silly especially the aforementioned sub universe sized robot, thou it does have new and interesting ideas which I have not seen before in anime, thou it does not mean they have not been used before.