If things suck, just pretend it’s another time.  2007 wasn’t exactly a walk in the park – global financial meltdown, American politics in crisis – but for anime at least, it was certainly a better time.  Maybe the best time, I’d argue – along with 2012, it was the best anime year ever in my eyes.  And Spring 2007 (again, along with Spring 2012) was probably the best anime season.  There were a lot of great and influential series that came out of that season, but I’m not sure any was a bigger global phenomenon than Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

I’m keeping my eyes on the poll (which Bacacano! seems certain to win), but for opportunity reasons – and because my old friend totoum suggested it a few days back – I’m starting my time travel with TTGL.  This series was so many things to so many people.  To me, it was the last hurrah for the studio that made me an anime fan, Gainax – they produced a few more series afterwards, but Gurren Lagann was the last glorious flowering of the Gainax aesthetic.  Of course I didn’t know that at the time.  Back then, it was just confirmation of the fact that nobody could make cool anime like Gainax.

I don’t want to jump ahead too much or lapse into the cultural aspects of TTGL – to the extent I can, I’m going to treat this rewatch as a new experience.  But it is a rewatch, and there’s no point pretending otherwise.  I haven’t watched the TV series itself for over a decade, and the last of the films in probably 9 or 10 years, so it’s not as if my memories are crystal clear.  But Gurren Lagann was a series that made a big impression, at least on me.  I remember more details than I do with most series from that long ago, even ones I loved (and there were a lot of them that year).

Pretty much all the big names from Gainax at the time worked on this series, and many of them would wind up at Trigger once things at Gainax started to fall apart (and it seemed to happen so quickly). Imaishi Hiroyuki stands at the head of that group – he was the director, and eventually became the head honcho at Trigger.  The unavoidable question is why TTGL was a show I loved and nothing Imaishi has done since has even been a show I even liked, especially since superficially there seem to be a lot of similarities.  I won’t try and answer it all at once, or maybe at all, though I suspect some kind of answer will reveal itself over the course of 27 episodes.

In watching these first two eps, the first thing that struck me was how crucial Iwasaki Taku’s soundtrack was to setting the mood (and of course it gets even more important as the series progresses).  Everything about Gurren Lagann is epic.  It’s a big series in every sense of the word – the story, the characters, the scale, the acting.  At the center of it all is Simon, the little village digger played by Kakihara Tetsuya.  He stands as the contrast to everyone and everything else, not least his aniki Kamina (unquestionably Konishi Katsuyuki’s defining role).  Of course when I watched these two eps the first time I had no idea just how big Nakashima Kazuki’s story actually was, but that knowledge does color my view of events I’m watching play out now.

The other factor that can’t be ignored is the sexual politics of TTGL, which would bleed over into Imaishi’s catalogue at Trigger.  Politically correct this series isn’t, and it’s too easy to say that it was simply the product of a different time in anime – but there’s no question the medium was very different in 2007.  I find Imaishi’s (and Nakashima’s) Kill la Kill to be among the most offensively misogynistic anime ever made, but Gurren Lagann’s portrayal of its female characters like Yoko – and of the quite campy Leeron – didn’t bother me much.  I think it’s because they’re actually portrayed as rather smart and even heroic – but I’ll be interested to see if that perception stands after this rewatch.

Little did I know what we were in for, watching these two episodes the first time.  A big, sprawling, mecha show to be sure – madcap and bombastic in the way nobody but Gainax could get quite right – but not the dark journey Naksahima intended to take us on.  Already the catch phrases that would live on in anime lore have appeared, mostly thanks to Kamina, and the first of many mecha battles certainly impressed.  But it was all just a toe in the water, really.  It would be easy for a series to get lost in the overwhelming mass of notable anime airing in Spring 2007 (indeed Nakashima had another series that season which did, Oh! Edo Rocket) but that was never a danger with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  This was a show that demanded to be the center of attention from the first frames, and never let up.