Gurren Lagann

Gurren Lagann just finished its run on Toonami last week, so now in memory, I will review the series that pushed the limits of credibility far beyond anything anyone should logically expect. Honestly logic is abandoned just a few episodes in, and then it just runs on pure WTF more than any show ever has.

Things start off relativey normal by standards of anime and post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi. We meet our heroes Simon and Kamina in an underground city. Kamina dreams of breaking through to the surface, following his father and achieving greatness, a plan which requires Simon the digger and his trusty drill, who unfortunately for Kamina just wants to do his job and live an ordinary life. Then Simon stumbles across a drill shaped pendant and a large meetal head which appears to be activated as a fully functional robot by the drill trinket. At first, Simon just thinks it's a curious oddity, but he isn't allowed to just let it be for long because an even bigger robot drops in to the city and Simon and his robot, dubbed Lagann by Kamina, along with Kamina suddenly become responsible for saving the city. The fight ends with Team Gurren(also Kamina;s idea, most of the crap in this series is Kamina's idea) breaking through to the surface along with Yoko, also a founding member of Team Gurren who came from another city called Litner. Once they reach the surface they find that these robots are called gunmen and they are operated by beastmen who oppress humans and drive them back underground, only since Litner is destroyed, the people can't go back, so they have to fight, and now Lagann is their best hope of fighting against the gunmen. Then Kamina hijacks a gunman, something nobody else has either thought or at least has been brave enough to try, or lucky enough to succeed. Dubbing his gunman Gurren Kamina and Simon become a team to fight against the beastmen armies along with Yoko and her rifle and their mechanic Leeron. Gradually they crusade from village to village collecting allies and freeing people from the opprssion of the beastmen. Then comes the defining moment, when Gurren and Lagann face a foe that is too powerful for them to defeat, and Kamina comes up with the brilliant idea of combining the two gunmen by smashing Lagann on top of Gurren. It should be noted that the size ratio between Lagann and Gurren are the same proportionate to a human head and the rest of the body respectively, it should also be noted that beastmen have their arms and legs coming straight out of the head which doubles as the body, so what Kamina has done is give Gurren a head. One more thing that should be noted is that the way Kamina goes about this makes no sense whatsoever to anybody, not the viewer, not his allies, not the beastmen who actually know how gunmen operate, possibly not even to Kamina himself, but he does it anyway, and at then something happens that changes the direction of the show, when they completely abandon the laws of phyiscs and give in to sheer willpower, Kamina's plan actually works and Gurren Lagann actually ends up being a more powerful robot that can produce infinite drills to ensure victory for our heroes. From here, Team Gurren Lagann mangages to inspire an army of gunmen hijacking human warriors to stand against the beastmen. So far the story is still pretty straightforward with everyone going after the leader of the beastmen, Lordgenome, and culminating in the final battle.

Then things start to get wierd. Yes, wierder than they already were. Kamina dies duing the battle, but the survivors carry on and rebuild the world anew and in just seven years the barren wasteland of Earth becomes a fertile prosperous civilization. And then comes the anti-spiral race. As it turns out, Lordgenome was actually trying to protect Earth from the anti-spirals. There is a force called spiral power; why? Because the whole thing started with Simon drilling and the creator decided to run with that theme so spirals became the central theme of the series for no real reason. Anyway, the anti-spirals determined that spiral power would lead to the destruction of our universe, so to stop that from happening they decided to destroy any race that achieved threshold spiral power, defined as having a certain population level. By oppressing humanity and leaving varied beastmen at war on the surface, no spiral race was dominating Earth as far as the anti-spirals could tell, so for the greater good of the planet maintaining that status quo was actually in the best interests of Earth not being estroyed by the anti-spirals. Long ago, Lordgenome had attempted a braver, more straightforward course of action but failed and fell back on this plan. What has changed now is Nia, Lordgenome's daughter who is actually the artificially generated messenger of the anti-spirals. Due to the prosperity of the human race, they have achieved the threshold population and she has been activated. The problem is she was completely unaware of her true nature prior to activation and has fallen in love with Simon who will now literally go to the ends of the universe to save her. The final episodes go so far beyond the limits of what should make sense that the final battle is actually between two robots large enough to dwarf galaxies fighting in a pocket dimension universe. They stand on large galaxies and throw smaller galaxies. Read that last part as many times as you need to either make sense of it or for your head to explode. Seriously this whole thing went off the rails, but man did it look good doing it.

Honestly, I can't hate on this series for being ridiculous, pretty much every good anime goes off like this. They all start off making sense, then push the limits until it doesn't make sense anymore. Unless, of course, you have been watchign all along, if you follow the pace, the crazy sneaks up on you so you don't really notice it until after. While you're watching it, you're like, that is so awesome! And then after you're done watching you look back and you're all like, wait, what did they do again? Gurren Lagann takes honors in terms of scale because few have gone so far as pitting two entire planets agaisnt eachother on an intergalactic battlefield for the fate of the entire universe WITH THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE ACTUALLY VISIBLE DURING THE BATTLE! The series ended simply because there was no next step, they hit the end of the road, there was no getting bigger than it got, so cheers to Gurren Lagann for leaving it all on the floor-er, galaxy.

Silmarillion

Today I felt like going a littel extra nerdy and taking a trip to Middle Earth. By now we are all familiar with the world of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, but what many do not realiz is these were a smaller part of Tolkein's magnum opus, the Silmarillion. I actually read this book a while back and it reads like the bible of Middle Earth. Hobbit fans will be disappointed to find that hobbits aren't a part of the Silmarillion at all, but rather focuses on elves, largely before the coming of humans. Tolkein actually started this first, but never finished it, his son published it posthumously. Tolkein made up the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in the world he created, but really the storie that made him famous were only the tail end of his great mythology of what is actually supposed to be our world.

Let's start at the beginning, Iluvatar. Iluvatar is basically God, the being that all of creation came from. Iluvatar(never referred to by gender) created a flat Earh and populated the world with four races. The first race was the Valar, eight males, seven of which had wives, making fifteen in total, and they are basically gods of a lower rank than their creator, but between them they have all of the power over the entire world, and because of their power and imortality, hey could nto reproduce, their numbers were fixed eternally. The two most important Valar in the grand scheme ofthings are Aule and Melkor, we'll get back to them later. The second race were the Maiar, and they were like the Valar, only somewhat less powerful because their powers were controlled by the Valar. The Maiar were actually very important, particularly five that ended up being the wizards of Middle Earth, yes, that's right, Gandalf the Grey was actually a third rank god, really puts that whole coming back from the dead thing in perspective huh? Next in line were the elves, also immortal, but significantly less powerful, weak enough to be able to procreate. Once elves reach maturity they do not age any further and wil only die if they are killed, but they still don't really die, they just go to the realm of the afterlife where they continue to live. This place is actually across the sea and living elves can visit. However, before the elves could happen, Aule became impatient and created the dwarves, seven, one for each Valar, at least the ones with wives, apparently the sons of the Valar. Iluvatar pointed out that he had overstepped his powers and created flawed beings, but then corrected the mistake, fixing the dwarves and giving them wives that these immortal beings could spawn mortal progeny, the only rule being that they must stay underground so the elves could be the first on the surface, which wasn't bad because the dwarves like being underground where they can mine mithril, pure silver. Dwarves have more complicated immortality, they are mostly a mortal race, but seven are immortal and if any of those seven are killed, they reincarnate as the next in their tribe.

Now that we have established the first beings, before humans came along, there was the terrible reign of Melkor, Vala of darkness. Melkor was all about corruption, his Maiar became Balrogs, the worst being Sauron, and Melkor was also the one who created orcs by corrupting elves, and made wargs out of wolves. Melkor's favorite creation was Ungoliant the giant spider, mother of Shelob and the giant spiders of Mirkwood that Bilbo slew in the Hobbit. Apparently, not having a wife really made Melkor a bitter old bastard because Ungoliant was made to eat light because he hates light. The biggest confrontation involved two trees, one gold and the other silver that glowed so bright that all of Middle Earth was illuminated by the trees from the other side of the world. The elves loved the trees so much that one named Feanor actually captured the light in the Silmaril, three stones which would become the crown jewels of the elves. Of course, Melkor had Ungoliant eat the light of the trees and cast the world into darkness. Everyone did their best to bring light back to the trees, but the best they could do was grow one gold fruit and one silver flower. Feanor encased them to be protected and two maiar became responsible for carrying them through the sky bring light to the world, and that is the origin of the sun and the moon. Yup, that's Tolkein's story and he's sticking to it.

After this the Silmarillion goes on to tell a grand epic about how elves defended the Silmaril from Melkor. The story follows two pairs of star crossed lovers, human men who fell in love with elven women who bore them half-elven children. Against all odds, the half elven children, one male, the other female, fell in love with each other and had two sons, one of which was Elrond who would later rule over Rivendell. This meant a totalof four half-elves, the only four that would ever be. After years of conflict, a group of elves finally realized Melkor was the problem and sailed across the sea tothe western paradise to request of the gods that Melkor be dealt with. Only Iluvatar had the power to do anything and refused unless someone could speak on behalf of men as well as elves. Of course, humans aren't allowed on the far shores of Valinor, so this was impossible, until the half-elves decided to go and make the request. Iluvatar responded by sending melkor into the void, but in turn also decided that the half-elves would have to decide what they wanted to be because they could not live as both humans and elves. Elrond obvioulsy chose to be an elf, but his brother chose to be a human.

Now there is actually a great deal of significance in the brother of Elrond, because even though he became human, his bloodline had a touch of elven grace, living three ties longer, aging three times slower, and having a bit of natural magic. They were given their own island called Numenor, halfway between Middle Earth and paradise. The elves of paradise had been cultivating lesser silver trees and gave one to the Numenoreans and it became their symbol. All was well for a long time, until one king was brazen enough to break the one rule of never setting foot on the shores of Valinor. Realizing the folly in advance, a group of Numenoreans set sail back to Middle Earth and established the kingdom of Gondor with yet another white tree near their capital of Minas Tirith, and connected their cities with the palantir, seven stones of seeing gifted to them with the tree. It was a smart move because the moment the foolish king set foot on the forbidden shore, Numenor sank beneath the waves along with the king and all his crew and the world was bent round so that any man who dared to follow would simply sail around to the other side and never reach Valinor.

This brings us to the era where the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings takes place and we know how that went. Now you know the whole story, or at least the highlights. If you want the rest, find your own copy of the Silmarillion and check it out for yourself. Warnign: for real nerds only.

The ugly step children of Final Fantasy: Squenix fails

In the past I have mentioned how much I love the Final Fantasy series, and while the main series is the greatest ever made, there have been some unfortunate attempts to capitalize on the success of the series by making spin-offs that ended up being crap. Honestly, aside from the Tactics offshoot, I would say anything that Square Enix makes featuring Final Fantasy should probably be avoided.

The first misstep was Ehrgheiz, which was a fighting game that boasted a 3D system. This was actually a revolutionary concept when you consider that most fightign games actually lock the fighters in a 2D plane even when the graphics give the illusion of 3D, Ehrgheiz actually allowed characters to move around the 3D battlefield. This was a good idea that was executed poorly, and the game became more known for featuring characters from Final Fantasy VII. The thing that killed it the most was that the FF cast were bonus characters in addition to a main cast with their own story, which is hinted at being interesting, but unfortunately little is done to deliver on the original promise. The game relies heavily on a story mode with no real story, there is a bonus stage at the end that is hidden in the credits and it's very easy to miss out entirely. There are bonus games that are not worth the data that went into them. The most interesting part to me was a dungeon crawler RPG that was rather disappointing given that it comes from the makers of the greatest RPGs and they just seem to throw away everything they ever knew and made the crappiest mini game since before the original FF. The worst part of the RPG is that you have to pay in game money to save which I thought Squenix learned long ago was a bad idea when it dragged the original FF and they made saving free in every installment after. In the end the only thing worthwhile about Ehrgheiz is playing as Cloud, which is hardly worth renting the stupid piece of crap. The worst part of Ehrgheiz is Squenix was so slow o learn they attempted a sort of sequel called The Bouncer, which bombed just as hard for pretty much the same reasons Ehrgheiz did.

The next bad game that I actually played was Final Fantasy VII:Dirge of Cereberus. A much maligned game, it's not as bad as some people say, but as someone who doesn't play first person shooters, I will say that for those of you that do, you will think this is crap. This game was an attempt to make an FPS out of FF and there was some good intent behind it. The premise is that Vincent Valentine, the gun wielding secret optional character from FFVII has to save the world from an army of super soldiers for which he was apparently the prototype. The whole thing takes place a few ears after FFVII, the world is settling into peace, and then these soldiers leftover from the now totally defunct Shinra Power Company, known as Deepground, decide to attack now that they realize their masters aren't coming back for them. Ultimately the real problem was it just didn't translate formats very well. It might have been good to come up with a decent story to continue FFVII, but this one tried too hard to fit the FPS mold and resulted in a lot of identical generic troops with a few signature FFVII mobs popping in for what amounted to cameos. For FF fans, the whole thing was a bit of a letdown, FPS fans got even worse if they expected anything worthwhile here. Vincent gets a grand total of six guns to use in the game, and all but one can be customized to some extent, but three are practically worthless, the bayonet is basically a fixed rifle with a negligble melee bonus, the Ultima Weapon is too hard to acquire to be worth the trouble, and the machine gun called Griffin is too clunky to bother with at all, it can shoot a lot but rarely hits anything. The remaining three guns include the titular Cereberus, a handgun that shoots three bullets at once which eats ammo but does enough decent damage you don't really need another gun; the Hydra, a rifle which is a good long range weapon for those few foes that are sort of out of reach; and the Death Penalty which only comes in at the end and does it's job well enough, but it makes you feel like all your hard work on the other guns doesn't matter when Vincent just transforms and uses this ultimate weapon to end the game.

Dissidia was...well recieved, but honestly, it's kind of crap. It's a fighting game that has bizarre mechanics and ignores the laws of physics which looks impressive but makes playing eaither frustratingly difficult or, once yu get used to it, makes you feel like what you're doing is utterly pointless. The system involves fighting with two gauges, bravery and HP. The idea is that you go back and forth with bravery attacks until one character is strong enought to take out the enemy with an HP attack. It makes vey little sense, even when you figure it out. The game's story, and I use that term loosely for a series that does well with stories, is that one hero and one villain each from the first ten FF games are locked in combat on behalf of the gods Chaos and Cosmos. Ultimately, it seems that the whole game actually takes place in a limbo in the time loop of the first FF game hat actually went for thirteen cycles before the original FF takes place and this game is the last cycle. It seems that everybody can fly so the actual battelfields ar mostly just irrelevant backgrounds and there is no clear connection between any of them. The only redeeming thing is that I get to finally see the epic battle between Kefka and Sephiroth, which is actually easy to make happen. You do have to unlock them, but to do so all you really have to do is finish any of the ten Destiny Odyssey story modes which will allow you to unlock caharacters for power points, which you should have accumulated enough of in the process to do two characters. From there, simply open an exhibtion match and watch Kefka prove his superiority prove Sephiroth.

The worst of all is Final Fantasy All the Bravest. I am a big enoug Final Fantasy fan to say this game isn't all bad, as a free app, it's a fun diversion, and I really appreciate the throwback to old school 16-bit graphics a la FFV. Howeve, other than graphics and music, it is a complete disappointment. ther is no strategy, the party is randomly assembled from available characters with each battle and everybody has a predetermined attack so all you do is touch them, not that it even really matters, it's really just an illusion that you're doing anything at all that actually makes a difference in the outcome of the battle. The worst part is that you have to pay for the bonus content that you might actually want, but it's randomized, so you'll shell out $40 just so Cloud can join your party.

Final Fantasy is great, but they need to be more careful about venturing beyond what they know and do well.

In defense of Dragon Ball GT

Dragon Ball Z, the greatest show ever, ended with Goku going off to train with Uub, the reincarnation of his last nemesis, Majin Buu. For those who do not know what that was about, MajinBuu waDNs an eater of gods, the series had been pushed to the absolute limit of what anybody should expect, and Akira Toriyama decided it was time to simply bow out. Yet, the fans still demanded more, so Toei Animation, who had the rights to make the animated series, and the filler and the movies which made for good eye candy despite being non-canon and irrelevant, decided they could keep making the series without Akira Toriyama. Somehow, the fans of Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan, were rather disappointed in Dragon Ball GT, the result of Toei's efforts, and yet it still happened because we DB fans are cheap whores that will take any crap that features Son Goku even when we hate it, we love it. Except the live action movie, apparently, we draw the line at live action, though I imagine I could match up the audio from Dragon Ball Evolution with actual footage of similar events from the anime and it would do well. In fact, it would probably get far more hits on YouTube than the actual movie. But this post isn't about that movie, it's about DBGT.

DBGT begins about where DBZ leaves off, with Goku and Uub training. Then Emperor Pilaf, Mai and Shuu, who have been absent since releasing Piccolo before DBZ started, show up and they have gotten old and pathetic and are no match for Goku. Pilaf is looking for the dark star dragon balls, which are just like regular dragon balls, except that they were made by Demon King Piccolo who added in an extar bit of evil; the dragon balls will scatter around the universe and if not returned to the planet the last wish was made on within the year the planet will be destroyed. Emperor Pilaf is willing to take the risk to finally wish to rule the world, but screws up and says to Goku "I wish you were a little kid so I could beat you up!" and Dark Shenron grants the wish. This is actually brilliant because it returns the seies to it's roots by making Goku a kid again and looking for the dragon balls, while it also keeps the growing scope of the Dragon Ball series universe. It is wierd that one of his companions is his granddaughter Pan who still calls him grandpa, even though they now appear to be the same age. Anyway, the series runs pretty aimlessly like it did way back when, but it's good for what it was meant to be, bringing back Goku. Then the Baby Saga starts. Baby is an android that possesses other people...blah, blah, blah...the only thing worthwhile that ets our attention back is the introduction of Super Saiyan 4, which Goku has to ascend to in order to defeat Baby when he possesses Vegeta. SS4 is awesome for a nmber of reasons, the most immediate being that Goku becomes an adult temporarily. Also, he turns into a monkey, sort of. I would argue this is the form Super Saiyan should have been all along, it's like mini-oozaru.

So they collect the dragon balls, defeat Baby, and save the world twice at once, what's next? Android 17 comes back! Okay, I didn't actually watch this part, some scheduling issues, I am meaning to watch it eventually, it seems like a good idea. The thing is, all of Goku's enemies either became his ally or he killed them, all except Android 17, he is the last loose thread hanging from the previous series. So he comes back for one last battle. Another good thing, this makes the Red Ribbon Army the most persistent enemy as they appear in all three series. I can't say much more since I didn't actually see it, I'm just saying don't hate on it.

Finally the series ends with the Shadow Dragon Saga, which I would argue is the greatest of Dragon Ball ever. The gang goes to the Dragon Balls to wish away all the damge that's been done so far, but the overused dragon balls go dark and instead manifest as the seven shadow dragons. Yes, Dragon Ball has become about fighting against the dragons that are born of the dragon balls, for once the title actually makes sense! The absolute best part is when Goku fights Nuova Shenron, the four-star dragon. The whole story started when Goku was protective of this very dragon ball, and now he gets to fight the ultimate battle for this particular dragon ball. In my opinion this beats Broly out of the water. I do have a different idea of how the series should have ended though. I d like the fight with Omega Shenron, the ultimate combination shadow dragon, but I would have gone in a different direction when Nuova came back after Goku ate the four star dragon ball to keep it from Omega. Nuova should have brought Potara earrings from Supreme Kai on the other side after his brief demise, and then he could have fused with Goku to become Nuova Goku, and Omega could have used the seven-star's power of absorption to absorb Vegeta and become Omega Vegeta, and then there could have been an epic battle of Dragon Saiyans. Maybe that would be a good way to go with the rumored reboot...