Don't get me wrong here.
The second Gurren Lagann movie recaps episodes 17 to 27 of the original series and includes some new stuff as well. As I said in my review of the first movie, I wasn't a big fan of that. It felt rushed and I disliked the divergence from the original series.
However, in this movie, the divergence was handled much better with an epic and mouth dropping final 10 minutes which was 100x better than the original ending. This movie succeeded in trying to do its own thing. Like the first movie, it also succeeded at throwing new information like f.ex Nia writing a letter to the deceased Kamina, Simon figuring out that she will die and Nia being much more of a badass!
Nia in this film got her own mech and she becomes way cooler and much less of a damsel in distress which she was a bit in the OG series. But just a bit, she was still a fantastic character in that as well.
But that wasn't the case with the other characters. Simon, Yoko, Kittan and Rossiu had the exact same things happen to them as it happened in the series, which I felt they could've given us more information about these characters. I would've really liked to know more about Simon and Kamina's deceased parents, which they had given us no information about. I would also really like to have known more about that first scene in the OG series, which I speculate is Kamina's father and Boota in the first war before the anti-spirals took over. However, I think a prequel would be great because it would explain Kamina's father, Lordgenome and the anti-spirals. Which we only got 10 minutes in the first film. Furthermore, another issue that I had in this movie is that like the first one, It feels way too compressed. Gainax could've made these two movies a bit lengthier.
To conclude, this movie was great all around but could've elaborated on some more things e.g anti-spirals, most of the main cast, Lordgenome, Kamina & Simons parents, etc. But, I highly recommend you watch this, mostly for the new stuff that's added and for the final battle, which was all around glorious. Still, though, it's not as fantastic as the real thing and you have to watch the series before these movies! It was still a tearjerker, especially that wedding :(
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