The following is basically a breif summary of the Gurren Lagann series with a couple of personal comments thrown in. If you don’t want to read it, this is all you really need to know: Galaxy. Sized. Mecha.

Epic

Gurren Lagann is a single, epic story told in very distinct segments. The first eight episodes comprise Kamina’s story. We’re introduced to Kamina and Simon, who live in an underground city. Kamina is something like the town nut, going on about “the surface” while everyone tells him to shut it. Simon is a digger, constantly working to expand the underground city, and one of the few that believes in Kamina.

After (another) failed attempted at breaking through to the surface, Kamina is locked up and Simon stumbles upon a “giant face” burried underground. Freeing Kamina, the two head off to figure out just what it is but are interrupted by a gigantic mecha crashing through the ceiling. Never one to back down, Kamina quickly takes charge of things while everyone else cowers, challenging the towering mecha with nothing but a katana.

Big Gun

Lucky for him the stunning (and deadly) Yoko quickly intervenes, fending off the ganmen with her high powered rifle. Yoko, Kamina, and Simon quickly join forces and head for Simon’s discovery which turns out to be a much smaller–though infinitely more powerful–ganmen. With their new found engine of descrution the three make quick work of the enemy and burst onto the surface…

The Surface

Only to find that things are even worse there. The surface world is largely desolate and crawling with these towering ganmen, whose sole purpose is to scare the crap out of or kill all humans that don’t stay underground. This is nothing to the fearless Kamina, though, who proceeds–with the help of Simon, Yoko, and others–to destroy everything in his path. He captures enemy ganmen, performs incredible transformations to form the powerful Gurren Lagann with Simon, and inspires a full-on rebellion amongst the Earth’s human population against their Beastmen overlords.

How much you enjoy the first arc is largely dependent on how much you enjoy Kamina. Though other characters get plenty of screentime Kamina is at the center of it all; he’s reckless, maybe a little stupid, constantly upbeat and enthusiastic, and won’t let anything stand in his way. I loved ‘em.

Episode nine starts the second major arc as we shift focus from Kamina to Simon. The human rebellion is in full swing as the Dai-Gurren Brigade battles on towards the enemy capital of Teperrin. Along the way they learn of the Helix King Lordgenome (ruler of the Earth) and his Big Four generals, each of which must be overcome. They also have repeated encounters with Viral, an enemy Beastman who’s repeatedly beat by Gurren Lagann… and his fellow beastmen.

The final confrontation with Lordgenome is as epic as the previous episodes would require. The Helix King is an imposing, powerful figure, and Simon and the Gurrne Brigade throw everything they have at him and still just barely manage victory. Despite all their struggle and the joy from a seemingly final victory, though, Lordgenome’s final words are ominous indeed, warning Simon and the others that if humanity flourishes on the surface the moon will become a “messenger of Hell.”

The Helix King, Lordgenome

This arc is a little slow going. The shift from Kamina to Simon is a little jarring, and Simon is basically the anti-Kamina for the first couple episodes. He eventually finds his groove, but be prepared for a couple of painful episodes unless you like little emo agnst boys (I know some of my readers do).

After the defeat of the Helix King and the fall of Teperrin we jump ahead seven years to the beginning of the final arc. Simon and many of hte core Dai-Gurren Brigade members have formed a new human govrenment, with a large, advanced city springing up around the remains of Teperrin during the interveining years. Lordgenome’s words ring true, however, as a new, deadlier threat appears: the Anti-Spirals. The final arc is truly epic, spaning just a little less than half the series but covering tons of ground. The final battle against the Anti-Spirals is long, painful, and not at all safe. Many of the characters we’ve come to know sacrifice themselves, and some old ones return to offer assistance.

Lagann!

And at the end of it all, we jump another twenty years into the future to see how those that did survive end up. It’s a truly epic story that starts—quite literally—in a whole in the ground and expands until it encompasses not just the entire universe but multiple universes across multiple dimenions. The characters are loveable, the action is intense, and while their are many touching moments the series never takes itself too seriously.

Sixteen-year-old Rushuna is on a journey, trying to make the world a better place by following the teachings of the empress Tenshi: to remove your opponents fighting spirit and end conflict without bloodshed. Unfortunately, her travels almost always force her into conflict with the kinds of people that aren’t interested in talking things over. Rushuna is no pushover, though. She’s a highly trained senshi (gun-fighter) who wields a six-shooter with deadly precision. Along the way she meets some travelling partners—including “Tiger of the Rear Guard” Yajiro and balloon-user Mikan—who tag along.

There is nothing serious about Grenadier. There are moments of seriousness, like when Yajiro has to fight his former love whom he thought was dead or when Rushuna is forced to fight childhood friend Teppa. All of these are quickly interrupted by either comedy or fan service (usually both). This is a lighthearted series about an attractive girl that likes taking baths and could easily kill you. She also has the most absurd, fastest, and greatest method of reloading a six-shooter ever (hint: guess where she keeps all of her ammo).

Luckily, we get to see this awesome reload method quite a bit because Rushuna is constantly getting into fights. Early in the series Tenshi starts sending her own personal guards to track down Rushuna, all of which are interesting characters that don’t like being reasoned with (for the most part). And if it isn’t Tenshi’s guards, countryside robbers, mad scientists, confused royalty, and all manner of bad guys show up, especially after Tenshi puts a price on Rushuna’s head. During the climax, we even get a one-on-one duel between Rushuna and Setsuna, a girl who looks (and figts) almost exactly like Rushuna.

It’s a pretty spectacular battle, and although the end isn’t exactly what I was hoping for, it wraps things up decently enough and isn’t at all disappointing. I would definitely recommend this series to anyone looking for a short, light series to have fun with.

I may yet skip over some; EVA and Haruhi have been done to death, and I’m not sure what I could add about them. Grenadier was surprisingly good… it’s like Trigun, but more upbeat and with a lot more fanservice. Someday’s Dreamers was also surprisingly good, and very low-key. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, but it was really good. And Jubei-chan 2 was excellent. Not quite as good as the original, but it nice to know the series didn’t go severly downhill. We even get two Jubei’s; how is that not fun?

Every women Tenjou Tenge is similarly… *ahem* built to Aya and Maya, and most of the guys are ripped like Bob (or creepy ugly). Masataka and Souichiro (forth and fifth from the left, respectively) are the only really “average” looking guy in the series. This style is apparently a sort of trademark of the original manga artist Oh! great, and it’s certainly interesting. The series includes martial arts as a major theme, and it’s not hard to compare the characters here to those in pretty much any fighting game; Aya and Maya immediately reminded me of Kasumi and Ayane from Dead or Alive.

The nice thing about having everyone impossibly built, though, is that after awhile you start to forget about it. Which is good, because Tenjou Tenge is nearly as stupid as it could’ve been. The first nine episodes are entirely setup: we’re introduced to Bob and Souichiro, two punks that come to Todo Academy seeking to rule the school by beating the crap out of anyone that gets in their way. This plan is quickly ruined by Maya, who stops Souichiro’s rampage with one well-placed blow that knocks him from the main school building into the accompanying bathhouse and on top of her sister, Aya, who immediately becomes infatuated with him. Souichiro isn’t too fond of the affection and immediately runs out to pick a fight with Masataka during lunch, who quickly beats him with a chopstick.

The Executive (student) Council takes note of Bob and Souichiro and decides to teach them a lesson by attacking Bob’s girlfriend, Chiaki. After failing miserably to protect her, the two finally realize they’re no match for anyone at Todo Academy and join Maya’s Juken Club, the only club willing to stand up to the Executive Council. After a vicious assult at a bowling alley that leaves the Juken Club sorely beaten, though, we discover that there’s more to the animosity between the Juken Club and the Executive council than even long-time Juken Club members had thought.

Cue the flashback arc, which starts in episode 10 and doesn’t really end until episode 23 (leaving less than half the series dedicated to our “main” characters). Here we learn about Maya’s psychotic brother Shin, Mastaka’s big brother Mitsuomi, their friend Bunshici, and a couple of other characters relevant to the complicated past between the Juken Club and the Executive Council, some of which don’t make an appearance during the presence for various reasons. Shin killed his mother and father and tends to kill anyone that gets to close to his beloved sister Maya (Maya has a thing for Mitsuomi, by the way). Mitsuomi is being trained to be the “true martial artist” by his father. Bunshichi is… well, he’s Bunshichi. He’s probably the most down to earth character in the whole series, and also the biggest bad ass. He’s great.

At least, that is, until Shin hits Mitsuomi with an overload of Ki. Shin has a tendency to go psycho at the drop of a hat, and Mitsuomi’s father–hoping to bring out the best in his son by turning Shin into an ultimate evil of sorts–kidnaps Maya. Things go wrong when Shin actually finds out and kills most of the people involved. Mitsuomi takes a beating too, but in a different way: Shin imbues him with a huge amount of Ki, driving his body into overdrive. This gives Mitsuomi unparalleled fighting ability, but it also starts killing him. With the help of Shin’s “girlfriend” Kuzunoha Mana,Mitsuomi discovers that he probably has three, maybe four years left to live, and although he can probably beat anyone in the world in a fight, anything over three minutes of exertion puts him at serious risk of immediate death.

Mitsuomi isn’t too happy about this. He and Shin have a final bout in Todo Academies school tournament, where Mitsuomi wipes the floor with Shin as Shin struggles not to go crazy and kill everyone. Just as Mitsuomi’s about to finish it, though, Shin snaps again, severely injuring or killing everyone inthe arena before Mana steps in and finally puts Shin out of his misery. After their deaths, Mitsuomi forms the Executive Council to prevent anything like this from happening again. Maya blames Mitsuomi for her brothers death, though, and refuses to join him, instead continuing her brothers Juken Club in opposition to the Council.

There’s a lot more to that, but seriously: just watch. It’s pretty good, and it’d take forever to explain everything that goes on between all these people and how they got to where they are today. The last episode is entirely non-serious and doesn’t give us any kind of ending. An additional two-episode OVA continues the story, where we find out that Souichiro is actually the “tru martial artist” that Mitsuomi was being trained to be. Once again, we don’t get any kind of ending, though. It’s an unfortunate flaw for the series; I was really hoping to see where all this was going, but all we get is loose ends and no resolution.

Still, it’s a good watch. If you can get past the character models (or if they’re your kind of thing) there’s a good, fairly complex story going on that (unfortunately) comes no where near a conclusion.

Virginia

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Virginia with a good friend and had a blast. We spent a lot of time watching movies, but I also got to visit Washington DC for the first time, as well as meet some new people. The flight back was an experience too; flying was fun, but with a two-hour layover in Atlanta meant that I didn’t get home until 5:30am the next day (that’s about twelve hours from taking off in D.C. to arriving home in Michigan). I’d just like to thank everyone in Virginia again–particularly the one that made the trip possible–for an awesome time.

Return to Oz

Liliy finally got me to watch Return to Oz, an awesome movie that’s much better than the original. Unless you completely hate the original film, you should definitely see it.

MO and RPG

Thanks to the freak power outage, I haven’t had time to get to any new Maikeru On themes; I’d hoped to do both a Christmas and 2008 theme, but it looks like they’ll both be late. On the plus side, the MORPG prototype forum is up if anyone is interested in participating. Even if you don’t have anything particular to contribute, you can still join the forum, post in the general section, and test out new features as they are added.

Half-Life

Half-Life has devoured most of my time these past few days. I got The Orange Box for Christmas, and ended up purchasing Half-Life from Steam so I could get the backstory for Half-Life 2. Having finished the original and Portal and started on Half-Life 2, I can safely say that these are some of the greatest games ever. Coolest moment so far: in Half-Life 2, there’s a spot where you have to load bricks onto one end of a see-saw platform to  get the other end up high enough to reach a ledge. It sounds boring, but those kinds of physics are rarely found in a game, and that level of detail and interaction really help to immerse you in the experience.

Dai-Guard and D.Grey-Man

I finally got Dai-Guard (perfect collection) for Christmas. I’m only six episodes in, but it’s definitely one of the better mecha anime I’ve seen. It’s always funny to see a stuffy board of directors argue over forms and funds while their pay-roll pilots launch the mecha with their say. The real genius of Dai-Guard is that it presents a fairly plausible picture of what things would probably be like if an independent corporation had it’s own giant mecha: the thing constantly breaks due to poor construction, and the corporate board sees it as a money pit that should never actually be used.D.Grey-Man is awesome, by the way. It’s the first actual manga I’ve read, but it’s good. And it’s probably going to eat away at my bank account now.

Safari

I’ve been playing with the Firefox 3 beta release for awhile now, and it’s really good. Unfortunately, it’s also not compatible with most of my extensions, and it made me realize that without those, there’s no particular reason for me to use Firefox. I decided to give Apple’s Safari a shot, and I’m extremely pleased so far. It’s really slick, and lightning-fast compared to Firefox. Firefox 3’s address bar autocomplete is still prettier, but Safari has it beat on speed. I might end up sticking with it.

And Finally…

… here’s to a new year; to new beginnings, new places, new opportunities, new experiences, and new people. To overcoming, letting go, and finding happiness. To good times and good friends. Here’s to what will hopefully be an explosively awesome year. Happy new year everyone!

The first arc of Death Note (episodes one through seventeen, which I’ll call the L arc) is excellent. Yagami Light discovers the Death Note one day, a notebook which allows the owner to kill anyone by writing their name in it and focusing on the persons face (thus ensuring that the correct person is killed and not someone with the same name). After some initial testing, the shinigami Ryuk shows up and Light reveals his plans: to become the god of a new world where he is Justice, passing judgment on criminals and other wastes to society. Light begins slowly, judging the most obvious criminals, and soon gains a cult following that dubs him Kira. As the body count racks up, though, the World Police Organization realizes that all these deaths can’t be coincidental and brings in L—all of the top three detectives in the world through other aliases—to discover who “Kira” is and shut him down.

First, Yagami Light. Light is an egotistical megalomaniac who, upon finding the Death Note, seeks to change this “rotting world” into something of his own vision where he can reign as god. He’s charismatic in the extreme (and “teh God of Sexiness”, so I’ve been told), uses everyone and everything to his own advantage, and is singularly focused on that one goal: to change the world. And it’s really hard not to like him. I couldn’t help but think how crazy he was for the first couple of episodes, but as time wore on, something about him turned me around. He’s despicable, but you can’t help but cheer for him. He’s killing people, but it’s difficult to hate a guy that, in his own twisted way, is really trying to change the world for the better. He’s a megalomaniac, but his execution is so masterful it’s hard not to think that maybe he has what it takes to accomplish such an insane goal.

Then L shows up. We don’t actually see L until about half-way through the first arc, but he immediately bests Light, discovering Light’s general location and discerning—to a small degree—how Kira is able to kill. L, like Light, sees himself as the embodiment of Justice as he works to find and eliminate Kira. And just like Light, L is masterful at what he does, if not quite so insanely sure of himself. L almost immediately looks to Yagami Light as the possible Kira, but suffers throughout the arc from a lack of evidence (more on this below).

Light eventually gives up his Death Note (and all memories associated with it) and joins L in the hunt for Kira in an attempt to clear his name, beginning the Yotsuba arc and all the awesomeness that this entails. Light and L and the other members of the Kira task force continue their search, eventually narrowing it down to a handful of corporate elites in the Yotsuba corporation. Amane Misa (the second Kira who has also given up her Death Note and lost all memory of it) eventually discovers who the new Kira is. The task force implements a strategy to capture this new Kira, which succeeds without a hitch and plays right into Lights hand: as the Death Note is recovered, Light grabs hold and all of his memories return. Light eventually explains the workings of this ridiculously awesome plan to clear his name and regain possession of the Death Note, even getting Rem (Misa’s shinigami) to kill L, ending the Yotsuba arc and seemingly ensuring Light’s victory.

This arc—as Liliy warned me—is made of awesomeness. The interaction between Light and L is spectacular to watch, especially when they start fighting (physically), and the entire task force is filled with great guys like Matsuda and Aizawa. It becomes painfully obvious in this arc, however, that:

1. L knows Light is Kira
2. L won’t admit it to himself because he wants Light

This was really annoying. Not L having a crush on Light; it’s never really explicitly stated, but it’s pretty obvious that something going on there. No big deal. By the time you reach the end of the Yotsuba arc, though, it seems obvious that L should have done something about Light. He must have known Light was Kira. There’s no way somebody as smart as L couldn’t have known, and he does nothing. Much as I like L, in the end I still have to side with Light because L had so many opportunities to stop Kira and he never did. Luckily, Light’s awesome plan to regain the Death Note and kill L makes the Yotsuba arc the best part of the entire series.

Then we get to the last arc, which I’ll call the Near arc. We jump a number of years into the future, where Light has joined the police force and is now acting as the new L, continuing the search for Kira while judging criminals as Kira while nobody’s watching. Eventually entire nations start pledging their loyalty to Kira, or at least abandoning any search for Kira, and the world becomes divided. The United States sets up a special task force to hunt for Kira unassociated with L and brings in Near, the true L’s replacement. Mikami shows up, lot’s of things happen, and Light is eventually found out and killed.

As you can probably tell by my complete lack of details, I wasn’t really happy with the Near arc. It’s not that it’s bad; there are a lot of great things that happen, and it’s at least as exciting as the other arcs… right up till the end. The end feels so horribly wrong that it almost ruins the entire series. It just doesn’t make sense. Luckily, you’ll probably be so caught up in things that it won’t hit until after the credits role.

Part of the problem is that Near and Mello (the other L wannabe) aren’t really as interesting as L. They only have half the number of episodes to work with and, apart from an awesome Death Note swipe by Mello, they never really feel like they’re any kind of threat to Light. But they still manage to beat him… somehow. Near explains it, but it just doesn’t make sense. Mikami wouldn’t have gone to the real Death Note and tried to kill Takada like he did. And even if he would have, Light wouldn’t have failed to see the possibility that the real Death Note had been tampered with; he would’ve given Mikami a sheet (or even a scrap) of the real Death Note to kill the task force at the end and avoided any chance of screwing it up. Even Matsuda’s reaction feels wrong. He liked the Chief, sure, but there are a number of scenes where he says that he agrees with Kira’s methods. Why would he suddenly start shooting at Light without any hesitation?

The entire ending feels like it’s there only because Light is the “bad guy” and has to lose. It doesn’t really make any sense, but the good guys had to win in the end and we needed to be reminded that however likable Light is, he’s an egotistical megalomaniac that has committed an untold number of murders in the name of Justice. As things happened, Light should have won, and the ending as-is goes against everything in the 36 episodes that precede it.

Other random thoughts:

• All of the shinigami are hilarious and awesome.
• Aizawa’s comeback at the end of Yotsuba is one of the greatest things ever. I just wish he never had to cut the ‘fro.
• Mogi is the best manager ever.
• Chief Yagami with shinigami eyes is the best Kira ever.
• L want to jump Light… badly