The spiral shows up as a visual and thematic motif all throughout Gainax's latest series, the giant-robot epic Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. However, the most important way the spiral influences the show is perhaps the simplest - by its shape. Gurren-Lagann uses an extremely common trope of shounen and action shows to great advantage - the spiral of ever-increasing stakes.
If you look at Shounen shows, you can see a spiral-shaped motif of growth in many of the classics and contemporaries alike. It makes sense: in action cartoons like Dragon Ball Z, you take a story and extend it as long as possible. Since such series tend to last for a really, really long time, the developers need to keep it interesting - and so things grow.
1. So you spend a certain length of story time fighting such and such super-powerful enemy. Once he's defeated, of course, the series can't end, so
2. A new villain needs to be introduced. And of course, if the new villain is weaker than or equal to the old one, there's no challenge, no drama - so to raise the stakes, this new villain is far more powerful than the old one, or there are a lot of them, or something. So the main character has to become stronger, and defeats this new enemy, after which
3. Yet another new villain shows up, more powerful than the last, rinse and repeat until no one buys your stale old shit anymore and you finally end the show after a couple hundred episodes.
Congratulations, you have create the Shounen Double-Spiral. Much like our own double-helix (you have no idea how much comparing spirals and helixes is bothering me), this set of spirals - one shaped by the obstacles our hero must face and the other by his growth to accommodate the increasing stakes - acts as a kind of story DNA and ultimately shapes almost any shounen or action show.
The phenomenon of ever-increasing stakes can be seen in (and really, is necessary to) any serial show, but is most pronounced in shounen cartoons. Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc. etc. People always getting new techniques or unleashing new powers to beat ever-more difficult enemies, and more powers and more powers. It's most apparent in Dragon Ball Z where the strength of its characters are actually assigned numerical values. Yes, they do indeed go over 9000. Sigh. The growths of characters in these shows are, I feel, mislabled as arcs; instead of having a traceable path with a rise, peak, and conclusion, they basically keep going and going, increasing more and more with each new iteration of the story, spiraling ever outward.
See what I did there? That's why I get paid the big bucks.
Anyway, Gurren-Lagann adapting the spiral as a conscious motif is a stroke of self-referential genius in the field of action anime. Whereas the spiral in most shows is a side-effect, a phenomenon borne necessarily of the endless commercially-driven extension of a story, Gurren takes that premise and utilizes it, compressing it into a normal 26-episode series. Instead of increasing the stakes as an attempt to keep a long-format series from getting boring, Gurren-Lagann uses the proven concept of the spiral as a powerful framework upon which to build its story. And it works.
The story builds itself bigger and bigger almost every episode by throwing our heroes against stakes which increase by the minute and forcing them to grow and adapt along the way. However, the shounen formula double-spiral is used for more than just a lifeline - whereas the growth in a long-term show is a shot of adrenaline to kickstart a slowing heart, the adrenaline in Gurren-Lagann is pumped into a healthy story to push it further, and further, and further.
Let's break down the spiral growth of Gurren-Lagann as represented by the size of the Hero's Robot. I won't note every instance of increasing stakes or scale because this is long enough already, but even when the robot itself doesn't get bigger, there are new allies that join the Gurren Brigade, fights where a weapon is used to a noticeably larger degree, or other upgrades to the side robots constituting a power-up. While more pronounced in some episodes than others, you can trace a distinct, definite increase in the scale of the conflict and characters in almost every episode of this series.
We start out with the conflict of humans being oppressed and trapped underground.
1. Lagann - Episode 1
The first mech Simon finds is tiny, by all accounts. Standing roughly waist-high on an adult, the Lagann is little more than an open-topped head with arms and legs. It can sprout a single drill from its bottom end. The Lagann is used to fight off a single enemy ganmen in close quarters.
1b. Gurren - Episode 2
Kamina decides that to fight Ganmen, he'll need a ganmen of his own, and jacks one from a beastman. Although it doesn't quite respond at first, he proves that with fighting spirit and determination, he can Do the Impossible. Somehow. This power-up evens the odds from 3v1 to 2v2, making our heroes stronger and allowing them to overcome the odds. Which is the whole point, really. The Gurren is an actual giant robot, but is small relative to the mecha you find in other shows.
2. Gurren-Lagann - Episode 3
When faced against Viral, a seemingly unbeatable beastman riding a Ganmen with two faces (the normal one in its torso and an extra head on top), all hope seems lost - until Kamina grabs Simon's little Lagann and jams it into his own Gurren's head in one of the most memorable (read: hilarious) moments in the series. It seems stupid, until the Lagann's ability to merge with other machines is revealed, and the two become the first real incarnation of the titular Gurren-Lagann. The Gurren-Lagann is about the size of a standard mecha.
As a side note, episode 3 also features the first of a long series of "cross counters." That's where two fighters punch each other and hit each other in the face at the same time, always accompanied by a dranatic pause as all onlookers stop in shock to say "C- Cross Counter!" The Japanese fucking love Cross Counters. They're everywhere in anime and manga that involve fighting, and GL is no exception. I can think of only one such cross counter in American culture, and that was Neo vs. Agent Smith in the last battle of Matrix Revolutions, but that whole segment was a big goddamn wannabe anime anyway so I'm not sure it counts.
3. Dai-Gurren - Episode 8
Faced with destruction from the Daiganzan, the Gurren brigade formulates a plan to use the Lagann to take it over. When all is said and done, the Daiganzan has been taken as the Dai-Gurren - the renamed Great Gurren Brigade (Dai-Gurren-Dan (大グレン団）, henceforth GGB) has their own walking fortress as headquarters. The Dai-Gurren is about the size of a battleship (with legs).
Episode 8, dramatic and important battle that it is, is also the first appearance of the Giga Drill Breaker, Gurren-Lagann's super move which involves about thirty (yes, 30) drills sprouting from various points and joints on its body, and then using a drill about far larger than Gurren-Lagann itself to break through an enemy.
4. Simon alone in the Gurren-Lagann - Episode 11
Whe defending the Dai-Gurren from another of the four generals, for the first time since Kamina's death, Simon proves that he can fight in the Gurren-Lagann solo, using the same moves as he was able to with Kamina. Technially other people can ride in the Gurren below, but they don't really do anything - it's all Simon. Also, It seems to be from this point on that Gurren-Lagann can sprout a drill from any point on its body.
5. Take to the skies - Episode 13
In Episode 13, the GGB somehow surmounts insurmountable odds, again. This time, Gurren-Lagann merges with a flying enemy ganmen to even the score against aerial battleships. At the end of the episode, the GGB steals the flight technology, and by episode 14, the Dai-Gurren and all of the Ganmen on it can now fly.
After episode 15, in which they defeat Lord Genome, the series skips 7 years into the future, where a new conflict comes in from the Anti-Spiral tribe, which declares that they since humanity has grown so much and so fast, they will destroy the entire planet and all human life on it, which they will do by crashing the moon into it.
This is an indication that if you thought the power-ups and rising stakes in the first arc of the show were something (they weren't, they were actually fairly standard for a giant robot show, although the scope of the story was still slightly wider than most), you ain't seen nothin' yet.
6. Arc-Gurren - Episode 20
So anyway, Rossiu and the government plan evacuations as they find buried beneath the city a massive spaceship called the Arc-Gurren designed for exactly that, planetary evacuation. Meanwhile, instead of running, Simon decides that they'll fight back. Against the moon. Sorry, let me repeat that.
They decide to fight the moon. So it's safe to say that battles will be in space from this point on.
7. Arc Gurren-Lagann - Episode 22
After fighting off a ton of enemy spaceships they reach the Main Ship, which combines to form a super-ship. Which is fine, because the Gurren-Lagann combines with the Arc-Gurren to form the Arc Gurren-Lagann, which is far larger than the Arc-Gurren itself was, making it larger than a city. At this point, the Arc Gurren-Lagann is a giant robot being piloted by another giant robot - the Gurren-Lagann itself sits in a pilot's seat, controlled by Simon from the interior pilot's seat.
The Arc Gurren-Lagann fights the enemy ship and ultimately wins the battle by punching it out of the space-time continuum.
8. The Moon/Supergalactic Dai-Gurren - Also Episode 22
The Arc Gurren-Lagann continues to fight the moon, which is itself a giant robot that shoots lasers and such at them. Continuing the trend, they manage to co-opt the moon itself, turning it into a space battleship which is, well, the size of the moon. This is named in the next episode the Supergalactic (Chouginga (超銀河) - Chou is an adverb meaning "super-" or "very-", and ginga meaning galaxy) Dai-Gurren. By this point, every other ganmen in the Gurren Brigade has been upgraded to be spaceworthy, and by this point all of them are also giant robots being piloted by giant robots.
9. Supergalactic Gurren-Lagann - Episode 25
After breaking free of a space ocean of some sort (we're so far past the point of stopping to question this stuff) and releasing lots of Spiral Energy, the Supergalactic Dai-Gurren transforms into an even more gianter robot. The show labels this with the fittingly large moniker "Transcendent Super Spiral Dreadnought Ganmen, Supergalactic Gurren-Lagann."
In episode 26, the enemy is seen throwing planets at the SGL, so we can see that an earth-like planet is the relative size of a basketball to this fucking thing. Also, this is a giant robot, being piloted by a giant robot, which is in turn being piloted by a giant robot. That's three layers of giant robot piloting. I have nothing to add to this.
10. Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann - Episode 27
After escaping from an infinite labyrinth of alternate universes, the Supergalactic Gurren-Lagann combines itself with all of the individual members of the Gurren Brigade, who are each piloting their own mecha. The final eponymous product is I swear to god the size of a a solar system at the smallest, perhaps as large as a small galaxy. Like, the final battle takes place on a galaxy, they throw spiral galaxies as shuriken and crash through galaxies like floors and at one point, the enemy recreates the Big Bang as a weapon and so on. Remember when I said the battles would be in space from a certain point? I don't think this counts any longer as being in space. At this point I think they're fighting in a special alternate dimension or something, mostly because I think there's no other way to describe just how ridiculous the scale of the robots and fights has become.
So there you go. Gurren-Lagann starts you off with a mech that is about the size of a Yugo, and ends up with a mech the size of a galaxy. However, for all their ridiculous growth, both climactic battles in the story feature a reduction from all of these rising stakes.
~When fighting Lord Genome, the battle starts with the Dai-Gurren vs. Teppelin, reduces to Gurren-Lagann vs. Lord Genome's own GL-type Rasengan, then just Lagann, then Simon vs. the Spiral King face to face.
~Similarly, in the last battle, you get a double cross counter, followed by a string of reduction as the smaller mech within peel away like nesting dolls as they approach until Simon in the tiny Lagann alone pierces the final enemy at the heart of this galactic-sized robot.
These are important because they work to keep the struggles relatively character-driven. It's a nod to structure that the battles are played out in progressively larger robots, but resolved through direct character interaction, increasing the drama, cementing the characters' heroism, and making for a really fitting way to cap off a series-long string of ridiculously escalating size.
Along the way you see a similarly epic growth from the cast, especially from Simon, who starts out the series as a simple driller and a pansy, and ends it as probably one of the biggest badasses in anime history - and there have been a lot of total badasses in anime history. The story spans years - the first arc spans many months, then there's the 7-year timeskip, and another 20 years for the epilogue. This definitely lends the series that little bit of extra epic feel (as if it needed it), stretching out the development across time, seeing the characters grow (literally, in the case of those who were still young in the first arc), and in the end we see humanity expanding beyond their planet, increasing the scope of the world even more (for the inevitable spin-off or sequel series). The scope of the story itself proves to be as large as the robots therein, and while it grows to equally ridiculous proportions along with said robots, it never gets so ridiculous that it stops being entertaining - indeed, the downright preposterousness is played just lightly enough to make it all buyable, but seriously enough that it's still fucking awesome.
Just like a spiral, Gurren-Lagann starts out small. The first few episodes don't stray too far, and the increases in the robots are mostly nominal. But as it spins further out, the diameter of spiral grows faster and faster, and by the second half of the series the stakes grow by orders of magnitude from one episode to the next.
Gurren Lagann, basically, has taken a shounen action show and boiled it down to its base, and used that to form a super-strong heavily-concentrated über-show. Like EVA before it redefined the Giant Robot genre with a complex psychological storyline, Gurren-Lagann has redefined it by recreating the archetype giant robot show. It's a superlative: its robots are the biggest and fight the hardest, its characters are the coolest and shout the loudest, its story has the grandest scope of all. It gets so big that it's absolutely senselessly ridiculois - and simultaneously completely awesome.
As I said before, Gurren-Lagann treads a very thin line in how seriously it treats itself. It's simultaneously a light-hearted send-up of giant robot shows. But instead of taking the familiar tropes and clichés and turning them into parody, it instead consciously analyzes and utilizes them to maximum effect, and becomes what is basically the paradigm of a giant robot show. When Simon and company decide to fight the moon, you never stop to wonder how the hell they're going to do that, because it's internally consistent with the show. While being absolutely retarded, it also somehow makes sense in context. And if you take the same light approach to the series as it does to itself, that is don't bother approaching it seriously or realistically, it only gets more entertaining as it gets more ridiculous.
In the end, Gurren-Lagann isn't particularly deep or thought-provoking as a story. But it's a very well-thought out, well-structured action show with exceptional directing and animation, and it's extremely entertaining. But it's beyond just an extremely entertaining show - it's a downright spectacle of animation, an event in anime, and for all that, in the end, it's also just a damn good show about gigantic super robots. And really, what more could you ask for?
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