My God, the rage – it’s all coming back to me now. I never forgot how angry this stretch of episodes of TTGL made me feel, but the sheer visceral depth of it did fade over time. Until now. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that with anime there are always those willing to defend consequentialism, no matter how vile. There’s something in it that appeals to a segment of the anime fandom, and Rossiu certainly had his defenders. But as compared to, say, Fate/Zero they were always in the minority. And I think the role Simon plays is the reason for the difference.
Yes, we see statues being toppled here, a reminder that things which we might be tempted to feel are unique to the present certainly are not. The rage of the people against those who “took away” their current comfortable life seems to conveniently overlook the fact that the ones they’re raging against were the ones that gave them that life in the first place. Fuck them, obviously – but stupid people being being a rabble is hardly a historical oddity. It’s the leadership that deserves the bulk of the disdain, as usual.
My favorite part of this episode was Simon telling Rossiu that the look in his eyes was exactly the same as that of the priest in his home village – and of course, it’s true. Rossiu and that man are very much alike, and circumstances have rather poetically conspired to highlight just how alike. Rossiu knows Simon is right of course, and no amount of betrayal and covert intrigue can hide Rossiu from himself. He knows what he is, and one reason he hates Simon is because even when he’s not doing so verbally, Simon is always reminding him. All Rossiu can do is continue his campaign of self-justified demagoguery – as long as he never has to put himself at risk in the process.
Kinon is the other key figure in these events. After Simon volunteers to defend Kamina City from the much-larger Mugann now heading towards it, despite having just been sentenced to death at his sham trial, Rossiu is forced to allow it. But only if (as Simon suggests) Gurren-Lagann is wired for destruction as a precaution against Simon running (which Rossiu knows full well he would never do). Rossiu justifies (his favorite activity after treachery) Kinon being the suicide bomb insurance by saying she volunteered. Which she did of course, but that’s totally irrelevant. And the fact that Rossiu can’t see (or won’t acknowledge) that is the reason why he’s morally and ethically unfit to be a leader.
His plan, apart from sacrificing Simon to save his own ass, is to evacuate humans to 36 underground cities left over from before Team Gurren-Lagann. The remaining overflow will leave the surface in “Arc-Gurren” – which was Lordgenome’s last Trump card. But the anti-spirals seem unlikely to be foiled by such superficial tactics when destroying spiral life forms is such a huge deal to them.
The sides seem pretty well chosen here – we know how Kittan and Kinon feel, and Dayakka has a long memory. But Leeron is a pragmatist’s pragmatist, and Gimmy and Darry and rather caught in the middle still. And then there’s the other one, who hasn’t shown herself since the timeskip and would surely seem to have strong opinions about what’s happening in Kamina City if she were aware of it. And there’s one more player involved here – ironically, one for whom honor transcends all other concerns…
