Gurren Lagann - disc 1 impressions

As I stated on the site earlier, I've seen a lot of people talking about Gurren Lagann lately on Twitter.  I know it's not a new series or anything like that, but people are chatting about it more than usual lately.  After seeing that chatter I went to read up on the series, and was surrounded by comments about just how much people loved the series.  With all that love and the interesting details that I read thus far, I thought I'd pick up the series and give it a go.  Now that I've finished up disc 1, I can say that I'm...not feeling it yet.

There are some things that I really love about the series thus far.  I truly dig the characters that are the main cast thus far.  They are really well developed and have some fantastic personalities.  Their intentions and feelings really come through, and that's thanks to both design and dialog.  I truly am really impressed with how fleshed out the characters feel thus far.

I also absolutely love the visual style.  From what I've seen, Gurren Lagann is a beautiful series with amazing animation to boot.  I should have expected to fall in love with the visuals.  Some of the FLCL team is at work here, and they really pull off some amazing things.  Sometimes I find myself getting caught up in the visuals and missing out on the story details!

With all that said, there are some things about the show that really irk me.  Thus far, I feel like a handful of the episodes aren't anything more than filler.  Are they going to serve a greater purpose as the story continues on?  I don't know that yet, but so far they feel like padding.  I'll gladly retract my statement if that changes later on in the series, but right now I'm not confident that a lot of this will come into play later.

I'm also really not a fan of just how much yelling there is in the feature.  The first episode was enough to throw me out of whack with all the screaming going on.  I know that multiple anime feature characters that love to yell and scream, but it seems like that's going on a lot more here than in any other feature I've seen.  I can take one or two characters that do that, but everyone seems to be getting in on that act!  Sometimes I like things to take a little bit slower, calmer tone.

Unfortunately, another personal hang-up is getting in the way of my enjoyment.  I honestly cannot give you a good reason why, but I'm just not into mech anime.  I can appreciate those that like it and how important the genre is to anime, but it's not something I really enjoy.  Again, I wish I had a reason why it just doesn't click with me, and perhaps Gurren Lagann will help me to better define why I don't enjoy it.  As those that have watched the series know, Gurren Lagann has a very big focus on giant robots fighting each other...so it's a bit tough for me.

Is any of this going to stop me from finishing the series?  Of course it won't!  I'm sticking through to the end, and like I've said, there are indeed elements that I enjoy.  There's a lot more series to go, and I could come out of all this loving the series to bits.  I'm hoping that's what happens, because right now I'm not too sure if this is the show for me.