A week ago, Gurren Lagann's anniversary was celebrated. The show happens to be right now 15 years old since it first premiered and is still to this day heralded as one of the most popular mecha anime out there. All it took was the right team from Gainax to concoct something that was outrageously fun and had crazy energy.
It's a simple story from points A to Z, a small remnant of humanity rose up against their oppressors using something that is equivalent to the force in Star Wars and fought to have their place in the galaxy, the need to survive and thrive. And they do it all with a ridiculous loud bang.
This was what you might call a penultimate anime where it has everything you want; gusto, crazy mechs, hot chicks, awesome battles, a good story, and a constant adrenaline-pumping rush. It'll make you laugh, cry, jump off your seats, so much of it in a crazy roller coaster of 12hr runtime.
There was a time when Konami was alright, a company working to make cool stuff happen with various talents. And so they've partnered up with Aniplex to create a mecha show, with the series director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima. Both worked on Re: Cutie Honey, so they formed some basis of personality based around their prior works together. Imaishi also worked on Neon Genesis with Anno.
Working in Gainax, they went through several pre-production planning and storyboarding, before working to create each episode, a lot of time and care was taken into making them, so the anime put the entire team through the wringer, enough to put out 27 episodes in total in 2007.
Right after Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking's release, Imaishi and the rest of Gainax's talent left to create Studio Trigger. Since then, they've been doing very well while Gainax deals with all sorts of legal repercussions for their past transgressions. Gurren Lagann's license was given away to Imaishi last year.
The entire show is a crazy power trip. Where everything is thrown in like sexually suggestive clothing, crude language, and obscene explosive action scenes where the animation throws the viewers into a space void filled with every spectrum of light, there would need to be an epilepsy warning before watching it.
After being stuck in a cave for most of their lives along with other villagers, both Simon and Kamina sought to escape just to seek the stars, then one day, a girl named Yoko fighting a beastmen comes from above and shatters any illusion that the villagers had of the outside world.
From that point on, they find a lost mech called a Gunman and go on a journey to find other lost souls while kissing the sun for the first time. Gurren Lagann is full of personality from this point. From the ridiculous exposition of "my stick is bigger than yours" to crazy firefights between mechas, and funny banters between the characters who eventually grow on one another.
Gurren Lagann does what every Shonen-based anime would do, except it does most of it a lot better than anybody else would imagine. Right after finding people, Kamina, Yoko, and Simone prepare themselves to fight against the beastmen that have enslaved humanity for generations to keep them from repopulating and keep them down way below the evolutionary ladder.
Of course, with the crazy charisma of Kamina, and the technical mastery of Simone, they fought tooth and nail to win the war, where the bad guys throw a crazy number of their units against the good guys, one would imagine that the battle was already decided. Not when you have, again gusto.
A tour de force team, pushed by sheer will, team Lagann has people different from each other yet all are driven by the greatest motto of all time "Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb!". You can thank Kamina for that one. They win the war, but not before a major character death happens.
The show is split between two major arcs, 2nd one is where it places itself several years after their first war before they find out that there are intergalactic beings that are pulling all the strings all along, and a major plot twist has roped whatever humanity's left into a last-ditch effort to fight truly for their survival.
Remember when I mentioned an energy equivalent to the Force? Well, that energy went all balls out, and team Lagann instead created a projection of a mecha that is the size of multiple galaxies combined before putting out a final showdown of absolute willpower.
Gurren Lagann seems meek, and cheerful on the surface, but it deals with intense subject matter like following your dreams even if it'll cost blood, sweat, and tears. People die, ones you like even if they side characters will lose their lives to achieve their dreams. The story beats resonate a lot with other mecha anime Mobile Suit Gundam, and Neon Genesis Evangelion underneath all the up-beat energy.
It's more than a feel-good anime, it's a feel-good that later trebuchets you to the highest altitude with maximum gusto. And it doesn't care what the reality of that shot will be, it expects you to land no matter what. And it just works.
It subverts a lot of anime tropes while carrying itself with high emotions, making you really clammer for the good guys to win. As bad-ass as they can be, it's their characterization and personalities that really draws us to them.
Of course, the anime doesn't completely on a happy note, it's too bittersweet but it also becomes the complete envy of other high-art media out there. Gurren Lagann has been the staple for what modern mecha genre animes should be and nothing has topped it since.