Fire Eater - A Short Story

The climactic fight of Gurren Lagann in its final episode is probably one of the most insane, emotional and visceral fight scenes I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the only times I had felt so emotionally hyped up for something in any anime ever, the one other time maybe being Jojos. It’s also one of the only times I’ve actually seen a concept such as it, being played out. You see, the team, “Dai-Gurren” has reached the final big bad. They’ve secured the princess, they’ve transformed into their final form which is a robot inside a robot inside a robot inside a robot inside a robot (give or take), they’ve done the cool pose and yelled with all their might “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE” and they’ve forced the big bad to assume its final form. As they fight by literally chucking galaxies at each other, the big bad Anti Spiral realises that they were fighting very close to the Earth all along. Due to some space warping wormhole shenanigans, the earth is right there. And then we get a POV from the Earth. And I absolutely adore the sequence that follows. It is one of the most empowering sequences I’ve ever witnessed. For one thing, it is the people of the earth, the entire human race bearing witness to the event that will decide their future. Them being able to witness it creates a feeling of togetherness. The dai gurren aren’t galaxies away, they're right there, next to home, fighting like hell for their future, their existence. It is an excellent way to showcase the difference between the two species. The anti spiral are beings who have turned themselves docile in order to protect the survival of the universe. The individuals of their species exist in a trance-like state on their planet. They too can see the fight as their planet too is very close by, but they’re lifeless and apathetic while the Anti Spiral fights on by himself whereas the Dai Gurren, on top of being a team by themselves, a team containing all kinds of species mind you, are also being watched and supported and cheered for by their species who are full of life. On the other hand, their sheer size is awe inspiring. Usually in media, size is often used to disempower. Think of Godzilla or the colossi from the shadow of the colossus. They are these insanely huge creatures that negate our sense of being. By being in their presence, we are forced to realise our crippling tinyness. We are negated by our negation that being their sheer size. This scenario can become empowering though. Think of God of War. How Kratos destroys gods a hundred times his size while remaining the same humanly size. This is the old David versus Goliath. It is satisfying. Then there is of course the empowerment that comes from supersizing ourselves. Japan has a history of this with its obsession with tokusatsu. Alongside antagonistic kaiju, there are protagonistic ones as well, like ultra man and his predecessors. This kind of empowerment is much more radical and even unrealistic, but no one can deny, it is cool as hell. Gurren Lagann uses both during this sequence. The supersizing done by the final form of the mecha Gurren Lagann and then the final blow being an unravelling of the entire robot inside a robot inside a robot inside a robot thing into good old lagann which is a thousand times smaller than anything we’ve seen thus far. Empowerment is, of course, probably THE word that could be used to encapsulate what the show is going for. Every facet of the show has this theme in it, in one form or another. Even its lowest emotional depths being only used to push the following peaks, even higher. And just like how the term “empowerment” has a popular political annotation to it, Gurren Lagann, too, has a rather strong political side. The mecha anime scene has a tendency for overt political commentaries in its very DNA with a good amount of early gundam having much to say about war and weaponry. Gurren Lagann does not mutate away from this DNA. I always thought that Gurren Lagann would be considered one the more political anime in the anime community, but reading certain reddit posts and comments such as

Makes me want to not do nice things. Like seriously? Themes of toppling authority, communally fighting a monarchical tyrant and then doing that again, but this time against individualistic determinists who's view of their species is so insanely grim that they have basically lobotomised themselves, all while portraying an insanely punk attitude is not political? In my very frank opinion, this is a degrading view of the show as it is essentially likening it to a silly cartoon only made for entertainment or emotional catharsis and nothing more. So yes, Mr. Person on the internet, This is why we can’t have nice things. 

Gurren Lagann is very much a political anime. In fact its director Imaishi would go on to direct Kill la kill which starts its very first episode with a classroom scene where the teacher is taking a chapter on fascism and the nazis, overtly foreshadowing the entire premise of the show. So it is clear that Imaishi Isn't very shy about making any strong political statements.

Gurren Lagann begins with Kamina and Simon breaking out of their underground village with the help of Yoko and a gunman (that being this show’s small robots). Their village’s society is quite explicitly painted as a feudal one, with the landlord/master - esque dude with a sheathed katana, beating the workers who are judged to be slacking in the chief’s eyes. Kamina is the great man (in Hegel's terms, the World Historical Individual), the revolutionary individual who has the spirit and will to break out of the system. He realizes that the person who is the most obedient, the most oppressed, if you will, will be the person who will paradoxically bring about the change. That person being Simon who becomes ultimately responsible for their escape due to his persistent digging. This dialectical movement is a persistent theme throughout the entirety of the show, from how the humans are revealed to be possessors of the spiral power and defeat the spiral king with the very power, to how the Spiral King turns out to be one of their very own, only turning tyrannical from the fear of the Anti Spirals taking out beings possessing Spiral energy. Moreover, it is this very act by the spiral king, that being the turn into tyranny, that leads to him being defeated by Simon and ultimately brings about what he feared most, which is the anti spiral’s attack. Kamina’s famous quote “Don’t believe in yourself but believe in the me that believes in you” is a highly dialectical notion if you think about it. Believing in yourself if ultimately blind as without another person, you are basically unaware of your true potential. But when you are to be perceived by another person, your potential becomes concrete and limited. And thus you can trust this other person’s recognition of you more than you can, your own view of yourself. You cannot stand on your own shoulders, as they say. And hence the truth of yourself can only be realized by you through your negation that being the other person. Even the core motif of the entire show, the drill, aside from having a spiral pattern which is, you know… a big deal in the show, is also a potent depiction of the Hegelian dialectical process. As Simon says himself during the final fight, “we evolve beyond the person we were a minute before, little by little we advance further with each turn. That’s how a drill works”. What he says is true. Looking at the show, We begin in the underground with Kamina and Simon trying to escape. Let's make it point A. They escape with the unintentended help of a gunman. That’s the first arc towards point B, freedom from the underground. Then they realize that the overworld isn’t all what they made it out to be. There is a tyrannical overlord and beastmen under him who rule the surface. They are yet again, back under point A. Here, they are back to a position similar to when they were underground, yet different as they have evolved and are below point A and hence totally different from it. Then Kamina takes control of a gunman and with the partnering of Simon, ends up creating Gurren Lagann, leading to a position under point B again as they are able to fight other beastmen. Each movement, keep in mind, happens through a negation. The escape from the underground happened due to Simon’s digging, that is, forced labor which is the very thing they were fighting against. The defeat of gunmen and viral and the capture of the Dai gurren ship, all happen due to Kamina and the gang using Gurren Lagann. That being a negation because Gurren Lagann is what they are fighting against, a gunman. They use spiral energy to fight the gunmen and get to the spiral king, whom they learn, also uses the spiral energy, only in the exact reverse way, that is, to oppress rather than to liberate. Kamina’s death, too, was partly inadvertently caused by Simon due to his turbulent feelings for Yoko as he likes her but also is guilty as he knows that Kamina and Yoko are in love. The guilt of course partly stemming from his adoration for Kamina. And so the quote “Believe in the me that believes in you” comes back to bite Simon as its negation, that is, when you have problems with the other person who believes in you, causes Simon to lose concentration and weakens his link with Lagann. And so Kamina had to punch him and tell him to “believe in you that believes in you”, that is, believing in the image of oneself created by oneself (keep in mind, this is not the same as “believe in yourself” as by this point, we have made it further downward in the spiral.). This movement, of course, could only happen after Simon had grown to be a significant member of the group, as it is only then that he is ready to evolve. But of course, it gets Kamina killed, which leads Simon into a depressive dump which leads him to an actual dump, where he find the princess Nia, who’s abandonment is a symptom of the spiral king’s system, who would then paradoxically aid in the defeat of lordgenome (or the spiral king) himself. Furthermore, this entire first arc of Kamina, Simon and the gang revolting against the Spiral king takes up only the first half of the series. A good majority of the folks who watched the series for the first time, including myself, were caught off guard by the defeat of the Spiral king so early into the show. I had thought that they’d lose or at the very least, encounter another big bad right after the Spiral king was defeated. This is because thus far, the show had been portraying a revolution. Kamina was painted as a populist revolutionary, climbing high up and inspiring the fighting spirit within his comrades. This reaches its epitome in the episode right before his death, where Kamina gives a speech where he singles out Simon and bestows upon him a huge responsibility in the upcoming battle. Kamina gains influence in a very short amount of time and under him, the show moves rapidly. One episode they are a giant walking robot head and the other, they are an insanely huge ship robot. Moreover his actions are reckless and risky. This is a very prominent aspect of the show. Even his death being attributed to this fact. Isn’t this how we view revolutions? They are rapid, ruthless and risky. They begin and end before one knows it and during this span they are full of life and humanity. The bloody revolution of France, The October revolution in Russia, hell even failed ones… or at least immediately failed ones such as the Paris Commune. But what makes Gurren Lagann so special and valuable is that it doesn’t end with the revolution. It lingers. It skips a couple of years and shows us the day after the revolution. 

Slavoj Zizek once talked about the film V for Vendetta.  It's a film co-written by the Wachowski sisters, you know, the same people who directed the film about a bunch of green numbers in a box. It was based on a comic by the same name written by Alan Moore. The movie itself is basically a leftist superhero power fantasy. The guy with the mask tries to blow up the parliament while also igniting the masses of a dystopian UK to rise up against their fascist coded government. Zizek cynically comments that what he really wanted to see, for which he would sell his mother into slavery for, was a part two. A sequel to the movie that details what happens after the revolt at the end of the film. Where does the United Kingdom go after rising up in the middle of the night and cosplaying a terrorist? Zizek’s point being that the sudden enthusiastic revolutionary moment is easy to achieve. But just like how a long night of drinking isn’t the hard part but the day after is, the revolution itself isn’t the hard part. The day after, is. People have a tendency to “go back to normal”. We did our revolution, we had our fun. Okay but now let's go back to our comfortable little lives folks! Zizek states that this is what happens to most revolutions. Lenin and his vanguard party seized power, but ultimately failed to do anything tangible with the power before the Soviet Union fell into wars and famines. At other points, instead of a slow collapse, a paranoid spiral into totalitarian rule. This tendency can be seen in most cases of real world revolutions. And a similar thing is what is depicted in Gurren Lagann. After the defeat of the Spiral king, they dive into an insane rate of technological and cultural development. A full fledged civilization is founded and a bureaucratic state is at the top. Kamina and the Dai-Gurren have become symbols of patriotism and collective identity. But as Simon realizes, something is lost. They haven’t done away with oppression as the beast men are still looked upon as the enemy and are not treated as equal to the humans. Rossiu, a boy who joined Kamina’s team from a hyper religious village and fought with Simon and the rest of the dai gurren, assumes power and even turns against Simon and the old revolutionaries in order to pursue a more bureaucratic, cutthroat system because you know… you gotta break a couple eggs to make an omelette… right? My history fellas? Alright look I don’t wanna get called out for comparing a real world event to a cartoon… again… although I don't really see a problem in it since I’m not equating the two, but comparing in order to draw out productive points but anyways. Zizek posits repetition as a necessary part of a revolution. This is due to the dialectical relationship between necessity and contingency with Hegel. If you didn’t know, Hegel saw history as not simply something that happened, but a very specific path. More specifically, he saw history as a process of the development of the consciousness of freedom. Freedom here does not mean liberty in that you are unrestricted by external forces, but freedom here means to be conscious of one’s own nature. In other words, history is a process of us achieving self consciousness and becoming conscious of our own nature. Hence, whatever has happened in history is and will be necessary. They must have happened. However, a common misunderstanding of Hegel is to take him as a historicist or a determinist in that he believes in a predestined fate for humanity. This is untrue, Zizek states. As an example, Zizek brings up Europe right before the second world war. The tension was in the air. Everyone had a vague semblance of a sense that something was coming. But still, they weren’t a hundred percent sure. However, once the war actually broke out, things became clear as day. There was no other way. The war had to have happened. So what happened here is that the war retroactively became necessary after it had happened. Until then, the future was contingent, it was up to chance. Anything could have happened. But once something did, that was the only thing that could have happened. This is the contingency of necessity. The reason why I bring that up here, is because repetition is pure contingency. Unlike iterating something, which is to do something exactly as it is or in other words to carry out a necessity, in repeating, anything can happen. Repeating implies a past failure. And so to repeat is to try to achieve that which was not achieved the last time. It is only through a repetition in revolution, that the revolution can legitimise itself. This is why the revolution, in the case of Gurren Lagann, the second fight against the Anti Spiral had to happen in order to actualise and legitimise the true revolutionary core of the story. 

There is a particular instance where the dialectical marrow floats to the surface in the story. When Nia has been captured by the Anti Spiral and they are being very creepy towards her as she refuses to let them probe into her for information, the Anti Spiral tells her that she has been a virtual lifeform injected into the spiral race so that if or when they rebel against the anti spiral, she can be used to gain an upper hand. The anti spiral mentions that the fact that Nia was born to a Spiral energy user and was loved by a Spiral energy user was no more than a coincidence. However, this so called coincidence then leads Nia to be steadfast in not giving up information and holding still until Simon and co break in to rescue her. This is what ultimately leads to the final battle which results in the defeat of the Anti Spiral. The coincidence, of course, points to the contingency present in the equation. The contingency that, once happened, that is, the virtual bug’s birth as the daughter of a Spiral being, becomes necessary in order for History to happen. And history is exactly what happens in the final fight. After the defeat of lordgenome, the society that rises forth is not exactly the most free. As stated earlier, the beastmen are alienated from society. Not only so, the society that does exist, exists in a hierarchical manner, with a dictator like figure up top. What’s more, the society under Rossiu is a paranoid one. Always in fear of collapse, the society’s singular focus is stability. However, the reveal of the Anti Spiral as the people actually in power negates this said society, as it becomes clear that it wasn’t all that table to begin with. The Anti Spiral of course, being a proper negation of the Spiral beings, as they too are concerned with survival, but as they say themselves, they are concerned about the stability of the universe as a whole. Hence why they shut themselves down and forbid themselves from ever evolving. This positively mirror’s Rossiu’s paranoid totalitarian regime which was only afraid of the stability of their species. And thus, what needs to happen is a complete toppling, or a vortex spiral like movement that evolves the two positions. And that is exactly what happens with the final fight. Simon’s epic proclamation of how humans are like the drill that evolves itself every moment, and that thinking that this will cause the collapse of the universe is their limitation is the exact moment that this new shape of consciousness is posited. In getting there, the Dai Gurren had had the help of both lordgenome and viral, both people whom they had at different points, oppressed. Moreover, due to the stuff that I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, everyone on Earth was able to witness the fight, and hence shared the power of the Spiral. Juxtaposed to the Anti Spiral, the Spiral beings draw their power from their link with others. And thus, at that moment, they are progressing history into the next step. They have realised that said facts about themselves and in doing so, have progressed in being conscious of their nature and also achieving Freedom. The Anti Spiral, on the other hand, are historicists. They have embraced necessity and thus cannot see a future where the spiral beings are unbound, while the universe remains fine. And it is this exact limit that gets them defeated, as they do not see the contingency of the future. For them, there is a necessary path that will be taken by history if the Spiral beings are liberated. And in rejecting the contingency inherent in the historical process, they limit themselves. All of this, of course results in the most bombastic, epic and the most hype finale I have ever seen, ever. Starting with “libera me from hell “and “Row row fight the power”, followed by the opening playing all while the two gigantic robots are fighting in the sky, remained… and will remain ingrained in my brain until the day I die. And maybe that’s why I always come back to the story of Gurren Lagann over the hundreds of other anime I’ve watched. It’s silly, it's goofy, it's fun and it’s awesome. The interestingly dialectical story structure initially takes paths that we already know, but twists it in a way that feels novel. Every plot point, in retrospect, is obvious. Yeah, obviously he’s gonna die after such a cliche romance scene. Yeah obviously they’re gonna team up (viral and simon). Obviously, they’re gonna win. But of course, they only won because they won, not because they were destined to.