Publisher: Aniplex USA (through Bandai Entertainment, USA)Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles
Length: 112 mins (Movie 1), 126 mins (Movie 2)
Production Date: 2008 - 2009
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
Story Outline: 14 year old Simon is a digger in a village called Giha which is located underground. While is happy to expand the village by drilling holes, he isn’t what you’d call a respected member of society. Laws state that no one is allowed to have contact with the outside world and indeed many people believe the surface does not exist. But Kamina has other ideas, and ropes Simon into his "Gurren Brigade" in attempt to reach the surface. It fails, however a huge robot falls into the village from above causing panic among the villagers. Following and attacking the robot is a scantily clad young woman named Yoko who fires her large gun repeatedly at it. The task of bringing it down seems impossible, but Kamina and Simon take Yoko the partly buried “big face” Simon discovered previously and using another artefact he found, a small drill key, they activate the “big face” (which is actually a small robot), destroy the robot and escape to the surface. Once there, Simon and Kamina discover that the giant robots are called Gunmen and are piloted by creatures called Beastmen, who seem to enjoy terrorising humans who live on the surface. One thing leads to another, and the trio find themselves centre of a resistance group, gathering members along the way, stealing Gunmen from Beastmen and using them to liberate the surface world for humankind.
Mini Review: I really enjoyed the original TV series, except maybe for the inclusion of Nia. I mean the show basically was an antidote to the dullness of modern day anime, the moe stuff included, so why include the moeish Nia? Now I’ve never been a big fan of movie compilations of TV series at all, and these two films haven’t changed my mind. Sure, back in the late 1970’s these films made sense, as there was no home video market and some shows didn’t get repeated on TV. Now it makes a whole lot less sense as I can pretty much watch any show I like at anytime. The first film basically covers the first two arcs of the TV series, the second starts a little before the very end of the second arc. With so many characters that need to be introduced, there is no time for any development at all in the first film for any of the secondary characters. This is really the first film’s downfall. The second film takes away the major problem I had with the beginning of the third arc in the TV series; the fact the span of time and changes in the behaviour of the main characters was jarring. However the flow of the story is severely messed up. When you had a tense and way overtop climax at nearly the end of every episode, it works well in a TV serial format, but it doesn’t work well when edited together in a movie. The special edition versions come with extra discs; “Gurren Lagann Parallel Works”, which is composed of eight music videos. I original thought the first special edition set came with the original “Gurren Lagann Parallel Works” released in 2008, and the second move special edition came with “Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2” which was released in early 2010. Unfortunately this was not the case. It’s “Gurren Lagann Parallel Works” spread over two discs. Even then the music videos aren’t all that great. I think I would have been better off importing the Japanese R2 DVD of “Gurren Lagann Parallel Works” , of which the last video contains most of the new animation from the prologue of the first film. I went to a lot of trouble to get these films (been trying several sources since July due to Aniplex USA’s dreadful distribution), and I don’t think it was worth it at all. 6.5 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: 18 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).
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