Cosplay of Yoko from Gurren Lagann, taken at Fanimecon 2010. Copyright Richard Tom.

This weekend I spent some of my free time watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, or more simply Gurren Lagann.  This is by no means a new series (it has been out since 2007) I just never got around to watching it.  I had heard mixed reviews about it, especially around the character of Yoko.  Anyways, after seeing Yoko done well in cosplay, I thought I should endeavor to see such as a fantastic series.

Now that I’ve finished watching it, I figured I’d share my thoughts.  NO SPOILERS

Yoko's "Space" costume. I approve!

Overall, this series is over the top and a bit… nuts. I tend not to be a fan of that totally over the top style of anime, so the first episode or two I wasn’t too sure about it.  As the episodes continued the “over the top” bits weren’t so over the top as to turn me off, and actually turned out to be quite fun.

I found Gurren Lagann, as a series, quite surprising.  They went directions and did things I wasn’t quite expecting, and are fairly unusual for a “feel good” series.  I won’t spoil whom, but they kill off a character fairly early on in the story, which I really did not expect.  In a lot of animes, a death of a character would be cause for those close to them to angst for practically the rest of the series.  In Lagann, they lightly angsted over the death for the next episode and a half.  But the end of that second episode, they got their act together and pushed on.  There were other bad things that happened, but basically no one sat about angsting for any amount of time, except for Rossiu (whom I didn’t like anyways).

As for the accusations that Yoko (pictured several times now) is a problem in the series, I disagree.  She plays a love interest, on occasion, to give the series a little more diversity other than just continuous awesome.  In reality, even though I’ve posted multiple pictures of her and she’s one of the “core” characters of the Gurren Brigade (as they call themselves), she doesn’t actually get all that much screen time.  Seeing as how she is the advertising tits to get you to watch the series (hey, it worked on me), I thought she’d play a bigger part.  I didn’t find her personality or the way she acted particularly annoying, and would have liked to see more of her, but alas it was not to be.

The length and speed of the series was great.  It was 27 episodes, which is an unusual number of episodes, but that really didn’t matter.  Basically, each episode they powered through the enemies or challenges they had.  Rarely did the series spend more than 2 episodes in one particular area.  The series is about the good guys winning, kicking ass, and being awesome.  The director realized they didn’t need to spend 3 episodes on every demi-boss fight to illustrate how awesome our protagonists are.  Thank you kami-sama.  Not to say I wouldn’t like to have seen a little more of the series, because I enjoyed it so much, but they wrapped the series up nicely and tied a bow on it even.  When it ended, it left me with the feeling of “Ahh, that was good… and now it is done”.  No strings left dangling, no loose ends, just complete.

Kamina, Simon and Yoko

It should be obvious by now, that I highly recommend watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  If I wasn’t, I would have included spoilers.  Let’s just say that the journey of Simon The Digger and his pig-mole, Boota (who is a critical component in the series), is a fun and worthwhile watch.  It might be crazy and over the top, but soon that becomes part of the hilarious good time of Gurren Lagann.

Oh, my God. You’re a wicked-cool covert operative masquerading as a sex-toy tycoon?

Yes.  Just brilliant…  but I will give you more reasons not to watch this movie.  As I hope you never see it, I’m going to explain how the movie ends (several times) and generally give away plot points.  So without further adieu… Warning: Spoilers and strong language (as the title of the “film” portends)

Bitch Slap is a B quality movie (at best) that revolves around three buxom ladies:  Hel (Played by Erin Cummings), Trixie (Played by Julia Voth) and Camero (Played by America Olivo).  Yes, they are all hot, yes this movie covers that aspect repeatedly, yes, they are all lesbians and yes, the movie covers that repeatedly also.  There are also numerous other female characters, but really only 3 male characters.  Cage, who gets shot in the head by Camero.  “Phoenix”, better known as Hercules or Kevin Sorbo, who shows up as some secret agent dude (and apparently dies at some point).  Lastly, the Deputy, who ends up dead (repeatedly).

One of the first things I noticed in this movie is that large portions of it are essentially soft-core porn, sans porn.  No one actually gets naked, but that doesn’t stop them from getting it on and ripping away their already tiny outfits.  The second bit is that the camera works is only good in said soft-core porn scenes, or any time basically they are trying to be seductive/sexy (see also water fight scene).  The rest of the time, the camera work sucks – and don’t get me started on their terribly shitty blue/green screening.  I’ve seen film school student demo reels that have had much more convincing blue screening.

The next issue is the story line.  It is… so screwed up and contrived I’m not even sure if I can describe it.  Basically these 3 chicks are trying to find 200 mil in diamonds.  Camero is just in it for the money, but she’s a junkie who is tweaking the hell out.  Hel turns out to be the “wicked-cool covert operative masquerading as a sex-toy tycoon” which is basically played to be a female James Bond – all the way down to the “down barrel” camera shot.  She’s not in it for the money but to recover some weapon, and happens to work for Hercules.  Trixi, who plays all helpless and useless (and gets it on with Hel) turns out to be “Pinky”, a notorious figure in the underground whom no one has ever seen because she’s so bad ass she kills EVERYONE.  She also apparently keeps throwing stars in her vagina.  I wish I were making this up, but she puts her hands in her crotch and pulls a throwing start out from… well… nowhere.  Due to the camera angle… you know exactly where her hands are going because why would they miss that great soft-core porn moment.  Turns out Trixi/Pinky actually orchestrated this entire “event” because Cage stole her “Naginata“.  Except that what she recovers is a Katana – not anywhere REMOTELY the same as a Naginata.

So the entire movie is about getting a sword back.  Okay…  That makes just about as much sense as anything else in this movie.  After all, a number of scenes and characters are homages of Kill Bill, and isn’t one of Uma Thurman’s big deals in the movie to get the good sword? Really though, you know the writers didn’t put a lot of work into this script because the dialogue is ATROCIOUS.  I’m… at a loss for words to explain how bad… so how about some examples:

I’m gonna booty-bang bitch slap your fucking ass until you’re just this side of salvage. Then I’m gonna ram-ride girly’s show tits asunder before I plow both of you bitches under!

Lube my boob skank twat.

… you’re decent and pure, and I love you. Now why don’t we tie a knot, bump uglies, and ride the pork bus to Tuna City?

Ram *this* in your clam bake, bitch cake!

That last line… that’s a particular favorite of mine. It just goes up to an entire new level of “This is a massive failure of a movie”.  Add on to that the fact that I was surprised the movie was only 1 hr 44mn long!  By the end it had dragged on for way too long, with multiple “endings”, I fully expected it to have been at least 2.5 hours.  In the end, the only reason to watch this movie is if chicks beating the living daylights out of everyone and each other really kicks your ticker into high gear.  Otherwise, please, save yourself 2 hours and watch the Discovery Channel instead.  That way you won’t feel like your brain cells have been burned out by a massive dose of “stupid”.

In othernews, there are some otherfully stupid people on eBay. Last month someone auction his forehead for advertising purposes (for a month or something to that effect). Niffty idea, attracted alot of attention. This month, a friend mention’s these auctions on ebay: here and here. Not to be mean, but… This isnt even creative. Ever heard of booth babes? Not to objectify women, but, They stand around at trade shows, look good, usually dress in something very skimpy, and get your attention. They tend to do a very good job at what they are doing. So, we’ve seen this women in advertising thing before. In fact booth babes dont even have to tatoo themselves (though it does happen).

If your bored, goto ebay and search for “Advertise on my”. I found 266 ‘items’ for sale. Many of them fake, all of them sad and pathetic. Oh and about 5 of them are creative (the rest are duplicate “advertise on my foreheads”, come on, that was cool the first time… now its old).

Still sick, still non-sensicle.