Don't get me wrong here.

I fucking LOOOOVE Gurren Lagann! For the past 8 months, it's been my all-time favorite anime. Everything about TTGL is brilliant including the plot, characters, music, and art, which Gainax had done an excellent job of making sure all of these factors were amazing. However, beyond that, I love the themes about evolution and ambition, two values which hold up very high to me. This show inspired and uplifted me, made me think about my life in a different way and made me realize the goals and dreams I had deep within me, that's how powerful this show was to me! But, let's not beat around the bush, this is going to be a review on the first movie, NOT on the excellent anime.

This movie is much like a recap movie of the first 15 episodes of the main series. But, it's not a recap movie like e.g the first two Madoka Magica movies. No, the Gurren Lagann movies include new footage and information that wasn't spread out in the main show. I'm going to try to spoil as little as I can, but an example in this movie was that they explored Lorgenomes backstory and how the world of Gurren Lagann came to be. There are many other things like that which get explained here. I think this is a great thing to do because even as amazing as TTGL was, there were still some questions left unanswered that left some wide gaps.

The purpose of these two movies was I think to fill in those gaps like f.ex who was Lordgenome or how the world of TTGL was made while also recapping the most essential parts of the story, which I think these two movies succeeded excellently at. There were quite an alarming amount of things that I hadn't noticed or forgot about in the main series e.g how Yoko came from an underground village with Dayakka, that the whole show was post-apocalyptic or that Dai-Gurren ship was originally enemy property which the gang had invaded.

However, with all that being said, there's not much else to take home. What I disliked about this movie in particular in how rushed it felt. It felt like Gainax knew they couldn't pack in 16 episodes worth of material in a duration of just two small hours, but tried to anyways. It's not as though they only included the most essential moments and the new stuff. No, they also diverged from the main series for the reason to alter the story, which felt totally unnecessary. This was most clear towards the end, where they try to defeat the gunmen.

To conclude, this movie succeeded in adding new and interesting stuff but failed in trying to bring its own thing, instead of just being obedient and faithful to its original source. The result was a mediocre movie which I won't revisit any time soon. But, wait! Don't watch this before the main series please! Watch these two movies AFTER the main 28 episode series, then watch these two moves. I would also recommend giving a lot of time between watching the series and the movies because then it will be easier to contrast and compare the two. Speaking of two, I will now go on to review the other movie!