I absolutely love Gurren Lagann. There's so much to enjoy, it's bombastic, its loud, it's incredibly dumb, but sometimes that's all a series needs to be. It's motivation incarnate, and sometimes it's all you need to cheer yourself up after a crappy day. Speaking of Gurren Lagann, this was directed by the same man.

There's plenty of similarities to the director's previous works. Gurren Lagann, Space Patrol Luluco, Kill la Kill, and others in Trigger's and Gainax's catalog in the designs or the plot. It matches GLs grand, ridiculous scale for it's finale, although it doesn't go... all the way. It's kind of hard to go beyond throwing literal galaxies at each other.

This is a great movie! The action is great and plenty of amazingly done animation. But honestly, it can feel a bit too much. Now, I'm totally okay with going completely overboard on a stylized anime in such a way that it blows my balls off. Its just that sometimes, the scenes get WAY too busy and it feels like overload and it can be really hard to see what's going on. I honestly wouldn't doubt this is intentional, to mimic the nature of an uncontrollable fire, but I feel it just crosses the line between incredibly loud and wonderfully stylized to annoying and hard to watch.

Speaking of the animation, this one blends a lot of 3D CG with masterfully done 2D animation. Normally, I'd be a bit underwhelmed with such a massive crutch on 3D, but honestly it's done really well here even if I don't know if it's exactly needed.

I guess perhaps the premise is not done as well as it should have been. I appreciate the more lighthearted tone of the action (big dudes punch and fight and make up attack names at each other) but I kind of wish there was a bit more development with the rather heavy topic of prejudice and genocide.

As with most of Trigger and Gainax's dubs, this one is very competently made. I appreciate the inclusion of the dynamic block text in English and in Japanese. I think the voice actor for Gulo is just kind of weird, but otherwise a great cast with plenty of veteran VAs.

The music sounds like Christian Rock. It's kind of weird, but I think if anyone knows what I'm talking about, they'd get the comparison. I like it, but I don't think it stands out completely on its own like previous soundtracks of their other works like Gurren Lagann or Kill La Kill.

There's also a few "prequel" shorts: "Promare Lio" and "Promare Galo", which follow the named characters shortly before the beginning of the movie. They're short, at only 10 minutes, but it's fun supplementary material. I'm not sure if it's better to watch them before or after the movie, but I think if you like the movie, you should watch them regardless.

I love Gurren Lagann, and any similar media is great in my book. It gets a bit busy in the animation, almost too much for its own good, but I think if you enjoy Trigger's stuff, or like big anime robots, this is a great time.