Screw you Gainax, screw you…

A movie adap­ta­tion lacks the time for details that a series enjoy. With that in mind, the sec­ond movie of Ten­gen Toppa Gur­ren Lagann: Lagann-hen was as good as it gets. Yes, it skived out a lot of the details from the early parts of the TTGL episodes range that it’s sup­pose to cover, but the bonuses it did add in totally destroyed any com­plaints I would have had. Seri­ously, the cli­matic bat­tle of Lagann-hen makes the final boss fight of Gur­ren Lagann TV series look like a cat­fight in com­par­i­son. Not to men­tion they did a bet­ter job clar­i­fy­ing the Spi­ral Neme­sis, and Lord Genome’s lit­tle Tron adven­ture were both brick-shitting and hilar­i­ous at the same time (screen­cap, 2).

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?! –is some­thing I want to say to Gainax

My beef with the movie how­ever, lays in how badly Gainax’s mood pac­ing ruined my emo­tional con­trol for an entire night, and not in a good way. Deliv­er­ing absolute despair to your fan is not cool. I guess they’ve accom­plished their objec­tive: I can never for­get this movie now. But that still doesn’t mean I want to watch it a sec­ond time; at least, not all of it.

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Yeah I know, it should be the other way around right? Well my anime club fin­ished this as our last show­ing project of the year…

It hasn’t been that long ago since the anime com­mu­nity exploded over Gur­ren Lagann and its sheer epic awe­some­ness, man­li­ness, and a healthy dose of Moe. Want another show with that Pierc­ing the Heav­ens atti­tude and all the finest parts of Gainax? Well there’s this not-well-known-enough series called Top wo Nerae! [Eng: Aim for the Top], bet­ter known as the Gun­buster and Die­buster series. For a show many anime fans have never touched (ranked #689&701 on MAL pop­u­lar­ity, com­pared to #13 for Gur­ren Lagann), the Gunbuster/Diebuster series is the ori­gin of almost every­thing Gur­ren Lagann had to offer.

Looks famil­iar? In before THAT POSE

My friend Cit­rus prefers to cat­e­go­rize Gunbuster/Diebuster in just seven words: “hard work, guts, and lov­ing your Onee-sama”. Okay, so you might be able to watch this show with Yuri Gog­gles, but it mostly par­al­lels the beloved “Soul Broth­ers” of Gur­ren Lagann. There’s also three more words which I feel must be added, which is “believ­ing in your­self”. Whether it’s believ­ing in the aniki coach who believes in you, or believ­ing in the Kouhai who believes in you, or believ­ing in your­self who believes in you, believ­ing will always be a neces­sity. Of course, you also need hard work and guts to back it up. Put all this together, strike the pose, and you have your awe-inspiring, heaven-piercing action. Sure, Gunbuster/Diebuster may not be toss­ing any galax­ies around, but we do get to throw Jupiter, slice black holes, and cre­ate Big Bangs …in dur­ing shirt-ripping action that shat­ters crazy eyeglasses.

Want any more rea­sons to watch? Gun­buster and Die­buster are respec­tively directed by Hidaeki Anno and Tsu­ru­maki Kazuya as one of their debuts. Of the two famous direc­tors, the for­mer made the orig­i­nal Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion series and is now direct­ing the new movies, while the lat­ter is co-directing the same movies while stash­ing away the widely pop­u­lar Furi Kuri under his belt (although I’m not a fan of it). Some would also claim that Gunbuster/Diebuster are the two’s great­est achievement.

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P4 makes an epic card back…

On one hand, I didn’t expect this post for at least another week or so due to National Novel Writ­ing Month. On the other hand, I’ve given up on com­plet­ing 50,000 words on time, so I might as well fin­ish this.

Here’s the rest of the cards to the Major Arcana Moé Tarot project.

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