Episode 3
"Looking at those two makes me think we can aim for bigger things, too."
This episode is as in-your-face as usual, with important developments like the show going Viral and the first time we see Lagann's combining power. Yet possibly the key line of dialogue is that one I quoted from a character whose name I never remember. Kamina's greatest strength isn't what he does himself, it's what he inspires in others. Of course, that line also has some ominous subtext for what happens when humanity climbs out of its pit and aims for the stars.
Again plenty of moments to enjoy, mainly the more comic ones for me: Kamina's unsheathing his sword which appears to be longer than the scabbard it is in, and Kamina & Simon's first attempt at combining being the main ones.
Some thoughts on each episode:
Ep 1
Just before the giant head breaks the surface the chief calls lights out, but the break reveals it's still light out. It is sun down, but unless it's the height of summer they go to bed pretty early OR maybe it shows how long society has been underground as human time and natural time aren't 1-2-1 (this assumes they've forgotten leap years are a thing).
One thing I was listening out for was how Simon (my real name) was pronounced. Now Japanese doesn't have the Si sound so they use シ (shi) and indeed it sounds like Shimon, but I'll forgive that, but in the dub also pronounced it the Japanese way but more like SHImon (actually just watched a clip, can't change tracks on the fly on this disc, and it's more like SEAmon which is even weirder than I remember. Also the X doesn't work as pause which is really annoying!) which was the one thing that bugged me about the dub when I watched it! When you thinking about all the liberties various dubs have taken by changing Japanese things into Western things, jelly doughnuts anyone, why use the Japanese pronunciation of a Western name? (it's actually from Hebrew)
My own take on fanservice is that I've seen/read so much hentai and ecchi stuff that it hardly registers and I only really noticed it because I saw the discussion. Definitely played for laughs here, in that we think Kamina is cracking onto Yoko because of her looks, but as soon as she says she's not from the surface he loses interest. It's the thought of meeting someone different that excited him, but it turns out she's the same as them in being from a pit.
Ep 2
Knowing that his father only made it just outside of their pit might break Kamina especially after his reaction to seeing the skull before even knowing it was his father...
Ep 3
But he seems fine as uses it as inspiration for their next step.
A bit of foreshadowing in this episode:
I can't remember exactly how he dies, but I sure it'll be him rushing in to a bad situation.
One thing I was listening out for was how Simon (my real name) was pronounced. Now Japanese doesn't have the Si sound so they use シ (shi) and indeed it sounds like Shimon, but I'll forgive that, but in the dub also pronounced it the Japanese way but more like SHImon (actually just watched a clip, can't change tracks on the fly on this disc, and it's more like SEAmon which is even weirder than I remember. Also the X doesn't work as pause which is really annoying!) which was the one thing that bugged me about the dub when I watched it! When you thinking about all the liberties various dubs have taken by changing Japanese things into Western things, jelly doughnuts anyone, why use the Japanese pronunciation of a Western name? (it's actually from Hebrew)
Like a lot of Anglicised names though, that original Hebrew version of the name is Shimon (see also Shmuel, Yosef, Yeshua etc), so if anything it's correcting a corruption of language!
Like a lot of Anglicised names though, that original Hebrew version of the name is Shimon (see also Shmuel, Yosef, Yeshua etc), so if anything it's correcting a corruption of language!
Yoko does not look happy with Simon coming along on the hunting trip! :3
I did enjoy how her rifle can fire arrows though! Kamina, does that sword you are drawing have an end?
Apparently the one with more faces decides who wins the mecha fight. At least making sure the face count is even!
Everyone else looked a bit confused about the idea to combine. I think Yoko looked a little too excited by the idea, and thought they meant something totally different!
Gurren Lagann gains a new helmet to cover the brain, and we learn that a drill is indeed mightier than a sword.
Only 3 episodes in and already setting out on the offensive!
It's not really about a band or music at all although some of it exists, it's about an otaku guy who wants to make a dating sim game with his friends, but it's very self-aware, and you get a lot of the usual tropes, along with 4th wall breaks. The characters he sees in real life inevitably wind up being parodied in the game they want to make, that kind of thing.
It's not an ecchi really, but it has some fan service. One of the girls wakes up in his bed because "she didn't get any screen time on the previous episode" as her reason.
Episode 3
I continue to be impressed on this second viewing by just how great the pacing of the show is, how it manages to pack both exciting and well-choreographed action and more intimate or expository scenes into a short runtime and still none of it feels rushed. Plus there are so many different scenes and environments and they all look beautiful, I have no idea how much Gurren Lagann cost to make but I imagine it must have been a lot. It’s even more apparent just how good this show looks now it is filling 80% of the width of my wall.
Ah, you don't say! Funnily enough, I actually thought that was probably the best bit. I love the part where Takuto takes a flying jump down the stairs; there's a real feeling of freedom that goes with it, like the kind of thing that you might be able to do in a dream.
Yeah, about Captain Earth, me too, but it just shows how much I care about mecha designs because I always wanted to give that show a try just based on the mecha design!
I know that MVM only just recently released the complete series on Blu-ray, so... maybe I'll be tempted for Deal of the Week price further down the line?
Back to Gurren Lagann and a quick backtrack through episodes 1 and 2...
unless it's the height of summer they go to bed pretty early OR maybe it shows how long society has been underground as human time and natural time aren't 1-2-1 (this assumes they've forgotten leap years are a thing)
As the chief explains to Kamina, "We've been warned for countless generations not to unseal the canopy." Humans have by this point lost touch with the outside world, so they really wouldn't know what's happening up top. This is why the village breeds pig-moles as food.
It pleases me how Dai and I picked different "key" lines of dialogue from this episode. Dai went with a line spoken by Littner village's Dayakka, and I chose an earlier one from Yōko, who was at the time criticising Simon's abilities.
it manages to pack both exciting and well-choreographed action and more intimate or expository scenes into a short runtime and still none of it feels rushed. Plus there are so many different scenes and environments and they all look beautiful
Funnily enough, I already had it in my mind that I wanted to compliment the shot composition in episode 3, which is really outstanding. It's so exciting and kinetic, and really brings the viewer along for the ride by having Viral looking down on a bleeding Kamina before reversing the perspectives to have Kamina tower above as the tide of the battle changes.
And yeah, it balances the high-octane fighting with engaging and delicate character drama. It's wonderful.
Just a forewarning for all simulwatchers that tomorrow brings us the dreaded episode 4. The short story is that it was overseen by a guest director rather than main director Hiroyuki Imaishi, and quite frankly it looks embarrassingly bad. It's also a very messy and chaotic episode and would likely be the final hammer blow to anyone already on the fence about whether to continue watching the series at this point, which is a terrible, terrible injustice. It really doesn't represent the quality of this series and what later episodes will go on to do.
As the chief explains to Kamina, "We've been warned for countless generations not to unseal the canopy." Humans have by this point lost touch with the outside world, so they really wouldn't know what's happening up top. This is why the village breeds pig-moles as food.
Yep, I know.
I'm just saying this could show just how long they've been down there. You'd have to be a astronomy nerd and a mathematician, and know what time of year it was and what time they think it is (and what location, I'm assuming somewhere in Japan) to then give a rough estimate of the actual time, the difference between the two and then how long it would take for time to slip that much.
In the real world with no natural light and only a meat diet, humans probably wouldn't last too long unless some form of evolution took place.
You'd have to be a astronomy nerd and a mathematician, and know what time of year it was and what time they think it is (and what location, I'm assuming somewhere in Japan) to then give a rough estimate of the actual time, the difference between the two and then how long it would take for time to slip that much.
Meh, probably not. Maybe there are areas when sunlight filters down and they can grow plants or something.
At the end of the day, humans being depicted as being forced to scrape out a living underground is very simply symbolism of their oppression. This show's a balls-to-the-wall mecha action anime, not a science thesis.
Episode 3
I had forgotten that Viral makes his introduction this early into the series. @ayase makes some great points (also jealous of that projector!) that I would echo for this episode.
Like a lot of Anglicised names though, that original Hebrew version of the name is Shimon (see also Shmuel, Yosef, Yeshua etc), so if anything it's correcting a corruption of language!
But clocks also go wrong over time. I'm saying that if you knew all the parameters you could work out the time from when their ancestors closed the roof to now.
Is that lore written elsewhere. Can't remember it from the show itself (been a while though). Certainly looks like their pit is in an extinct volcano from the aerial shot (obviously that could be a lot of place if it's based on the real world, but as it's written and made in Japan that's the obvious choice)
Lore?
You mean that the world of GL is a fictional one? I would've thought that was evident just from watching the show.
There's no mention of any real-life countries — or nations of any sort, for that matter — so that facet of our own world has no bearing on the story of Gurren Lagann whatsoever.
You definitely have to take a lot of GL with a pinch of salt realism wise, also same is true for KLK I guess, life fibres? what?
GL has some basis in reality, i.e. people need to eat food, and have homes, and are presented as people. But a lot of what goes on is definitely make-believe territory!
You definitely have to take a lot of GL with a pinch of salt realism wise, also same is true for KLK I guess, life fibres? what?
GL has some basis in reality, i.e. people need to eat food, and have homes, and are presented as people. But a lot of what goes on is definitely make-believe territory!
You mean that the world of GL is a fictional one? I would've thought that was evident just from watching the show.
There's no mention of any real-life countries — or nations of any sort, for that matter — so that facet of our own world has no bearing on the story of Gurren Lagann whatsoever.
I might be imaging it (I've watched a lot over the last 48 hours), but there's a shot of the planet that they're on and it looks very earth like (actually that might have been The Promised Neverland s2)
Anyway there's obviously a history to their world whether it's based on ours or no and it does have a bearing on the story as the weapons put aside by who ever, are the weapons Yoko and her group wield. Also because of a chemical leak they were forced out of their pit and then the beastmen attacked them leading to the incident which kicks off Kamina and Simon's journey. No weapons cache, no Yoko/beastmen attack crashing through their roof and thus Kamina will probably be stuck dreaming big and doing little in the pit and Simon happily digging away! Again just the historian/archaeologist in me thinking out loud about the origin of things.
Whoops you saw that before I changed it. We had this debate last year. And I never said I didn't like it, just that some of it didn't work for me because of some of, in my eyes, the liberties it took in telling a real persons life by combining it with another real persons life.
It's Viral time in Episode 3. He was kinda bodied in this episode, but he's definitely a great character that gets even better as the series goes on and comes to have great chemistry with the main character.
Great action, great animation, Simon yet again showing us he can dance just fine and we get introduced to the first mecha design I actually like in the series.
The road to their adventure starts here. @Neil.T I took a look at the menu and didn't find any variation of episode 6, is it in another disc?
Episode 3
The start of Team Gurren... And the start of Viral's antics..
Some awesome robot action in this episode.. and the combination of the robots to make.. Gurren Lagann! (quite a quick title drop)
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k, there really is no hope!
