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
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