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?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Thrust to the Heavens with your Giant Robot, Part 1
If you've been following anime at all since April, then Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann needs no introduction. The latest effort from studio Gainax has turned out to be one of the biggest action shows to come out of Japan in years, and not only has it turned the Giant Robot genre of anime upside-down, but in many cases it has renewed Gainax's ailing reputation. We won't talk about some of their most recent pre-Gurren work (Especially not Kono Minikukumo Utsukushii Sekai. We will not), but it's safe to say that coming into this year, the studio that had brought us classics from Gunbuster to Evangelion to FLCL had apparently passed its glory days.
Well, to be fair, that's still true, but Gurren-Lagann proves that they've still got it in them.
Gurren-Lagann is probably not only the best show to come out of the spring 2007 anime season, but many would say for the whole year - and then some, depending on who you're talking to. I have only two ways to describe the show itself.
1. Completely fucking ridiculous
2. Totally fucking awesome
Without swearing, it just doesn't convey the levels this show went to. There's something almost transcendent about the show, something that not even the fuck word can really grasp. Gurren-Lagann is hot-blooded chest-pounding testosterone-overflowing action, has great characters and amazing animation, and gives us one of the most epic and satisfying story arcs of any series in a long time.
And it's all because of the drill.
In short, Gurren-Lagann is set in a world where humanity is relegated to caves while Beastmen in giant mecha (referred to as Ganmen (顔面) which also means "face" - the robots appear as giant faces with arms and legs) rule the surface. Simon, a tunnel-driller from an underground village, and Kamina, a manly-man of single-minded determination, decide to break out from their life underground. Simon finds a face as he's drilling one day, and conveniently so, because it's only hours later when a beastman's Ganmen crashes through the roof of their cave. Simon and Kamina fight it off with the aid of Yoko, a scantily-clad fanservice machine with a big jiggly bust and a big powerful gun, and they find themselves on the surface. Adventures ensue and so on.
Basically, in a long series of increasingly ridiculous giant robot fights, we're taught the valuable lessons that you should always believe in yourself, should never stop fighting no matter how insurmountable the odds, and that if you have enough Fighting Spirit (気合), or rather, if you shout loudly and dramatically enough, you can beat any foe and overcome any challenge. (気合 not only means fighting spirit, it's also the shouting in Japanese martial arts. I'm not making this up, fighting spirit = shouting as loud as you can, and Kamina, Viral, Simon, Kittan and others will not let you forget that.)
I won't go into full detail because just summarizing the series would require a blog entry of its own. Like I said, the span of the story is epic. This would be a good time to mention that the following story contains spoilers. Like, more or less the whole thing.
Gurren-Lagann is constructed entirely and closely around the motif of the spiral, most notably embodied as a drill. There are drills and spirals all over the damn place, and that's not even discussing its subtler presences. Almost all of the thematic, structural, and plot-related elements relate in the series directly back to the spiral. The drill is depicted as a primary tool and weapon: Simon begins the story a driller, digging tunnels underground, and the various incarnations of the robot Gurren-Lagann use drills as their primary weapons, and are powered by a small drill-key that Simon finds. As we find out later in the series, the key to Simon's and indeed all of the characters' power is Spiral Energy, an energy inherent in DNA-based lifeforms, or basically, a harnessable (presumably by shouting loudly enough) Life Force brought about by our own spiral-shaped DNA (I would point out that DNA is a helix and not a spiral, but the word rasen (螺旋) that the show uses can mean both spiral and helix, as well as screw - thereby encompassing the drill as well).
So the spiral is a physical object which shapes the earth, becomes a weapon, and lives Inside Each and Every One of Us. How very reaffirming.
Taken a little more metaphorically, we see Simon drilling tunnels through solid Earth at the beginning of the show. He has no idea where he's going, but he turns and turns his hand-drill and drives onward, digging a tunnel through solid rock, searching for treasure and extending his village. The drill, as a spiral, breaks through anything in its path, point-down, and as "Spiral beings," Simon and the characters in the series do the same. As the series progresses, the odds they face grow more and more insurmountable, but they never stop drilling, and always manage to pierce their barriers, and the ones after that, and the ones after that.
So the spiral and the drill are symbols of perseverance, breaking through obstacles and driving onwards. How cute!
Well, I never accused Gurren-Lagann of being particularly deep. Indeed, the content of the story is, well, nothing too special. The first half of the series, episodes 1-15, are far more story-driven than the latter. They focus mainly on relationships, especially that of Simon to Kamina. Kamina is a born hero, basically, and doesn't really have much development. Remember when I called him single-minded? That's about the nicest way I can say "one-dimensional." He shouts the loudest of anyone, has faith in the power of manlymanhood, fights against any stupid odds and never gives up. And that doesn't change. The modifier is Simon's growth as a character - first as Kamina's dependent weakling sidekick who goes through all of the usual struggles - too scared to fight, wants to give up, doesn't believe in himself. Kamina's leadership is an example for Simon and indeed all of humanity, who flock to follow him.
Until he dies - which was absolutely inevitable, really. Like Obi-Wan and Yoda, like Dumbledore, the mentor in a heroic epic has to die so that the hero can make his own way. If Kamina lives, Simon's journey means nothing. But once Kamina dies, Simon has to find strength in himself, not from his hero - he has to become his own Hero. It's fairly standard as far as a Heroic Epic goes, not to mention the Coming of Age elements that Gainax loves so well.
This is not to say that the robot fights and action sequences in 1-15 aren't astonishing, because they are. But the focus is still on developing the story. At this point, Gurren-Lagann is just a very good giant robot show, but it hasn't earned its real marks yet.
Starting in Episode 17, after a 7-year time jump, the story jumps to the backseat and the action gets cranked up to "balls-to-the-fucking-wall" awesome. This is where things get really ridiculous. Simon is already a hero, basically, and doesn't really change or mature at all across the second arc. He's already become Kamina's successor, and any "development" is really just him finishing the last spurts of filling in those shoes and then bursting out of them by going way, way beyond. They've already told the story; part 2 is about a setup for some retarded/awesome fight sequences.
Allow me to illustrate the manner of appreciation for Gurren-Lagann's two phases.
Part 1: Man, I can't believe this/that happened. Oh man, that fight was pretty cool. Oh hell no, check out those drills. I'm just glad Simon isn't a whiny bitch anymore.
Part 2: HOLY WHAT THE FUCK DID HE JUST OH MY GOD WAS THAT - THEY'RE GOING TO FIGHT THE WHAT JESUS CHRIST DID- OH GOD THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM DID THEY REALLY JUST OH FUCK THIS IS RIDICULOUS
Not to say there isn't story in the second part. Seeing the characters in whole new environments and roles, especially Rossiu's evolution into a hard-nosed but well-intentioned, er, dictator, are quite interesting and set the tone for really intriguing character interaction. But that's a bonus, mere dressing around the edge of a show about giant robots are fighting the moon and punching gigantic aliens clear out of the space-time continuum.
While the growth and pace are a little uneven (Gurren-Lagann was supposed to be a 52-episode series, cut down to 26; it was also supposed to be more free-form episodic until they started getting into the story and really liking what they had come up with; the second part develops a lot faster and a lot more than the first did), you can still see the Spiral at work in its most important role.
For all the after-school-special metaphors and hamfisted visual motifs (which isn't to say that they're not effective despite their simiplicity) in the content of the show, where the spiral really comes into play is in its form, behind the scenes of the story. It shapes and informs the structure, growth and development of the story from beginning to end. The enemies get bigger and bigger, and so do the robots, and when you think it can't possibly get any bigger, it does - and does again. And again. As our hero and his robot grow and grow, spiraling out of control, the show grows to literally epic proportions. I'll break down exactly how in Part 2.
Well, to be fair, that's still true, but Gurren-Lagann proves that they've still got it in them.
Gurren-Lagann is probably not only the best show to come out of the spring 2007 anime season, but many would say for the whole year - and then some, depending on who you're talking to. I have only two ways to describe the show itself.
1. Completely fucking ridiculous
2. Totally fucking awesome
Without swearing, it just doesn't convey the levels this show went to. There's something almost transcendent about the show, something that not even the fuck word can really grasp. Gurren-Lagann is hot-blooded chest-pounding testosterone-overflowing action, has great characters and amazing animation, and gives us one of the most epic and satisfying story arcs of any series in a long time.
And it's all because of the drill.
In short, Gurren-Lagann is set in a world where humanity is relegated to caves while Beastmen in giant mecha (referred to as Ganmen (顔面) which also means "face" - the robots appear as giant faces with arms and legs) rule the surface. Simon, a tunnel-driller from an underground village, and Kamina, a manly-man of single-minded determination, decide to break out from their life underground. Simon finds a face as he's drilling one day, and conveniently so, because it's only hours later when a beastman's Ganmen crashes through the roof of their cave. Simon and Kamina fight it off with the aid of Yoko, a scantily-clad fanservice machine with a big jiggly bust and a big powerful gun, and they find themselves on the surface. Adventures ensue and so on.
Basically, in a long series of increasingly ridiculous giant robot fights, we're taught the valuable lessons that you should always believe in yourself, should never stop fighting no matter how insurmountable the odds, and that if you have enough Fighting Spirit (気合), or rather, if you shout loudly and dramatically enough, you can beat any foe and overcome any challenge. (気合 not only means fighting spirit, it's also the shouting in Japanese martial arts. I'm not making this up, fighting spirit = shouting as loud as you can, and Kamina, Viral, Simon, Kittan and others will not let you forget that.)
I won't go into full detail because just summarizing the series would require a blog entry of its own. Like I said, the span of the story is epic. This would be a good time to mention that the following story contains spoilers. Like, more or less the whole thing.
Gurren-Lagann is constructed entirely and closely around the motif of the spiral, most notably embodied as a drill. There are drills and spirals all over the damn place, and that's not even discussing its subtler presences. Almost all of the thematic, structural, and plot-related elements relate in the series directly back to the spiral. The drill is depicted as a primary tool and weapon: Simon begins the story a driller, digging tunnels underground, and the various incarnations of the robot Gurren-Lagann use drills as their primary weapons, and are powered by a small drill-key that Simon finds. As we find out later in the series, the key to Simon's and indeed all of the characters' power is Spiral Energy, an energy inherent in DNA-based lifeforms, or basically, a harnessable (presumably by shouting loudly enough) Life Force brought about by our own spiral-shaped DNA (I would point out that DNA is a helix and not a spiral, but the word rasen (螺旋) that the show uses can mean both spiral and helix, as well as screw - thereby encompassing the drill as well).
So the spiral is a physical object which shapes the earth, becomes a weapon, and lives Inside Each and Every One of Us. How very reaffirming.
Taken a little more metaphorically, we see Simon drilling tunnels through solid Earth at the beginning of the show. He has no idea where he's going, but he turns and turns his hand-drill and drives onward, digging a tunnel through solid rock, searching for treasure and extending his village. The drill, as a spiral, breaks through anything in its path, point-down, and as "Spiral beings," Simon and the characters in the series do the same. As the series progresses, the odds they face grow more and more insurmountable, but they never stop drilling, and always manage to pierce their barriers, and the ones after that, and the ones after that.
So the spiral and the drill are symbols of perseverance, breaking through obstacles and driving onwards. How cute!
Well, I never accused Gurren-Lagann of being particularly deep. Indeed, the content of the story is, well, nothing too special. The first half of the series, episodes 1-15, are far more story-driven than the latter. They focus mainly on relationships, especially that of Simon to Kamina. Kamina is a born hero, basically, and doesn't really have much development. Remember when I called him single-minded? That's about the nicest way I can say "one-dimensional." He shouts the loudest of anyone, has faith in the power of manlymanhood, fights against any stupid odds and never gives up. And that doesn't change. The modifier is Simon's growth as a character - first as Kamina's dependent weakling sidekick who goes through all of the usual struggles - too scared to fight, wants to give up, doesn't believe in himself. Kamina's leadership is an example for Simon and indeed all of humanity, who flock to follow him.
Until he dies - which was absolutely inevitable, really. Like Obi-Wan and Yoda, like Dumbledore, the mentor in a heroic epic has to die so that the hero can make his own way. If Kamina lives, Simon's journey means nothing. But once Kamina dies, Simon has to find strength in himself, not from his hero - he has to become his own Hero. It's fairly standard as far as a Heroic Epic goes, not to mention the Coming of Age elements that Gainax loves so well.
This is not to say that the robot fights and action sequences in 1-15 aren't astonishing, because they are. But the focus is still on developing the story. At this point, Gurren-Lagann is just a very good giant robot show, but it hasn't earned its real marks yet.
Starting in Episode 17, after a 7-year time jump, the story jumps to the backseat and the action gets cranked up to "balls-to-the-fucking-wall" awesome. This is where things get really ridiculous. Simon is already a hero, basically, and doesn't really change or mature at all across the second arc. He's already become Kamina's successor, and any "development" is really just him finishing the last spurts of filling in those shoes and then bursting out of them by going way, way beyond. They've already told the story; part 2 is about a setup for some retarded/awesome fight sequences.
Allow me to illustrate the manner of appreciation for Gurren-Lagann's two phases.
Part 1: Man, I can't believe this/that happened. Oh man, that fight was pretty cool. Oh hell no, check out those drills. I'm just glad Simon isn't a whiny bitch anymore.
Part 2: HOLY WHAT THE FUCK DID HE JUST OH MY GOD WAS THAT - THEY'RE GOING TO FIGHT THE WHAT JESUS CHRIST DID- OH GOD THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM DID THEY REALLY JUST OH FUCK THIS IS RIDICULOUS
Not to say there isn't story in the second part. Seeing the characters in whole new environments and roles, especially Rossiu's evolution into a hard-nosed but well-intentioned, er, dictator, are quite interesting and set the tone for really intriguing character interaction. But that's a bonus, mere dressing around the edge of a show about giant robots are fighting the moon and punching gigantic aliens clear out of the space-time continuum.
While the growth and pace are a little uneven (Gurren-Lagann was supposed to be a 52-episode series, cut down to 26; it was also supposed to be more free-form episodic until they started getting into the story and really liking what they had come up with; the second part develops a lot faster and a lot more than the first did), you can still see the Spiral at work in its most important role.
For all the after-school-special metaphors and hamfisted visual motifs (which isn't to say that they're not effective despite their simiplicity) in the content of the show, where the spiral really comes into play is in its form, behind the scenes of the story. It shapes and informs the structure, growth and development of the story from beginning to end. The enemies get bigger and bigger, and so do the robots, and when you think it can't possibly get any bigger, it does - and does again. And again. As our hero and his robot grow and grow, spiraling out of control, the show grows to literally epic proportions. I'll break down exactly how in Part 2.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Animation is Art: Seriously!
One of the things that bothers me the most about animation is that, at least in America, people have a strong tendency to dismiss anything animated as Cartoons, as no more than entertainment for children. It makes it hard to discuss anime when people immediately write you off for watching cartoons, not to mention thinking less of you (Dork, loser, etc). We're not going to get into the sections of anime fandom about which they, you know, have a point (Naruto); this is about the art form in general.
So, if I'm going to be writing about things like animation, I might as well start off by talking about why animation is worth talking about.
First off, I've repeatedly encountered two popular false assumptions about animation:
1. Animation is somehow less viable as a form of artistic expression than any other medium.
2. Animation is a genre, not a medium.
3. Animation is for children.
All we have to do to see why these are untrue is to break down animation as an art form. Animation is created by stringing together images at a certain high number of images per second (24-30 depending on whether the work in question is cinema or television). Using persistence of vision, these independent images appear to move (or are animated, as in, still images are given life or spirit). On top of this, there are usually sounds added to this - music and often voices.
If this sounds familiar, you know something about cinema. Indeed, animation is part of cinema. The technical aspects of any given movie or television show are identical between animation and live-action, save for one point: the nature of the images. In one, the images are hand-drawn, whereas in the other, they are photographic. That's it. Technically speaking, that's the difference between The Lion King and The Godfather.
So the issue of live-action vs. animation is, when boiled down, one of photography vs. drawing. Now, I don't think anyone would credit either of those two art forms as being more or less artistic than the other - and if they did, I can see more arguments for drawing or painting being more artistic than photography. So why is that when you take the two of them, and bring them to life in the same manner, them put them back next to each other, one is suddenly worth less than the other?
The answer, of course, is that it's not. Animation is not a subset of cinema: Cinema is animation. Animation of drawings or animation of photography, but animation all the same. They are part and parcel part of the same medium, and you cannot discard one and keep the other. For both Animated and Live-action films, what you have is a conglomeration of classical art forms, including literature, drama, music, drawing, even architecture, sculpture, and dance to certain degrees.
And let's not forget the increasing presence of computer animation in films - live-action and animated alike. Films like the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies are as much or more animation than live-action film - the battle scenes and armies, all the CG effects and characters. What about Beowulf, a fully computer-animated movie animated around real performances? Where does one draw the line? Who can even say when that line is only going to become more and more blurry as technology gets better and better?
At any rate, let me skip to the third point for a moment: Animation is for children. If we follow the previous discussion, it should be easy to see that there is nothing inherent in the medium of animation that makes it more fit for consumption by children than adults. No more than live-action movies are for adults moreso than children. And yet, most of the animation in America is indeed for children. What gives?
The problem is not in the medium itself, but in how we use it. Here is the second point: as far as American culture is concerned, animation is a genre, not a medium. Let's take a look at how American culture uses animation:
Television animation: 2 categories
Children's cartoons (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network)
Adult comedy (Family Guy, Simpsons, etc.)
Animated Feature Films: 1.5 categories (at best)
Children's / Family movies
A subest thereof: Children's / Family movies that adults can actually tolerate.
(I'm being kind by keeping this separate. The only thing that actually separates these two is quality - the movies that are so bad that only a child could appreciate it, and the movies that are actually good enough to be appreciated as movies regardless of their being aimed at children. e.g. most Pixar movies)
This is an astonishingly narrow utilization of a full-fledged artistic medium. When was the last time you saw a piece of American animation aimed at adults that wasn't a zany comedy? A family drama, or an action-adventure, or a serious romance?
When almost all of the mainstream animation in America consists of children's shows (itself a sticky genre to define, these mostly characterized by being vapid culture commercials) or "edgy" / "satirical" comedy like South Park or Family Guy, can the consumers really be blamed for having formed such a narrow opinion thereof?
Now, a little disclaimer: Animation is indeed well-suited to children's movies. Talking animals, bright colors, and so on are easier to do (well) in animation. Babe is a good example of how it could be done in live-action, but if you look through Disney's animated feature catalogue, you can see that they were using unique capabilities of the medium of animation to tell their stories in a way that would have been impossible in live-action. This is, in itself, a good thing.
Animation is also well-suited to zany comedies - by not having to work with live actors, you can set up a joke however you want. Comedic timing, physical comedy, cut-aways and over-the-top setups like are much easier to manipulate when animated. Futurama, I think, is the best example of an animated comedy that would be difficult to reproduce faithfully as a live-action show - imagine Leela and Bender is people in costumes.
There's nothing wrong with using animation for some of the things it's good at. However, when you limit it to that so rigorously, you do harm to the entire art form. Cinema tends to truly excel past other media at telling realistic, personal stories, because you can portray real people. But thankfully, cinema covers far more bases than that, because people are willing to accept a whole slew of genres and styles from cinema - an artistic freedom that Americans are unwilling to grant animation.
So, how should we be using animation?
This is where I bring up Japan. Japanese culture has embraced the artistic possibilities of animation on a level unheard of by any other mainstream culture. The amount of animation produced, shown, sold and bought far and away exceed any other culture's industry. And historically there's been a lot more artistic freedom in the way they've used the medium.
Animation for children in Japan is still a large part of the market. However, there's a huge array of animation produced for teenagers and adults as well, and among any demographic, animation can be found in almost any genre. Action, adventure, comedy, romance, slice-of-life, period drama, family drama, science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, supernatural - the list goes on, and that's not to mention the frequent cross-pollination.
For every show like, say, Sailor Moon, you have a show like Mushishi. Mushishi would be best described as a cross between "Ghost Stories without the Ghosts" and a "Supernatural Nature show." It's beautifully drawn and animated, scored very subtly, and tells moving, human stories set in not-quite-human circumstances.
For every show like Inuyasha, you have a show like Honey and Clover - a simple, realistic, slice-of-life story about a group of friends in school. Graduating and moving on to adulthood, finding your path in life, love and friendship - a deeply human, realistic story.
The number shows with (often excessive) violence, sexual themes, complex psychological aspects, and otherwise mature content is vast. An this is without even mentioning animated pornography, as if you needed another example to prove that in Japan, animation has, by its nature, nothing to do with children.
The overall quality, the American perception, and the rampant marketing aspects of animation in Japan are topics for other posts. For now, we can look at Japan and see that just because we only use animation for children's shows and college-demo comedies in America and the west does not mean that's all it's good for. So the next time you hear someone mention that animation is fluff, or that it's for children, give 'em a good slap and tell them to sit back and think about it for five minutes. And if they can think of a single reason why animation, by its nature, is any less artistic than cinema, or literature, or painting, or why it should only be used to make children's entertainment, I would love to hear it.
So, if I'm going to be writing about things like animation, I might as well start off by talking about why animation is worth talking about.
First off, I've repeatedly encountered two popular false assumptions about animation:
1. Animation is somehow less viable as a form of artistic expression than any other medium.
2. Animation is a genre, not a medium.
3. Animation is for children.
All we have to do to see why these are untrue is to break down animation as an art form. Animation is created by stringing together images at a certain high number of images per second (24-30 depending on whether the work in question is cinema or television). Using persistence of vision, these independent images appear to move (or are animated, as in, still images are given life or spirit). On top of this, there are usually sounds added to this - music and often voices.
If this sounds familiar, you know something about cinema. Indeed, animation is part of cinema. The technical aspects of any given movie or television show are identical between animation and live-action, save for one point: the nature of the images. In one, the images are hand-drawn, whereas in the other, they are photographic. That's it. Technically speaking, that's the difference between The Lion King and The Godfather.
So the issue of live-action vs. animation is, when boiled down, one of photography vs. drawing. Now, I don't think anyone would credit either of those two art forms as being more or less artistic than the other - and if they did, I can see more arguments for drawing or painting being more artistic than photography. So why is that when you take the two of them, and bring them to life in the same manner, them put them back next to each other, one is suddenly worth less than the other?
The answer, of course, is that it's not. Animation is not a subset of cinema: Cinema is animation. Animation of drawings or animation of photography, but animation all the same. They are part and parcel part of the same medium, and you cannot discard one and keep the other. For both Animated and Live-action films, what you have is a conglomeration of classical art forms, including literature, drama, music, drawing, even architecture, sculpture, and dance to certain degrees.
And let's not forget the increasing presence of computer animation in films - live-action and animated alike. Films like the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies are as much or more animation than live-action film - the battle scenes and armies, all the CG effects and characters. What about Beowulf, a fully computer-animated movie animated around real performances? Where does one draw the line? Who can even say when that line is only going to become more and more blurry as technology gets better and better?
At any rate, let me skip to the third point for a moment: Animation is for children. If we follow the previous discussion, it should be easy to see that there is nothing inherent in the medium of animation that makes it more fit for consumption by children than adults. No more than live-action movies are for adults moreso than children. And yet, most of the animation in America is indeed for children. What gives?
The problem is not in the medium itself, but in how we use it. Here is the second point: as far as American culture is concerned, animation is a genre, not a medium. Let's take a look at how American culture uses animation:
Television animation: 2 categories
Children's cartoons (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network)
Adult comedy (Family Guy, Simpsons, etc.)
Animated Feature Films: 1.5 categories (at best)
Children's / Family movies
A subest thereof: Children's / Family movies that adults can actually tolerate.
(I'm being kind by keeping this separate. The only thing that actually separates these two is quality - the movies that are so bad that only a child could appreciate it, and the movies that are actually good enough to be appreciated as movies regardless of their being aimed at children. e.g. most Pixar movies)
This is an astonishingly narrow utilization of a full-fledged artistic medium. When was the last time you saw a piece of American animation aimed at adults that wasn't a zany comedy? A family drama, or an action-adventure, or a serious romance?
When almost all of the mainstream animation in America consists of children's shows (itself a sticky genre to define, these mostly characterized by being vapid culture commercials) or "edgy" / "satirical" comedy like South Park or Family Guy, can the consumers really be blamed for having formed such a narrow opinion thereof?
Now, a little disclaimer: Animation is indeed well-suited to children's movies. Talking animals, bright colors, and so on are easier to do (well) in animation. Babe is a good example of how it could be done in live-action, but if you look through Disney's animated feature catalogue, you can see that they were using unique capabilities of the medium of animation to tell their stories in a way that would have been impossible in live-action. This is, in itself, a good thing.
Animation is also well-suited to zany comedies - by not having to work with live actors, you can set up a joke however you want. Comedic timing, physical comedy, cut-aways and over-the-top setups like are much easier to manipulate when animated. Futurama, I think, is the best example of an animated comedy that would be difficult to reproduce faithfully as a live-action show - imagine Leela and Bender is people in costumes.
There's nothing wrong with using animation for some of the things it's good at. However, when you limit it to that so rigorously, you do harm to the entire art form. Cinema tends to truly excel past other media at telling realistic, personal stories, because you can portray real people. But thankfully, cinema covers far more bases than that, because people are willing to accept a whole slew of genres and styles from cinema - an artistic freedom that Americans are unwilling to grant animation.
So, how should we be using animation?
This is where I bring up Japan. Japanese culture has embraced the artistic possibilities of animation on a level unheard of by any other mainstream culture. The amount of animation produced, shown, sold and bought far and away exceed any other culture's industry. And historically there's been a lot more artistic freedom in the way they've used the medium.
Animation for children in Japan is still a large part of the market. However, there's a huge array of animation produced for teenagers and adults as well, and among any demographic, animation can be found in almost any genre. Action, adventure, comedy, romance, slice-of-life, period drama, family drama, science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, supernatural - the list goes on, and that's not to mention the frequent cross-pollination.
For every show like, say, Sailor Moon, you have a show like Mushishi. Mushishi would be best described as a cross between "Ghost Stories without the Ghosts" and a "Supernatural Nature show." It's beautifully drawn and animated, scored very subtly, and tells moving, human stories set in not-quite-human circumstances.
For every show like Inuyasha, you have a show like Honey and Clover - a simple, realistic, slice-of-life story about a group of friends in school. Graduating and moving on to adulthood, finding your path in life, love and friendship - a deeply human, realistic story.
The number shows with (often excessive) violence, sexual themes, complex psychological aspects, and otherwise mature content is vast. An this is without even mentioning animated pornography, as if you needed another example to prove that in Japan, animation has, by its nature, nothing to do with children.
The overall quality, the American perception, and the rampant marketing aspects of animation in Japan are topics for other posts. For now, we can look at Japan and see that just because we only use animation for children's shows and college-demo comedies in America and the west does not mean that's all it's good for. So the next time you hear someone mention that animation is fluff, or that it's for children, give 'em a good slap and tell them to sit back and think about it for five minutes. And if they can think of a single reason why animation, by its nature, is any less artistic than cinema, or literature, or painting, or why it should only be used to make children's entertainment, I would love to hear it.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Blogging about Anime
Henceforth of this inaugural post, this blog shall be where I post my thoughts, feelings, ruminations, reviews, and the like regarding visual culture. This will mostly concern anime, but in all will cover television, movies, and comics, both animated and live-action, from Japan or America or anywhere on Earth that catches my eye.
The title and url of the blog are derived from Latin. Animatum, from the root word Animatus, the fourth principle part of the Latin verb Animo, whence comes our word Animate. It means "to breathe life into, to inspire, to animate, to bring to life." Anima itself can mean "spirit" or "mind," or the like. I hope to lend an intellectual, if not downright metaphysical, weight to my writings about that which the more ignorant may deem "cartoons and funnybooks." And what better, more well-tested, more widely-abused way than to use Latin? Just a little bit of pretensious wankery I hope you will grant me as a writer.
Forthcoming: Actual posts!
The title and url of the blog are derived from Latin. Animatum, from the root word Animatus, the fourth principle part of the Latin verb Animo, whence comes our word Animate. It means "to breathe life into, to inspire, to animate, to bring to life." Anima itself can mean "spirit" or "mind," or the like. I hope to lend an intellectual, if not downright metaphysical, weight to my writings about that which the more ignorant may deem "cartoons and funnybooks." And what better, more well-tested, more widely-abused way than to use Latin? Just a little bit of pretensious wankery I hope you will grant me as a writer.
Forthcoming: Actual posts!
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