What's “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”?
If looking for new anime to watch is like tunneling through the earth in search of buried treasures, then “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog” is like your trusty, hand-cranked drill. Each week we provide additional information and cultural context to help anime fans decide whether or not they'd like to take an unknown series for a test drive.
What's Gurren Lagann?
Gurren Lagann, originally known in Japan as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (“Heaven-Piercing Gurren Lagann”), is an original 2007 TV anime with direction by Hiroyuki Imaishi (Kill la Kill) and animation by Studio Gainax (Wish Upon the Pleiades). Crunchyroll describes Gurren Lagann as follows:
"This is the story of a man who has yet to realize what destiny holds in store for him…In the distant future, mankind has lived quietly and restlessly underground for hundreds of years, subject to earthquakes and cave-ins. Living in one such village are 2 young men: one named Simon who is shy and naïve, and the other named Kamina who believes in the existence of a “surface” world above their heads."
Gurren Lagann is at its heart a mecha series, but it's so much more than that. Beginning in a humble hole in the ground and culminating in a conflict that encompasses entire galaxies and alternate dimensions, Gurren Lagann is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of nearly impossible adversity. It's a story of ordinary people becoming extraordinary heroes in a quest that spans three generations.
Of Drills and Faces.
Much ink could be spilled about the drills in Gurren Lagann, which range in function from weaponry in robot combat to a phallic symbol in raunchy gags to a metaphor for the inscrutable nature of the human soul and a visual representation of the show's central conceit of "Spiral Power". Suffice to say that drills take on thematic significance in this show, as do faces. Everyone knows that with mecha, more faces equals more power, right?
History and Homage.
Gurren Lagann can be enjoyed by viewers who are unfamiliar with the mecha subgenre, but the show also serves as a love letter to the robot anime that came before it. Gurren Lagann is littered with visual references to earlier shows. Some are subtle (Yoko's rifle-scope recalls the face-plate of the Scopedog mecha from Armored Trooper VOTOMS) while some are more overt (reproducing the “Itano circus” missile trails and the “Daedalus attack” from Super Dimension Fortress Macross).
The homages aren't just visual, but narrative as well. As Clarissa Graffeo and Gerald Rathkolb observe in their 2008 review on the Anime World Order podcast, Gurren Lagann can be roughly divided into three story arcs: the first arc resembles a Seventies super robot anime; the second arc is more like the melancholy and political mecha of the post-Evangelion period; and the third arc goes full Gunbuster in terms of its astronomical scope and scale.
Talent and Technique.
An exceptional amount of talent was poured into the creation of Gurren Lagann, including but not limited to the efforts of director Hiroyuki Imaishi, series composer Kazuki Nakashima, music director Taku Iwasaki, and key animator / mechanical designer Yoh Yoshinari. Imaishi and Yoshinari later left Gainax to fill key positions at Studio TRIGGER.
Many of the techniques that were later perfected in TRIGGER's Kill la Kill, such as “harmony” (a freeze-frame technique that transitions from an animation cell to a painting) and the use of heavy line-work in close-up shots for exaggerated emotional effect, can be seen in an earlier form in Gurren Lagann.
Team Dai-Gurren Lives On.
Crunchyroll currently streams Gurren Lagann in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The series is available in Japanese with English subtitles.
The history of Gurren Lagann on North America home video is a rocky one. Gurren Lagann is currently available on Bluray from Aniplex of America in a set of 5 releases aimed at a collector's market. Aniplex previously released limited edition collector's box sets of the series on DVD and Bluray, but these versions are out-of-print.
Prior to that, ADV Films announced the license for Gurren Lagann back in 2007 and even dubbed several episodes in English, but this release never materialized after the distributor's deal with Sojitz Corporation fell through and ADV Films splintered into numerous smaller companies, such as Sentai Filmworks and Section23 Films.
After this kerfuffle, Bandai Entertainment stepped in with two different DVD releases of Gurren Lagann in 2008, one subtitled-only, the other featuring an English dub. Needless to say, this caused some confusion among the fans. Bandai Entertainment went belly up in 2012, so these earlier releases are also out-of-print.
Releases come and go, but the spirit of Gurren Lagann still burns in the hearts of its fans even a decade later. If you're in the mood for a hot-blooded, high-concept, emotional roller-coaster in anime form, consider checking out Gurren Lagann. And if you're already familiar, consider giving it another look. It's the kind of series that gets better with age.
Is there a series in Crunchyroll's catalog that you think needs some more love and attention? Please send in your suggestions via e-mail to cruisingcrunchy@gmail.com or post a Tweet to @gooberzilla. Your pick could inspire the next installment of “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”!
Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.
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