OKAY. OKAY. OKAY.

I have to sort out my thoughts and calm down.

Honestly just, wow.

I just witnessed the pinacle of the nekketsu shonen spirit in the most goofy, dramatical mecha anime ever.

First of all, I genuinely can't believe the anime is from 2007. The animation for the fights scenes is incredible and even when there's no fights, it's consistant and original. The artstyle just perfectly fits the content, the characters designs are simple yet they tell a lot about the characters personnalities from just a sight. It's something many anime with unecessary heavy characters designs tend to forget. It's simple : if the character is adventurous : you'll see flowing accessories on them like capes or long clothings. If they're dangerous : spiky hair. If they're soft : bubbly, rond hair.

The artstyle is "simple" but well defined, perfectionned and recognizable, all of that sublimated by the crazy animation and you get one of the most visually stunning anime.

When I see stories like this, I remember there's a reason why manga and anime are my favorite type of book and show.

It is unapolegetically eccentric.

The first manga I ever read was Fairy Tail. I was in third grade and my friend, who's mom was a librarian, and I were waiting in her workplace. He was all worked up because he wanted to introduce me to the world of manga. Among all the things he showed me, I picked the first volume or FT and I guess you could say it changed my life for ever.

As any boy of my age, I was obsessed with heroes and such. But NEVER did any other type of entertainment made me so inspired and hyped up.

There was something about seeing Natsu and his friends always getting up no matter the blows they received or how emotionally destroyed they were that deeply touched me. It wasn't exclusive to manga but clearly, nothing else I had ever saw put that much emphasis on never giving up.
Even when I thought it was too much, even when I lowkey wanted them to rest. Hell nah. They'd always stand up back on their feets again in the most ridiculous, flashy over the top way. This made my whole childhood. I know for many it was Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Bleach etc. Nekketsu shonen are so powerful, they left a trace on the hearts of millions of people, a trace that will never faint.

It may seem ridiculous (and it is) how long it takes for Goku to transform and how much emphasis is put on his screams but that was a way to capture the true essence of the feeling that is determination.
Again, it may seem to much but that's how powerful determination is. As a proof, that scream inspired thousands of artists, it's the father of millions of anime, manga, light novels, games that came out after. It's that stupid scream that changed pop culture forever.

If the point of art is to convey feelings then, a feeling as empowering, as absurd and as abstract as determination can only conveyed by an artwork as equally as crazy as that feeling.
Anime aren't affraid to go lenghts and lenght to convey a feeling or a message in it's most genuine essence and that's why I love it.

And that's why I love Gurren Lagann.

What is it that gets you thorugh all the hardhships of life? Love? Motivation? Wrong.

When something terrible happens, the things I usually do lose meaning. Why the f#ck would I care about throwing the garbages or going to an appointement in those moments? It certainly is not because I want to, some would argue it's because It's an obligation, I say it's because of hope.

We know life is cold, suffering and chaos but we still live, why ? Because we have hope. Despite the certainty of getting hurt by associating with others we still do so because we hope at the end it would have been more positive than negative. We know we'll always get disappointed by life and things won't always go our way but we still live because we hope we'll still manage to accomplish what we want.

Hope is our greatest buffer. There's many people that greatly contributed to society and they were mentally ill, physically limited and socially disadvantaged. I've seen people that lacked things become great but I've never seen anyone whith 0 hope and faith in themselves get anywhere.

Humanity is capable of everything. People underestimate how full of possibilities life is and how great they can achieve if they really believe in it and work hard for it.

There's always circumstances and differences but if humans let that stop them, all the pogress we made would have never existed. It's impossible until someone actually does it.

The problem is that we let causality and fatality get to us and that makes us think we're not able or worthy to accomplish anything. This is the begining of despair, the worst is that despair is logical and reasonable. Our lives mean nothing in the universe, we're futile and unimportant and all the knowledge we acquire is negligible. We are purposeless and even at the end there will be no one to tell you "you did good" or "it was the right way to live your life". It is the double edged sword of our so called intelligence that separates us from animals it makes us aware of how small we are and of our own finitude. Animal only rely on instincts, that's true, but at least that spares them from doubting their actions or introspecting themselves.
The only thing we truly realised with our intelligence is that we're nothing, and that's a curse. Humanity knows it's smallness and that is it's only greatness.

Knowing all that, it makes sense to despair or just give up. We're so weak and life dont go easy on us. If anything, foolishness would be to hope, hope for a better future despite our terrible conditions. That is illogical and crazy. That's the chad idomitable human spirit versus the virgin indifferent cruelty of the universe.

Gurren Lagann is a world where humanity is stuck underground, forbidden from going at the surface because of it's dangers. Living underground is dangerous as well but it's a well-known type of dangerous. We can prevent small avalanches etc. We can't predict what will happen on the surface. It's sad because they know that one day, they won't be able to go their way around the ground falling on their head and they'll die burried so they just keep digging deeper and deeper to repel this day. It's reasonable. What would be irrational would be to use the same drill they use to dig down to dig up and get out of the undegrounds to face the unknown. That's the irrationality our two main characters Simon and Kamina share.

Despite the dangers, they want to leave this cocoon to deploy their wings. As the opening theme says, the weight of their aspirations causes them to get reclused and rejected. The greater the goal, the greater the responsibility and the greater the fear. They want freedom but what comes with it is the loss of certainty, confort and stability. They go on a dangerous path so their reolve have to mesure up to their dreams or they'll just get stomped by the weight of the harsh reality.
Our lives are ephemere and seeing it that way can make us mentally imprisoned and cause despair but we can also chose to see it not as a damnation but as an opportunity to do the most out of it and THEN the understanding that our lives are small becomes a LIBERATION. You enjoy all the more the little things and you don't even have the time to give up or doubt.

Only this anime could pull off to perfectly retranscribe the weight, nuances and powerfulness of the crazy driving feeling that is HOPE. The burning illogical hope that defies the logical coldness of despair. We all have a drill, we can either use it to dig up and enlarge our own distress or to break through it and see the small rays of light. Nothing is certain, we want to have control over everything but the only thing we can really control is our choices. It's your choice to see the world as a prison to stay or to escape. Just know that you fully have the power to make your drill the drill that will pierce the heavens and defy the gods themselves! You are capable of kicking logic to the curb and do the impossible. That's the power and curse of humanity written in the most insane way and this was the cringiest review you'll ever read on the greatest story ever told : ours!