a: if the rights holders had wanted to they 100% had grounds to sue, and they would have probably won
b: the getter emperor is so cool! and someone should have told the people at gainax "if you're going to do getter emperor, the manifestation of colonialism and genocide as the natural extremes of directionless shonen hotblooded spirit and humanities endless potential for evolution, you need a stronger argument than "nuh uh" when saying 'actually this is a good thing. it's good to forever grow and become more powerful and kill everything in your way'"
if i ever rewatch it i'm not going to be able to see team gurren as anything other than evil. seeing kittan's sacrifice and shaking my head like "he succumbed to the corruption of the getter. sad!"
or maybe i'm wrong and it has a satisfying response that goes beyond "actually i'd just be chill about this whole thing," but i really don't remember that
And do they destroy the universe or consume everything in existence? No, they throw off the chains of whatever eco-fash argument the anti-spiral is operating on that had them living in strictly population-controlled literal holes in the ground, and they build a functioning society
the charge wasn't that they'd immediately destroy the universe, it was that they would do so someday. maybe team gurren will successfully lead humanity to a functioning society, but like. if someone goes "you have too much hot blooded determination! it is going to destroy everything!" and the heroes go "that doesn't matter! i have hot blooded determination!" and then just win you understand why that might not be satisfying?
getter robo is about this exact thing. that's why i made the post. in getter robo the anti-spiral analogue show the heroes that if they continue their hot blooded determination they will create the getter emperor, who will destroy everything. the heroes go "well we can figure it out with our hot blooded determination!" and then this attitude leads to them creating the getter emperor because they did exactly what the villains said would lead to the getter emperor happening. in gurren lagann they do the exact same thing except it's fine
I guess the question is, is there any validity to the belief that humanity thriving will necessarily lead to the destruction of the universe? Where does that belief come from? I see them, as I implied, as an analogue to the eco-fascists who tell us that modern society is a mistake and we're going to destroy the world unless we smash all our TVs and return to hunter-gatherer tribes. There are always unsustainable and unethical ways for humanity to thrive, such as capitalism, and for humanity to continue to expand down this path will result in the destruction of the planet we live on. But it's not the only way for humanity to thrive and expand, and we don't have to return to monke in order to avoid destroying the world.
So if an eco-fascist were making that argument to me, my response would probably be something analogous to Team Gurren's answer to it. Fuck you, we don't have to destroy the world just to live well. I'll have my cake and eat it too.
sure, but you need to have a fucking plan! they don't have any plan for it, in that climate metaphor they're much closer to a capitalist saying "you can't restrict us! we'll keep growing and using fossil fuel forever!" because THEY KEEP USING SPIRAL ENERGY TO DEFEAT THEM. they are never shown to find any other way, they just keep using spiral power and growing bigger and stronger. if they were shown to find an alternative that wasn't going to lead to the destruction of the universe that'd be great! but they just keep using spiral power!
anyways this post was originally about getter robo and how it's good and it does things that i think are interesting and compelling and makes me think about gurren lagann differently than i used to. i'm not trying to say i actually think the anti-spiral are the good guys or something, just that when gurren lagann is so clearly invoking the legacy of getter robo it's disappointing and unsatisfying when it doesn't actually do anything with that