Writer’s Spotlight: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Let me just say that this anime is on my top 3. I never thought a mecha would place that high honestly, because as many of my friends and readers an attest to, I’m not much into giant robots. Also, any review I can do on this show still won’t give it the respect that is deserved, but I’m going to try.

Today I’ll be reviewing the Gainax animated and Aniplex/Konami co-produced anime, “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann” (Poster Inset)

TTGL, known in Japan as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann literally “Heaven-Piercing Gurren Lagann” is a Japanese mecha anime television series. It ran for twenty-seven episodes on Japan’s TV Tokyo between April 1, 2007 and September 30, 2007. It is directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, written by playwright Kazuki Nakashima and has been in development since the participation of the famed animator in the Abenobashi mecha themed episodes by the same studio. The anime won several awards at the Tokyo International Anime Fair, the Animation Kobe, and Japan Media Arts Festivals.

For the sake of keeping some of the story intact without ruining it with spoilers, I’ll only talk about the plot of the first episode. Gurren Lagann takes place in a fictional future in which human beings have been forced to live under Earth’s surface and live in isolated subterranean civilizations. These “villages” have no contact with the surface world or other villages – it’s pretty much like the stone age all over again.

Because frequent earthquakes damage infrastructure, the villages must constantly extend deeper into the earth—individuals relegated to this task are known as “diggers.”

Jeeha Village is the home of Simon, a fourteen-year-old digger who was orphaned when his parents were killed in an earthquake. Although Simon is respected by the village elders as the best of the diggers, he is ostracized by his peers because all he does is dig and get covered in dirt from head to toe.

Simon discovers a special drill key while digging one day, deep in the ground. He is soon recruited by an eccentric fellow orphan named Kamina into his group the “Gurren Brigade” (or literally, Crimson Brigade.) Kamina dreams of the surface world, which he once visited as a child, though he had to return home as he was too young to survive there. He forever wants to return to the surface and show his father (who he went with as a child) that he’s man enough to survive and surpass him.

After a failed attempt at reaching the surface, Kamina is jailed by the village elder of Jeeha. Simon resumes digging, only to discover “a big face” deep in his tunnel. As he excitedly fetches Kamina to show him the discovery, Simon is also caught by the village elder. Fortuitously, Kamina’s punishment is interrupted by the collapse of the ceiling over Jeeha Village, as an enormous mecha (or in this series, they’re called “Ganmen”) falls into the cavern.

A girl named Yoko appears and tries to repel the machine with a large caliber sniper rifle. Simon takes Kamina and Yoko to the “big face” he found earlier and discovers that the small drill key can be used to activate it. Dubbed “Lagann-sama” by Kamina, he uses it to destroy the invading mecha and effectively break through to the surface.

This is where their journey will start to destroy the fate the universe has set before them. At first, it starts out a wee bit slow, but by the end of the series, the battles have progressed to the Universal stage, and I mean that quite literally. I highly recommend this anime. Good characters, deep plot, lots of action combine into making this an anime anyone can enjoy, just not people who like the “Mecha” genre.

Happy watching!

Shimus Darkraven, Resident Nerd and News Writer.