Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagen

I think I made a mistake. I think I made a really big mistake.

It’s like this. Take a ridiculous robot show that pulls in just about all the clichés: shouting attacks, combining robots, “powering up”, you name it.

Overdo those clichés just enough to wink at the audience, “Yeah, we know this is silly, too.”

Add an odd style of drawing the characters, some realistic, some weird. Toss in one really flaming gay guy.

Combine it with some real drama, political, and personal conflicts.

That’s Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagen. Earlier this year, I watched the first five episodes, finally tossing it aside when a scene grossed me out. It just seemed to be wandering around, screaming and being silly, so I dropped the show and slammed it on this blog. A few weeks later, the fans went berserk over unexpected developments in Episode 8. (Not even putting it in a spoiler. If you know, don’t say, or I’ll delete your comment. If you don’t know, you don’t want to have it spoiled.) The show didn’t exactly get Melancholy-level raves, but there was suddenly a lot of buzz about it, which I ignored. And I kept ignoring it. I’d read the occasional blog post about it, but couldn’t get over that one scene.

I kept wondering though, if maybe I hadn’t missed a bet. But before I got around to admitting that maybe I made a mistake, it was licensed –either before the run was finished or right after, memory fails me. So I just shrugged and moved on. Last night, I saw a renegade fansub group had just finished their copy of episode 19, and I decided “what the hell, download it and see what this episode is like. Maybe the series is worth buying.”

It is. Oh yeah, it is. That first half dozen episodes were just what it needed to set the stage, I guess; from what everyone said, it ramps up after that and starts rocking; based on what I saw tonight, I can believe it. It’s got drama, pathos, conflict, betrayal, psycho women, honor, and a very strong grasp of human nature. But what blew me away was the visuals.. I don’t know if it was an aberration, but if they’d been doing this at the beginning of the show, I’d have watched it all the way through.

(pictures below the fold, because I messed up and they’ll blow the formatting.)

Look at the pictures in the top row. Then look at the first picture in the second row. See it? They drew the shadows of that incredibly detailed latticework. They drew the friggin’ shadows.

Am I all agog because of that detail? No, not because of the detail, but because of the art it represets. It passes so fast on screen, you probably won’t notice it; I didn’t until I was working with the captures. But on some level, the viewer does notice these things, and it helps to set the mood, to provoke a reaction. It is all the more effective for being a piece of beauty and grandeur contrasted with the tawdriness of the show trial, and the very real armed guards standing in the shadows at either side.

Is there a sunset, at “the changing of the guard?” No, there’s a Spectacular Sunset. Is one character ascendant and another fading? Then they stand in light and shadow, respectively.

And a few moments later, we’re in a scene with weirdly drawn characters mulling over some problem or another, but with comical events interspersed. And after that, it’s back to serious and dark. It’s almost as if someone tried to edit (forgive me for this) Vandread into Evangelion. Perhaps not quite that jarring, because it works. The dramatic scenes ground the show and give it an edge, while the silly scenes keep it from becoming too dark and somber. Or so it seems from this one episode.

I think there were hints of this before (the episode where Rouissou is introduced, in particular) but I didn’t get it at the time. It made the show seem schizoid, as if it didn’t know what it wanted to be. Perhaps Gainax got better at it as time went on, or perhaps I was just more in tune with it this time, but I found it worked for me.

So, it goes on the “purchase” list. I’m going to be really, really ticked off, if this episode was out of the ordinary….