Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen

Simon lives a boring life in the underground village of Jeeha, where his main job day in and day out is to dig tunnels. His close friend Kamina, however, longs to bust out of their oppressive existence and reach the surface world where open skies and adventure await! One day, during his usual digs, Simon discovers a robot with a big face buried amongst the rocks. No sooner has he shown Kamina his mysterious find when two beings from the surface crash land into Jeeha Village - one is a gun-toting woman calling herself Yoko and the other is a terrifying mecha piloted by a Beastman! Seeing their chance to escape village drudgery, Kamina rallies Simon and Yoko to defeat the invader using their new robot, Lagann. However, upon breaking out onto the surface world, Simon, Kamina, and Yoko encounter enemies more powerful than they could have envisioned. Their fight for adventure just turned into a war for the survival of the human race - will their lust for freedom hold out against such terrible odds? Source: Anime-planet.com


Gainax has jammed the whole of the original Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann series into 2 movies each running up to almost 2 hours long. Guren-hen is part 1 of the movie followed by Ragan-hen as the sequel. Now this is just a sorry excuse for a “movie”. Re-using old scenes from the original series, it’s basically a recap. Watching this movie, I remembered what the hype of the original series was about as it was still evident in this movie. The character designs were excellent. The robots were ever changing, so I didn’t have to worry about seeing the same robot form over and over again. And the animation is still as lively as ever. All this comes together to make this title feels fresh as ever. Only problem with this movie is, if you didn’t watch the original series, there is no freaking way that you will understand this movie and what it’s about. The movie highlights the important parts of the original series but totally ignores the build-up plot and the lack of script doesn’t help either.

So if you would watch a title just for the animation then you can give this movie a try. Otherwise, just stay clear of this movie completely. The final battle was interesting though as I felt like I was just watching the original series yesterday. And that was the only part I enjoyed. If my memory doesn’t fail me, the storyline was slightly altered and some new scenes were added. This could have been a really good movie if they could somehow squeeze more explanations to provide a better understanding of the setting. Bah! Humbug!


Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen
Rating: 3-Stars
Torrents: BSS