Oh man… this show’s making the same mistake HALO did. I’m supposed to hate the beast creatures piloting the gunmen and I can’t do that when they’re this goofy! For Pete’s sake… that monkey man looks like he’s running around in assless chaps! How’s Simon supposed to be threatened by that? Perhaps he ought to feel threatened by that effeminate mechanic guy. People have been talking about GURREN LAGANN inverting or honoring standards of the genre. For one, all of the mecha... they’re not robo-knights like Gundams are or giant gimps like Evas are. They’re either just giant heads or they’ve got drills coming out the wazoo. Following that, I suppose it’d figure this show would riff on Gainax’s habit of having teen guys getting hit on by grown-up girls by making it an older guy doing the flirting this time. And he’s an aggressive flirt, at that.
This episode’s already pulling at the heart string’s with the reveal of Kamina’s Dad’s tragic fate. Poor bro! I can’t help feeling like they’re trying to slyly imply that his father’s some established character whom I’m not familiar with. They never show his face, but they fixate on all that peculiar jewelry he’s got on his hands. Maybe they’re saving a big reveal of him for later, but it sure… smells like he’s a character they don’t own the rights to. This kind of thing happens in superhero comics all the time.
I remember somebody commenting that EVA was supposed to be atypical for Gainax’s usual animation style. They were going for “photo realism” and, thus, avoided their trademark “ Gainax bounce.” I think I’m starting to get a better sense of the what Gainax's signature style is after noticing some similarities to FLCL’s animation style here. There’s a lot of extreme, curvilinear perspective, as if every frame were photographed through a fish eyes lens. To all you more experience Anime Vice lunatics - - am I getting warm?
Watch this episode, "I Said Pilot It!" below and here, read my comments about the first episode here.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Studios and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. HYBRID BASTARDS! is available here and UNIMAGINABLE is available here for pre-order on Amazon.com.
