We’re back again for the second half of our two week Gurren Lagann-athon to cover the second half of the series in the second film. Once again, this is much better for pre-existing fans who have already seen the show, which is immediately very apparent as this movie starts with a very sporadically edited version of the conclusion of the final battle against Lordgenome, with a lot of jumping around in that episode which I can only see confusing people jumping into this from only the previous movie. Imagine finishing that first movie, getting hyped for Team Dai-Guren to fight the big bad guy who they plowed through legions of soldiers to get through…only to see him defeated within the first ten minutes and then jumping ahead SEVEN YEARS to a totally different plot. And even beyond that, for every extra good thing made for these movies, there are changes made to later points that really only hamper the flow of the story and could only be appealing to people who have already seen the original version. So from here on, I am assuming you have already seen the original series in full, and even if you never see these movies, I would suggest that over these any day. Okay?SPOILERS!!!!Okay, so once the movie gets into the second half of the series with the seven year time skip, it actually tries a lot more creative editing choices to distill the story, even if it messes with the pacing a bit. The reason the Anti-Spiral trap is triggered is due to humans trying to reach the moon this time, not because their population become large enough, which is an odd and arbitrary change in my opinion, but also makes it feel like reverse Star Trek oddly enough. Simon is pretty much immediately sentenced to death after the initial battle with the Mugann instead of getting a couple more chances to fight (though the energy containing spiral bullets do make an appearance later with no explanation), leading to the total invasion soon after, which then leads to the creation of Arc-Gurren Lagann. With no time for a breather like in the show, the story very quickly zooms past to finding the captured Nia out in space, but also decides to cut out the massive slaughter of Dai-Gurren members from the show and reducing it to just Kittan’s sacrifice, which inadvertently makes a later moment when they’re looking back on all those who died kinda awkward because…it’s just Kamina and Kittan.We also get a look at Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann ahead of time when the team takes control of the moon which is revealed to be a massive spaceship, which kind of undercuts its first transformation in the show, but then again we only first see it WITHOUT the sunglasses so that getting those later is kinda treated like a reveal? And the characters who survive in this iteration get to go onto the massively expanded final battle against the Anti-Spiral, where just about everyone gets a galaxy-sized upgrade to their Gunmen…aside from Kittan of course (though his gets a design in the artbook, so I guess that works out). This then leads to SUPER TENGEN TOPPA GURREN LAGANN, who you can barely qualify as a mech anymore but is so damn cool that they just had to go for it. All of this is just pure machismo and, I’ll say it, EPICNESS that is only enhanced by having it on a big screen (which was definitely a first for me) and I couldn’t help but be in awe, not just for the nostalgia factor of having seen this over a decade ago, but also getting to see it in more glory than I had ever before.If you didn’t catch this during its two-day run, I’m sorry, but hopefully they’ll have a rerelease in a few years for the twentieth anniversary. And really, these movies are just a big commercial for the tv show anyway, so this review will ALSO be a commercial to watch the tv show. GO WATCH THE TV SHOW! If you like mecha anime, go watch it, if you like high energy action, go watch it, if you don’t like bouncing giant boobs as humor…well, that’s understandable and this show definitely has a lot of that, so you might want to avoid it. But if you LIKE that, then watch it! Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is an iconic and legendary classic in whatever form you wish to consume it, it has a great animation pedigree in terms of creative staff, has been influenced by and gone on to influence many great shows and movies and people. It’s just…great, top to bottom. Except for Episode 4, which is ass, but you have to watch it, so…tough.