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There are tributes and homage, then there are down right rip offs. Gurren Lagann tip toes a fine line between tribute and rip off.

Upon viewing with no prior knowledge of the super robot genre it has that feeling of "this is the most exciting, hotblooded etc etc anime of all time". If you view it after you have seen the classic shows of super robot anime (Mazinger series, Getter Robo, etc) or even lesser known super robot work (Zambot 3 especially in this case) you see a series that a lot of times feels as if they took one idea from one show ... one idea from another and just combined them. The tributes at times can be great, but many of the times it feels soulless, and adds nothing to the genre. In the end its a fun show, but the shear amount of tributes creep into ripoff and thus put a sour note on the show.

What we have here is a real gem. In the same sort of style as the original SD Gundam OVAs, CB chara Go Nagai World merges the worlds of Devilman and Mazinger Z and trap them in a sort of chibi world. While it almost always keeps a light hearted tone, you never feel like your watching something for kids. The story is a bit weird but since its just a Chibi parity, it actually works pretty well. If your a Devilman or Mazinger Z fan you should definitely check this out, as the jokes will mean all that much more if your a fan ... of either series.

A little background on how i found this old school gem, there was a magazine that talked about all of Tomino's work before gundam, this was one of those anime's. I was reminded of this little article by watching Gurren Lagann (GL takes some themes and mecha designs from this) So after some searching i finally found this. And was it worth it. The story starts out as your basic monster of the week sort of super robot anime, but each episode explores how these fights effect the population and how they react to the pilots themselves, the show gets more intense with each episode ... with what i would call a perfect ending. For its time the animation is very good too. So if your looking for a great old school anime that really isn't well known, give this show a try.

So for a little background i am a old school Gundam fan, I love all the UC series and tend to hate the newer series. Now i was planning on never seeing this series, but after talking with people who know a lot about mecha i decided to give it a shot, and wow was I very disappointed. The gundam pilots or as they are called in this show "meisters" have no depth to them at all. They have the personality of a paper plate and even after seeing their background nothing is really added to those characters. The gundam's themselves are over the top ... and so ridiculous at some points i couldn't help but laugh. The one saving grace of this show are the enemies. Characters from the other 3 countries are pretty well developed, and pretty damn likable. The mecha designs are nice and realistic. For most of the show i found my self cheering for them hoping beyond hope that they would be able to beat the odds and defeat the gundam's. So overall its 3, its really just Gundam Wing with very likable bad guys.