27Apr/100
Empowerment Fantasies: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Over at The House Next Door, I take a look at Gurren Lagann and what it has to say about its own genre:
If Evangelion is shonen giant robot fare through the lens of Alan Moore, a dissection and a dangerous swerve towards an underlying emotional reality, then Gurren Lagann is the same material through the lens of Grant Morrison: reactionary in part, but a distillation, mad and a little messy but more fun and a reminder of the original concept's power with a modern (and occasionally postmodern) gloss. (The image of Yoko in the virtual reality tank in the music video even inadvertently recalls Morrison's counterculture opus The Invisibles, in which a very different redhead uses the system to, appropriately enough, rewrite her own history).