Gurren Lagann: Childhood’s End & Misc News

My week’s been hectic.  I’m gearing up for my wedding this weekend, and I’ve had not a lot of time for reading manga, watching anime, or playing video games.  Of course this means that I REALLY want to do all 3.  After this weekend……

Yesterday, I came home to find the first Gurren Lagann movie on the table waiting for me, which was a pleasant surprise because I forgot that I had ordered it.  There was some accidental good timing on Bandai’s part, because I read about the movies being available through their website right after I had finished watching the series, and full of the warm glow the series had left me with, I ordered both movies.  I found out somewhat later that they’re just recaps of the series, but I figured that could be good too.

So I decided to watch it when I went to bed, which was probably not the best of ideas because I tend to drift off to sleep pretty quick once I’m cozy and watching pretty much anything on my television, boring or not.  Needless to say, the movie kinda dragged.  I did enjoy taking the trip back into the series and reliving all of Kamina’s awesome one-liners, but after a while even the novelty of that left me.

I am very much in favor of the awesome Yoko/Adiane fight scene however.  That was cool, and the fanservice didn’t bother me a bit.  I actually think it was pretty cleverly done, and ended up more toward the badass end of the spectrum rather than sleazy.

Other than that, I was a little disappointed in the movie.  I watched it with an eye toward introducing new viewers to Gurren Lagann, but I don’t think the movie would be better for that than the series itself.  The beginning is fairly strong, introducing Simon, Kamina, Yoko, and the others, but the middle was too random and just jumped around too much to draw in someone who hadn’t already seen all the footage being covered.  As you may know I’m currently “mentoring” a number of newbie anime fans, so I like to keep an eye out for anything that’s easily accessible to them.

I still like the movie generally though.  It’s good to pop in if I don’t feel like shuffling discs, and there is that great fight scene.  I’m really looking forward to getting the second movie.

I’ve been doing some manga reading, picking up first volumes of various series, mostly because I found them for cheap at the local Hastings when I go to visit my mom.  Recently I’ve read Crying Freeman, vol. 1, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, vol. 1, My Heavenly Hockey Club, vol. 1, and in keeping with my recent habits, Butterflies, Flowers, vol. 3, Black Butler, vol. 2, and Deadman Wonderland, vol. 2.  Pretty good variety.  I’ve had to scale back my spending some, but that really just means that I keep up on around 4 titles, and just put the rest on hold until I can afford to binge-spend, or I start looking up cheap volumes.  My personal favorite of all those is Butterflies, Flowers which is a mature josei (ladies’) title, with surprising amounts of twisted humor.  I literally laughed out loud a few times, and I generally never laugh out loud when I’m reading anything.

I’m trying to clear a few titles off of my “currently watching” list on MAL.  At the moment, I’m in the middle of around 25 anime, which is just too many.  I’ll make exceptions for One Piece and Bleach, since they’re long and not yet ended, but pretty much everything else had an ending, and I need to get to it.  I just finished Ippatsu Kikimusume, and the next series I finish will be Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and Spice and Wolf.  I just borrowed both seasons of Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex from a coworker, so I’m trying to clear a few series before I start on those.

Like I mentioned in the beginning of the post, I’m getting married this weekend.  It’s pretty exciting, but I’m currently of the opinion that the ceremony is definitely not worth it.  As much as I LOVE getting to see my mom, dad, and brother all at the same time, plus aunts, uncles, and other friends and coworkers that I haven’t seen in a while all in one place, the logistics of being “in charge” of an event where people are constantly telling me what I should do is very irritating.  What’s also irritating is people telling me it’s my event and that I should just do what I want.  Try telling that to the people telling me what to do, thanks.  End rant.  I’m really very excited, and the most exciting bit for me is that I designed (with help) my own dress.

I used a pattern of course, and I also got help sewing the top, since that’s a little advanced for my newbie/beginner skills, but I did most of the work on the skirt, and the color scheme and everything else was my idea.  So at least I’m doing exactly what I want with the dress, which really is fine by me.   I’ll try and post a picture sometime next week for you guys.