You may have noticed that the entire title is capitalised. There's a reason for that: it's because the title is meant to be yelled at the top of your lungs. In fact, do that right now. In your most manly, hot-blooded and over-the-top, Japanese-accented voice, please yell TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN. . . There, now if you've followed my instructions, you've just saved yourself a few minutes of time because you now know what the show is all about and you don't have to bother reading the rest of this review. If you're easily embarrassed and there are other people in the room and you therefore have not followed my instructions, feel free to read on and I'll do my best to give my general impressions.

TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN is the latest Giant Robot-athon from the infamously controversial studio Gainax. As the story begins, humans are oppressed and forced to live underground, but thanks the efforts of the main character, Simon and his inconsistently growing merry band of hotheads, they steadily break down boundaries and move up in the world. And I mean literally break down boundaries. As this is a show about Super Robots, everything is achieved through using said robots to blow pretty much everything up. And that's not a complaint. Very early on, the show lets its viewer know that this is a show about manly men riding in gigantic robots who explode lots of things and if you're into that kind of thing, then strap in and enjoy it.

But "Kristof", you say, "Didn't you say this anime is from Gainax? How can it be just a generic super robot show? Where's the overt religious symbolism? Where are the unexpected twists and the ridiculous ending where everyone dies? The producers at Gainax are way too "clever" to write something that doesn't at least try mess with your head at every turn!" Well, that's the thing. Gurren Lagann is generic. In fact, it's a little too generic. It's like the creators said "Let's do a manly, hot-blooded show about super robots and let's do it right." You can tell when you watch it that the producers knew what they were doing, that they have a lot of experience with super robot shows and most importantly, they really love the genre. Essentially, it's a love letter to fans of super robots, sprinkled with tongue in cheek references to old-school anime for added nostalgia. Not to mention the frequent (and often hilarious) innuendo*. With these kinds of touches it's like Gainax is saying "yes, we realise that a lot of the elements in this show are cliches and staples of the genre, but we totally did that on purpose."

You very rarely see robot designs that are this unique in anime.

So at this point we've established that I do like the show, so let's move on to what I don't like about it. There aren't too much, but there are some things that are worth mentioning. I said-er, typed before that there is an "inconsistently growing merry band of hotheads" carrying the show through to completion. I say this because as Gurren Lagann opens, we are given three primary characters to worry about. All three are likeable and well-designed, so the hope is that they get a nice helping of development and by the end of the series we genuinely care about what happens to them. Not so, unfortunately. At first, it's not so bad, and we're given a few new characters over the course of the next six or seven episodes. This is to be expected, of course. But then, we're force-fed a veritable army of new characters all at once, with only so much as a name given as introduction. This is where things start to go awry and character development screeches to a halt, while events carry everything through to the end like a torrential rainfall. True to the spirit of the series, I suppose, having action take priority to feelings, but it's frustrating when the show expects us to care tremendously about characters in the last few episodes whose names I didn't even know for the past ten. And speaking of the last few episodes . . .

The last third of the series takes a dramatic change in setting and tone, pitting characters who are friends against one another, adding a dash of political conflict, and starting to weave a message about humanity's fickleness and selfishness into the story. This is all well and good, considering this portion of the series is almost like a second season, removed from the first. But my issue with it is that they take a bit of a deus ex machina (Ha, literally!) approach to resolving the long list of problems that the characters face (as detailed before, all problems are solved by giant robots exploding things), which just makes me wonder why they bothered setting up complicated interpersonal and political problems in the first place.

Let's get one thing straight, this show loves drills.

It seems that Gainax can't find a nice middle ground when they produce anime. Things are either needlessly complicated or terribly oversimplified. Characters are either as shallow as a puddle or so overdeveloped that we're unappreciatingly treated to each and every one of their depressing (read: boring) thoughts. With Gurren Lagann, it seems like they were going for this middle ground, but ended up with something that's a bit uneven and patchy. This isn't surprising, as its constant effort to one-up its own overblown proportions can only really lead to a story that looks like a sharp bell curve, rather than a linear equation. But, ultimately, this is part of its charm. Being amazed and surprised every time something unbelievable happens and wondering how they're going to top it in a few episodes' time is what makes it fun to watch. I've complained quite a bit, but Gurren Lagann is one of the most truly fun animes I've ever had the pleasure of watching and I can't count the number of times I found myself smiling widely and saying "Awesome!" while watching it.

My Advice: "Watch this show if you have any appreciation at all for giant super robots."

*Ignoring the fact that they ruin it all in one of the final episodes by trying to fill a plot hole with a lame scientific explanation of why all the low brow jokes up till that point were actually the source of everyone's super powers. UGH