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
maybe i worded it badly but i meant it's not interested in the ways actual structures work. like, utena spends time digging into the ways misogyny is perpetuated and enforced, or how the patriarchy manages to keep people trapped and thinking it's the best way of doing things. ttgl does not care about anything on those conceptual levels with any specificity.
yeah they come up with countermeasures for this one specific problem, but going forward every single fight is still won through the exact thing that got those people killed there! they change in that one specific thing but simon still treats every new thing the anti-spiral do the exact same way. like he goes right back to punching them through dimensional walls or screaming so hard thousands of them explode, it's all the same shit
yeah but like. they overcome those obstacles purely through hot-blooded willpower. when everyone in team gurren has a big heroic sacrifice that's still just them solving the problems the exact same way without any changes. they fight the anti-spiral exactly the same way they fight lordgenome, they do not actually change strategy and the one time they do it's done by rossiu, who the show kinda hates for daring to try anything other than hot blooded willpower as a solution
the anti-spiral say the universe will be destroyed. if the show wants to say "actually they were lying" then ok, but it doesn't. if it wants me to be satisfied with how they solve it i really feel like i need more than "uhhh rossiu went and did a conference and he handled it" after they beat the anti-spiral in the exact way the anti-spiral were explicitly saying was the problem!
also "Like, again, the crux of the matter comes down to "Do you believe that the human spirit is a force for good?" and imo TTGL gives that question all the weight it deserves, with an unequivocal and enthusiastic "YES!"." is just not true. human spirit is not inherently good, if it was people wouldn't do bad things. human spirit clearly isn't a force for good and only good! saying "human spirit is a force for good" is a meaningless thing to say, are the structures you say the anti-spiral represents not set up by humans who had human spirit? everyone is always fighting for their own future, saying that they're fighting for a better tomorrow without any more details on what that tomorrow looks like is worthless
and again, i want to repeat that i am not saying gurren lagann is a bad show or that you are wrong to take away the things you take away from it, just that i was thinking about it after seeing a story deal with the same ideas and the exact same plot and i feel like gurren lagann deals with those themes in a way that is profoundly unsatisfying
Ahhhhhhhhhh I had a whole reply typed out but Hexbear ate it.
Ok 5 min summary:
TTGL does go into the way actual structures work, it's talking about the psychology of rebellion and existentialism. The way the show discusses despair and terror as tools of oppression is a lot like how Fanon describes them in Wretched of the Earth.
Resistance to oppression is resistance to oppression, all that changed was scale. Rossiu's entire arc is to point out that survival isn't the same as fighting back.
Lordgenome points out in the same scene that the Anti-Spiral is only saying that to paralyze Simon with despair, and Simon's response that he can't let a possible future prevent him from acting to correct an injustice in the present is imo the correct one. We only have the Anti-Spirals word that the problem is intractable, so I'm going to bet on the guy who went from a miner to saving the Earth by making the impossible possible. That's also why I'm satisfied with the ending, because anything after would be kinda redundant.
This is on me, when I said human spirit I should have specified revolutionary spirit or the will of the oppressed to overthrow their oppressor. Sorry for moving the goalpost, I swear it wasn't intentional
Don't worry about it I'm only discussing this with you because I find it fun
idk it all seems like very stock villain stuff to me. if we start saying this stuff about gurren lagann then we start saying it about everything that has any evil empire as the villain and i just don't think that's true, you know? maybe i'm just not perceiving/remembering the subtle nuance gurren lagann brings to the table
i've said this before but when they say "this is a bad thing you are doing! the way you solve your problems is going to destroy everything!" and the heroes just have nothing but "nu-uh!" it just doesn't hit right for me now that i've read something that takes the time to really dig into it. "well it's possible they're lying so i'll just keep believing in myself and not actually consider whether it's possible i could have made a mistake here!" doesn't do it for me. like i think it's cool to watch but philosophically it feels like a complete rejection of any and all material reality
that's good! i also really like being able to turn it around in my head and put into words the thoughts i've been having and hear an alternate take that i disagree with
I’m not gonna claim that TTGL addresses it’s criticisms of structures on the level of Utena, but the way it focuses on the psychology of rebellion/oppression always stuck with me- with how it tied finding a reason to live with resisting oppression and wanting to live with dignity, in a way beyond most other shows.
Right, but I’ve been trying to point out that the underlying read of the metaphor for “ hot blooded shonen spirit” seems to be different between the two shows: for Getter by your description it seems to be “life’s insatiable ability to propagate and consume”, and for TTGL I’ve been trying to make the case that it’s “life’s struggle to live in a harsh universe with dignity”, and that those two things aren’t the same, because one is much simpler than the other.
Like, to me the main concern that TTGL has is “Do you have the willpower to live and to resist oppression? Yes or no? Everything else is a matter of scale” which, I think is more a philosophical question than a material one. It’s a “in order to build a better world, one must first be able to imagine it” kinda deal.
Obviously reckoning with humanity’s desire for consumption would require more nuance and depth to the work, but I suspect that if TTGL is a response to Getter the same way it is to Evangelion it would be something like: “You’re overcomplicating things. This is a matter of psychology. Do you have the willpower to rise to the challenge? That’s the first step to overcoming it.”
Yeah, I was kinda worried you’d just check out haha, so I’m glad you were having fun too. I do think we’ve kinda exhausted where the conversation can go until I read Getter tho, so I’ll get right on that after Yokohama Kidou Kaishi
oh yeah, i totally get that they're trying to do different things, i just (without having rewatched gurren lagann in a few years) feel like gurren lagann doesn't distance itself from getter robo enough for that to fully work. like, thinking about it with the context of getter robo i feel like it doesn't quite work on its own merits and definitely doesn't work when compared to getter
i agree we've probably reached the endpoint of the discussion, but this has been fun. and i'll probably watch gurren lagann at some point with your read in mind and regardless of whether i agree or not i'll definitely have a good time! i hope you do read getter and let me know what you think about it, i think it's really something special and even if you don't like it as much as me it'll DEFINITELY be helpful in broadening your understanding the show you clearly love. like how i don't love rose of versailles as much as i hoped but understanding its influence on utena was still a very worthwhile experience ::: spoiler a few more cool pages from getter robo, for the road
these are all from getter robo arc, the last manga in the series! even at it's most serious and kinda cynical it's still delivering on ridiculous action, look at that gun! that's a machine-fed revolver! that rules!