3 out of 5

Directed by: Hiroyuki Imaishi

I’ve been burned by widely acclaimed series or movie before, whether it’s a wishy-washy response to something that has otherwise seemed to really grab people, or the occasional complete befuddlement that the masses will – by my opinion – have been taken for a ride by something bunk. I thus try to approach such highly esteemed shows / films with as open eyes as possible, as with as little background as possible, beyond whatever may have directed me to whatever it is in the first place.

Mega-mecha anime Gurren Lagann has a pretty notable reputation – with the damning praise of it developing into something deeper as it goes on – and gets tossed around as an RIYL in relation to a lot of expressive, boisterous series, such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the Reddit board of which alerted me to Gurren…

The praise I refer to as damning is because whenever something is pitched like that, it implies you have to hang in there to appreciate it. So if you don’t “feel it” by episode X, then maybe you should wait until episode Y. On the plus side, I don’t think this actually ends up applying to Gurren: while there is a clear shift at the show’s halfway point, it doesn’t really change the tone or style, it sort of just switches out one bad guy for another. I do think there was a lot of potential with that shift, though, and because it’s presented as a game-changer, I can imagine getting swept up in it if I was watching during I time when I couldn’t stream the whole series back to back. But granted that ability, the overall shallowness of either half of the show is apparent, and you more have to decide whether or not you can just enjoy GL’s energy. Which is an easy enough request: a frantic, highly stylized look – the featured mecha are all befitted with giant faces, giant drills, and flip-flop fly through the air for massive, now-here’s-an-even-bigger-drill-than-you-could-previously-have-imagined battles – and energetic voice actors make the episode-by-episode scuffles exciting enough, with a generally straight and narrow story given pep via dotted bits of lore, and an admittedly great sense of mid-episode and end-episode cliffhangers… yes, Gurren Lagann is an easy watch, as it’s a lot of sound and fury.

But the sound almost always amounts to: ‘believe in yourself an you can overcome,’ and the fury features characters gritting their teeth even harder than last time so they can punch that much harder. While the loosey-goosey premise of surface-dwelling beasts who’ve kept humans sequestered in small, underground hovels for however many years – prompting humanities rebellion, and embracing their ‘spiral’ abilities (i.e. ability to wield gigantic drills) – gives us a solid rah-rah fight-fer-yer-life motivator, the way the show’s writers inconsistently apply stakes to the battles and “rules” to how their various mecha work prevents much of the story from really landing, and this is perpetuated in similar ways after the mid-series shift. The one-dimensional characters don’t distract from that.

Still, there are glimmers of intelligence throughout, and definitely quality comedic beats. The stand-outs, though, are the designs and the general oomph of the presentation, both of which make for a show that will probably grab your eyeballs for several eps at a time… until you start actually thinking about what’s going on beneath that wild surface.