[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 6
Recaps? Already?! They say some things never change but sadly this adage extends to Gurren Lagann and the infamous GAINAX recap tactic. This is going to be another short post since half of this ep was just recap - what original material that was here was great but there wasn’t enough of it!
There were references and parodies galore here - the Spirited Away bath house was the obvious one, and there were some cameo appearances from Top O Nirae! 2’s Nono and Raruku, as well as Mahoro, Asuka and Rei (as bunny girls, no less). Good to know us long-term GAINAX fanatics are catered for. ^_^ The writers and cast are clearly having a lot of fun with this show but if the story falters as much as this I don’t think the viewers will share the same good feeling for long - it’s quite a frustrating experience to have comic gold buried so much recycled material.
That said, there are one or two details that could prove to be important once the story gets back on track: Kamina suggests that if they can break to the surface so easily, why not carry on and go the moon? This alludes to what I thought was an out-of-place opening scene in ep #1, in which our heroes appear to be in space. Rossiu also gets to do a bit of mecha piloting and those three girls from the infamous fourth episode turn up again (they could become regular characters after all).
All in all this was a mixed bag of an episode - there were some moments of brilliance but with the past controversies in mind this is beginning to look like a production that’s dogged with setbacks. I really don’t what the writers are playing at.
Posted on May 18th, 2007 @ 7:17 am
the recap was probably there to save budget for the next episode
Posted on May 22nd, 2007 @ 4:22 am
Apparently the DVD will replace the recap footage with new animation, so it may have been a way of censoring.