gurren lagann 11
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A transcendent hero appears!
Like how everyone predicted, Simon has become the new Kamina. Sure, it took three episodes… one carrier jacking… a village of boring and uninteresting nubile hawt chix0rs… and Nia, but Simon finally came around. He’s not just Kamina Reloaded, he’s the Evolutionary Kamina. Hopefully, Simon carries over his best qualities (the quiet determination) with Kamina’s (absolute tour de forceness, if that’s a real non-made up quality).
The best part of Simon’s arrival is that we no longer have a wimpy, spineless loser. He’s someone we can proudly root for… it only took, what, over a decade for Gainax to make it up to us for inflicting Shinji Ikari on us? Hopefully Simon will encourage other people to create less typical loser harem males and more bombastic Kamina types. Still, even with Simon’s newfound bravado, he doesn’t get the transcendent hero cape unless he bags Nia and Yoko. Preferably simultaneously. (And if Kyon bags Mikuru and videotapes it, then he gets the transcendent hero cape. It’s that simple.)
Not only is the torch passed from Kamina to Simon, but also from Yoko to Nia as the female lead. I never thought that Nia and her weird clover theme would supplant Yoko as the alpha female, but she has. And I would never have guessed that an anime series would start off with two A+++ characters (Kamina and Yoko) and have them take a backseat for other characters to shine… and have it work. Despite my sobriety, I can’t think of this happening before in anime.
(The weirdest part has to be the fanboys all flooding over to the Nia camp… between Konata and Nia, we’re probably in a new Golden Age of DFC. Scary thought… I mean, Maria even had a size reduction. The horror!)
The comedy MVP has to be Leeron’s “This is a boring village” comment. Now that’s comedy. Andohbytheway, it must be good to be the king. I now have the Monster King slightly ahead of the Burger King King in my King Power Rankings.
Also, Simon almost has enough votes to enter the Emo Facial Contortion Pantheon. He’s very close. Probably worth noting that he’ll be the first member inducted who isn’t a complete train wreck. (But with Gainax at the helm, I’m not completely sure until we get to the Captain Harlock ending.)
I know I say this a lot, but I am enjoying Gurren Lagann a lot. It’s a fun series and shows what anime could be capable of delivering.
(Episode 12 looks frisky as well, but since Yoko is always wearing a bikini and her top already fell off, how are they going to top that? I hope Gainax has been watching those Code Geass DVD specials…)
28 Responses to “gurren lagann 11”
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We all knew that Yoko’s breasts were to much for the current loli trend to handle, thus enter Nia.
Flooding over? I was never a Yoko Fan. Sure she’s hot and stuff, so what?
Nia is Good Stuff. Sure she’s a loli, but she got Clover Eyes! Not many anime girls I know have Clover Eyes. Woohoo Nia Wins!
And Kamina sucks. Sorry, flame me or whatever. Just never liked the guy. Good Riddance I say. Ok, I give him credit for making Simon what he is today. That’s about it.
R.I.P. Kamina, I’ll just put you together with the hundred other dead pre-Nias. Hope you enjoy their company.
Nia Wins!!
Maybe its just me, but Simon’s transition from Shinji like moping to Kamina and above awesomeness just felt somewhat unnatural. In one scene, he continues to weep about how he cannot be like Kamina. In the next, he suddenly “realizes” the truth. While what brought about the change is pretty obvious, Nia’s words to Simon doesn’t seem to draw a reaction from Simon, in this episode at the least. Though I suppose that is how epiphanies work, and it matches the pace of the series as a whole, but it still feels somewhat odd to me.
With that said, the baton has been passed to Nia and Simon, and I can’t say I have any complaints. And indeed, a new era of DFC is dawning.
(This is my third time retyping this because I keep forgeting to fill out the spam protection slot ;_;)
I’m pretty sure Seto and Airantou don’t fall under the DFC trappings… at least the main females aren’t DFC.
Could be me, but as an Asian I feel more Asian women are falling under the DFC category. Could be happening in Japan too for all I know. Thus the sudden fetish for DFC…
Anyway, back to topic, I think Simon drilling by himself is the main point of the episode. It’s the drilling where Simon is mostly at home with. So I don’t feel it is that strange nor sudden for his “transformation” (A little rushed perhaps but not much). It takes drilling for Simon to be Simon. That’s what Kamina would have said.
And yes, I am bored at work.
Simon is Simon! Kamina ja nai!
-And does everyone remember the very first scene of Gurren Lagaan? This ep pretty much made it clear that the badass barking orders at his crew aboard the Dai-Ganzan in midst of a fierce space battle is what will become of Simon.
Gosh I loved this episode… I think I rewatched it almost as many times as the ep where Kamina passed away.
So now Yoko joins Maria (Hayate the Combat Butler), Siesta (The Familiar of Zero), and Nayuki (Kanon) in the Nayuki Ending All-Stars, where Melonpan gets passed up for DFC. There’ll be quite a number of All-Stars if this Golden Age of DFC continues.
I think Simon’s balls just dropped.
Which is good news as regards the chances of him trying to bag Nia and/or Yoko…
I can’t say too much more than what you did, but I also made a blog post about this episode with similar opinions. Simply an amazing tour de force of character transformation.
I didn’t really mind the suddenness of the transformation, since the buildup was there, meaning Simon WAS trying to work his way through this and recognized he was doing something wrong. Coming to understand the answer to a problem often does come in form of sudden cognitive snap. Epiphanies in anime pretty much are exaggerated forms of that, and TTGL is already rather exaggerated of a series.
The Awesomeness index of this show would be though the roof if Nia turns out to be a buster machine. :P
Really loved this episode. For me this even tops episode 8. Simon’s evolution into gunbuster pose badass has been a convincing one (just watched episode 2 again, and I am impressed how far the character has evolute).
[quote comment=”151671″]I’m pretty sure Seto and Airantou don’t fall under the DFC trappings… at least the main females aren’t DFC.[/quote] Luna and the shrine maidens fill out the daily quota. DFC has become an essential part of a healthy diet. Glad Gurren Lagann isnt making us fat.
[quote comment=”151685″]Luna and the shrine maidens fill out the daily quota. DFC has become an essential part of a healthy diet. Glad Gurren Lagann isnt making us fat.[/quote]
Yes, I agree having a mixture is good. Anyone remembers Eiken? That was the ANTI-DFC. Melonpan can’t even begin describe it… oh the horror… and to think I enjoyed it…
We need some hot Yoko/Nia action. STAT. Honestly. Gainax doesn’t know their audience yet? We want hot lesbian sexxors. Nobody can deny it. I can’t even deny it and I’m straight.
Man…I wish Yoko was the costume raping type…
>> I now have the Monster King slightly ahead of the Burger King King in my King Power Rankings.
I’m holding my vote until I get a Monster King game with my extra value meal.
Hate to sound like a bigger otaku, but what’s DFC and its relation to mellonpan?
Love this show. It went from lol to win, suddenly back to lol and then into Hall of Fame. Brace for Gainax Ending.
@ Jason, about half my attempts to enter this site are futile. I get the “Site is using more than 20% of its CPU quota” very often. And thats even AFTER I switched off my Firefox tweaks. Are your host that cheap on bandwidth? :P
I’m in the…. Pro Yoko Against Kamina camp? if there is one? hrm.
Oh well. Sad. All these lolichasers is enough to make a normal person cry.
[quote comment=”151693″]Are your host that cheap on bandwidth? :P[/quote]
Well, you’re not the only one. I’m looking for solutions myself, but the bottom line is that WordPress 2 is just not as fast or efficient as WordPress 1. It takes almost double the CPU time per visitor than it did before. Also, because I put in better anti-spam measures, the spam bots have been hammering the site extra hard. The politicians should stop making dumb stuff like bringing a camera into a movie theater illegal and focus on spam (e-mail and comment) laws.
[quote post=”1101″]13 06 2007
Akumate (07:09:42, #151692) Quote :
Hate to sound like a bigger otaku, but what’s DFC and its relation to mellonpan?[/quote]
DFC=Delicious Flat Chest
[quote comment=”151694″]I’m in the…. Pro Yoko Against Kamina camp? if there is one? hrm.
Oh well. Sad. All these lolichasers is enough to make a normal person cry.[/quote]
I’m definitely no lolichaser, all of my fav anime girls are definitely ANTI-DFC and of LEGAL age… until NIA that is. And that’s not because of her DFC but her eyes and hair color and her “hakoiri musume” attitude. (Hakoiri Musume directly translates to “Girl in a Box” which is a Japanese phrase for “Innocent, Naive Girl who knows nothing much outside her home”. Kudos to Gainax for really putting her in a box.)
In anycase, I’m Pro Nia – Neutral Yoko – Against Kamina if you’re wondering.
ah, the loli in a box. the last, and greatest, of these was Outlaw Star’s Melfina. Nia’s 100 years too early to supplant her in my book.
plus, Yoko is still tops in my TTGL rankings.
[quote comment=”151701″]ah, the loli in a box. the last, and greatest, of these was Outlaw Star’s Melfina. Nia’s 100 years too early to supplant her in my book.
plus, Yoko is still tops in my TTGL rankings.[/quote]
Melfina.is.not.LOLI!!!! *bangs head at wall. She definitely appears to be 18. And that’s legal.
But she is the greatest Chick-in-a-Box. That I agree.
i misspoke. i had originally typed in hakoiri musume, but for certain reasons, it ended up as read. silly, darou?
Lol, well it isn’t that important. The description of what defines Loli is different over many countries in the world. I was just being defensive :P
But yeah I would rank the Hakoiri Musume just below Nekomimi, Miko and Meido in my list of fav anime female standards.
> And I would never have guessed that an anime series would start off with two A+++ characters (Kamina and Yoko) and have them take a backseat for other characters to shine… and have it work. Despite my sobriety, I can’t think of this happening before in anime.
Well said–even with the aid of alcohol, I can’t think of anything in anime like it. Simoun going from Kamina worshipper to a hero and a leader in his own right in just eleven episodes–it’s hard to do character development like that well but Gurren-Lagann has pulled it off. Normally I’d rather stick my face in a fan than watch a mecha series, but so far this is awesome.
They take out an awesome character and replace him with a stupid “Cute” little girl who dosen’t fit the series at all…
I was really hoping Adine was going to splat her.
Nia ftl. Her voice irritates me. When’s Yoko getting the spotlight again :D
Nia scores 100 on Mary-Sue tests. Stick that in your drill and spin it.
Stick that in your drill and spin it?
LOL, that’s priceless.