Simon found the best way he could to find peace with his grief, to find fulfillment with his life. He faced the impossibility of his situation, and he stayed true to himself in the process — and what you seem to fail to realize is that is vital. For Simon to find any satisfaction with the nihilistic, narcissistic destruction you've got yourself gassed up thinking is some kinda wise, he would had to utterly betray and destroy who he is as a person.
He's not someone who could take joy from wanton destruction. He's not some clown who thinks the world should suffer because he was made to. He was never that selfish or weak. You're working from the wrong starting point.
Edit:
Yeah, y'know, that's a fair point. Pardon this last response, then — it was being written before you posted that. I do agree with you there, though.
Edited by RegisteredUser on Apr 24th 2020 at 5:20:04 AM
I'll just admit it. I am a very selfish person by nature. I can't understand why someone would give up their own happiness and be okay with it, especially when others enjoy the fruits of your labor. Nor can I understand how someone can have the power to change their situation and not use it. Nor can I understand why someone who is denied everything the one chance they had for happiness wouldn't want the entire world to burn. Gurren Lagann's ending is a challenge to everything I believe it and it infuriates me.
Hate to be the one to break the news, but people are generally good and self-sacrificing. Should be pretty obvious, especially now, with most of the human population willingly staying at home and cutting off physical contact with other people so as to prevent the spread of a potentially deadly virus.
How did you even get to the end? The whole series is about fighting to save people from tyranny. Putting your life on the line to make sure everyone else gets to live a happy life. The very concept of a hero is someone who is more selfless than most others.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Apr 24th 2020 at 4:49:32 AM
~jmf6401, between your posts here and your initial thread here
, it's really coming off that all you want to do here is navel-gaze bitterly. That's not really what threads are about - constructive criticism and discussion is fine and good, but if you're just here to relentlessly complain, that's not an enjoyable environment for anyone.
It reminds me of "I Hate Anime (part 1, 2, and comment comeback)" by I Hate Everything. It's a great analysis of the show and its inspirations (dare I say, better than Best Guy Ever's) but what it praises are also reasons the medium is so alienating to "normal people".
I saw this one that I found really interesting that really gets into the lead-up to and inspirations for the series.
Apologies for the length and double apologies if someone posted this already, but its a super interesting video. It always amazes me how anime, particularly the stuff I watched when I was younger, was all a part of this interconnected web of creators that really built off of each other and what came before.
You know, looking at this oft-cited databook image
, it's clear that it's not accurate. I don't speak Japanese, but it looks like the text at the top is saying that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is 10^25 times the height of the standard Gurren Lagann to be 10^26 meters tall total, making the standard Gurren Lagann 10 meters tall.
- 10 meters seems a little too small for Gurren Lagann, but it's not too bad.
- But then it says that Arc Gurren Lagann is 10^5 times the size of Gurren Lagann, which is plainly ridiculous. Most reasonable estimates of Arc Gurren Lagann have it around 5-10 thousand meters tall, but 10^5 times 10 is 1 million meters tall, which would make it 1/3rd the diameter of the MOON, which is insane because Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann is the one that's supposed to be moon size!
- And then Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann says that it's 10^5 times the size of Arc Gurren Lagann, which would make it 100 billion meters tall, otherwise known as THE DIAMETER OF VENUS'S ORBIT. That's completely and utterly ridiculous, as well as contradictory with everything we see of it. Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann is literally transformed from the moon, most reasonable estimates have it being 5-10 million meters, not 100 billion meters!
- And then Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's stated height of 10^26 comes back into play, and even that's bigger than it looks. In the final battle, it looks to be around the same size as your average galaxy, but the diameter of the entire Milky Way is 10^21 meters across, which is WAY smaller than TTGL's supposed size.
It's weird, usually Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale applies to astronomical things being much SMALLER than they should be, not much LARGER. Hell, we even see the smaller version in full-force during the actual series, where the Anti-Spiral Homeworld is clearly visible on top of the head of Granzeboma, despite the fact that it should be so small it's not even visible.
Here is a neat surprise. In order to celebrate Gurren Lagann's 15th anniversary, the Good Smile Company is releasing a new figure with supervision from the animation staff. This is Infinite Combining Gurren Dan Lagann. It is Gurren Lagann combining with the rest of Team Dai Gurren's Gunmen. It is definitely a cool what if.

So you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If suffering is the only option then that's all the more reason to make sure you're not the only one. It's why I have more respect for characters like Rau Le Crueset or MCU Killmonger over those like Simon.