Otakuism

Finally the moment we’ve all been waiting for, where Simon stands up to inherit the gar mantle of Kamina in all its glory. I got chills when Simon assumed the Gunbuster position for his epic speech. Nice to know that Gainax still remembers its roots.If you do not know where that pose came from, then go and watch Gunbuster right now. Then some Diebuster so you can hear Nono’s moe voice. Ok, your back now. There were several interesting parallels in Simon’s return to self-confidence. One was the Kamina flashback, where Kamina revealed to Yoko that he never really believed in himself, but was amazed by Simon’s dedication. Great line here, “I swore to be a man that would never laugh at that back.” Gives new meaning to the ‘believe in me who believes in you’ mantra, since Kamina was able to act courageous in that situation because he believed in Simon and Simon was able to act because he believed in Kamina. Of course, it was exactly because of this that Simon couldn’t act when Kamina died, but when he realized that there were people that depended on him - namely Nia - he was able to stand up and believe in himself. Maybe I’m just a romantic, but that’s powerful stuff to me.

Seeing him give such a beat down to Guame was nice, too. When he was about to perform the Giga Drill Break attack is was nice to see everyone go “Oh Shi-!” at the awesomeness of it. I hope there are some other hissatsu attacks Gurren-Lagann will use, though. There’s such potential will you can spout drills all over your body out of nowhere. And the insert song seemed inappropiate to me. Not bad, just wrong. Needed either a Jam Project song or the regular Gurren-Lagann theme, so you can have even more parallels to Kamina’s original attack. Guame was a very sleazy and despictable villian. While Adiane was somewhat noble, or maybe her image was just softened by Viral, Guame was a bastard. Putting down Nia just to turn her into a sex slave is unforgiveable. Though, you have to wonder how sex works for an armadillo fury. Not that I really want to know. Some doujin artist is probably already working on it anyways.

Nia herself was pretty awesome here, gar if you will. She finally discovered why she was made - as a plaything of the Helix King - but was able to stand up to Guame and believe in Simon. The, “I’m not allowed to die,” line was great. It’s really clear now that she likes Simon. A lot. Just take a look at that face when Simon rescues her. And nice to see Simon not being shy anymore either, not balking at piloting the Lagann with her or giving her the emerald. I wonder why the Helix King feels a need to create “daughters” like Nia, only to discard them when they question him. Could just be a megalomaniac, but since he himself is obviously human, it will be interesting to see what his rational for everything is. I’m not sure if he’s going to be the final enemy or not. It looks like he might be defeated by episode 17, so I wonder if we’ll see the larger army from episode 1 introduced then. Beach episode next and the final battle against Adiane probably. But the real question is can Yoko wear a swimsuit skimpier than her normal wear? We shall see.