asian-invasion

I’m always ready to check out a new anime title when it’s released to the US in English-dubbed format. Subtitles are a distraction for me. I would rather gain the entire experience of a show rather than having to switch back and forth from watching to reading. But that’s nothing to do with this review.

Tengen Toppa (loosely translated to “Heaven Shattering”) Gurren Lagann, is a Japanese “shonen” mecha anime series originally produced by Gainax studio and co-produced by Aniplex and Konami. ADV Films in Houston, TX gained the license and left it to Bandai Entertainment who re-dubbed all 27 episodes into English.

This series is difficult for me to sink into for different reasons. First, I’m not a big fan of “giant robot” anime. This made it difficult for me to like Transformers or Voltron growing up. It’s not enough to make me biased, though. Second, there’s more than a fair share of cheesy dialogue. I often find myself grimacing when lead characters Kamina and young Simon exchange lines like “over the top” heroes, usually yelling either menacingly or victoriously. This is something that definitely doesn’t win much favor with me.

It’s hard to overlook the “fan service” characters Yoko (the main one) and Kyoh, not to mention the overtly flamboyant Leeron. There is a host of whatever anime character archetype you could wan; just magnify the personalities a few times and the story, which is largely unoriginal, isn’t enough to mask the cheesy qualities of Gurren Lagann. It’s likable to only a certain extent, meaning it’s not a obnoxious study of anime stereotypes in spite of the show being hard to swallow at times.

Gurren Lagann airs two episodes Monday nights at 11:pm on SciFi Channel. If you like giant fighting robots and don’t mind a fairly typical story with a cheesy script, give this a try…

Trackback URI | Comments RSS