Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Part 0

Part 0: Introduction

Think about your life real quick. Seriously, take a moment and think about the things that you would say define you. Generally, people are defined by their actions, but actions come from a specific place in the mind. We are inspired to take action by a myriad of different things: Family, friends, hobbies, etc. You take all of this with you and it creates you. Now, for a moment, pretend that what I said is absolute truth and it isn’t a lot more complicated than that: Can you think of ANYTHING specifically that defines you? A sport? A video game? A book? A song? Maybe something that speaks to you easily?

As for me, I’m pretty easy to put together. When I was younger, my parents (read: mother) made sure I was subjected to everything necessary to be a huge nerd. First, I watched Godzilla movies a lot which sparked my interest in dinosaurs and reading and eventually to dragons and myth. Then that interest was taken further by the family’s NES, from which I played my very first game, the Legend of Zelda. From Legend of Zelda, my love of high adventure and elves and swordsmanship could easily be traced. I could go on, but I think I have illustrated my point about how things affect you. All of this rambling to get to this point: The most recent thing I can think of that has had an effect on me and my life is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Yes.

Gainax is a monster-truck of powerful series. Evangelion requires no introduction, anyone with any real interest in Anime as an artform has heard of it at least. FLCL, which I have examined myself, is a masterpiece of coming of age tales. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a loving callback/parody to a genre that doesn’t really exist anymore, but did it with such excellence that it became 

something more.

To oversimplify, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a giant robot anime. It is a giant robot anime in the same vein that Evangelion is a giant robot anime, and the same vein that “Schindler’s List” is a movie about some people who do stuff. That is to say, all of those things are true but WAY oversimplified. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is about inspiration, leadership, bonds, triumph and standing up even when there is no way to prevail. It is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Evangelion, and that makes it great.

It is a show that the first time I finished it, despite it being 3 am, I had to tell somebody about it. The ending literally brought me to tears. Now, I’m gonna tell you about it in my own perspective. I will focus on my initial reaction, and then what I think about it now. First, I’m gonna get some things out of the way:

I'm going to focus on the subtitled version of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and sometimes I will purposefully refer to a fan-based translation as opposed to the official Bandai translation. This is because the way Japanese translates into English sometimes certain phrases are translated better by fans of the show than people paid to translate something they have no passion for. This is probably true of any language, but this show is especially prone to NEEDING a convincing performance with convincing dialog. I guess that’s true of just about any movie/anime/whatever, but I didn’t realize how important it was that I believed what the characters said…

Until I heard the English dub. The English dub is a travesty, it is horrible. What’s more is that there is no excuse for it being so horrible; the company who dubbed it is the same company responsible for FLCL, possibly the most excellent dub of all time. It’s so disappointing. I might dedicate an entire part of this analysis just to take apart what is wrong with the show, but I’ll get this out there right now:

The dub does the show an injustice. The voice actors have no passion, no fire. Many are miscast, and it’s entirely possible that this is one of those times where a show can’t really be dubbed. Some things just don’t translate. As a quick example, a common phrase in the show is “That is the way of the Dai-Gurren Dan!” In the English dub, it was translated into “That’s how (the great) Gurren Brigade rolls!” Granted, they are more or less the same sentence but one has passion and grandeur, and the other is…blah. It’s a very George Lucas-y type thing. It’s written down, it is in fact a sentence, but it’s not really actable or believable. How we roll? Really? The real problem is Kamina, but again, I’ll probably elaborate on this elsewhere.

Come back soon, for I start my journey to the center of TTGL by breaking down the characters, starting with the star: Simon!