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
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!