He liked the film and promptly started watching the series the next day, though disappointed that the TV series did not feel anywhere near as batshit insane as the movie. I watched the film with a friend who hadn't seen the series.
And it does a pretty good job of distilling the overall craziness and over-the-top quality of the mecha series. If it's worth anything, the first Gurren Lagann movie is a MUCH better introduction to the series than Death and Rebirth was to Neon Genesis Evangelion, simply because the movie actually cares about introducing characters and having them interact with one other, however minimally. I'm going to watch it anyway, because that's what fans do, but since the first movie only covered the first fourteen or so episodes, it doesn't bode well for the Spiral Stone Chapter or whatever it's being called. I don't know if the second Gurren Lagann movie is going to be a compilation as well. wrapped up the TV series in 90 minutes and tacked on a teaser trailer for the second movie, End of Evangelion, an alternate conclusion to the TV series which was, quite simply, one of the most baffling, twisted, and downright awesome anime bookends ever created.
At least the Eva mash had Shinji playing a cello - and…uh, well, that was a pretty shitty movie, too, and shouldn't be a benchmark for anything, anywhere - but at least Hideaki Anno and co. Fans might argue that we knew that this was going to be a Death and Rebirth sort of thing going in, but that really is a poor explanation for watching a movie any fan could very reasonably have made 3/4 of on Final Cut. Essentially, it's an elongated episode 9 (the filler recap episode). At a running time of a little under two hours, about 80% of the film is recycled animation from the TV series, with a new (admittedly spectacular) ending tacked on at the end. Granted, Gainax (the studio behind the film and TV series) is very much used to making half-assed compilations-as-movies and packaging them for a dedicated audience that will buy anything with the words "Evangelion" on it, but this movie was still a pretty big disappointment. Well, I fucking love this series, and I was far from pleased. The first Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie, Crimson Rose Chapter ( Guren-hen), is not going to be screening in any theatres this year, might not even get a proper dub DVD release until next year (if ever), and was made entirely for the consumption of fans of the original TV anime series, but there will doubtlessly be a review sometime, somewhere which proclaims that while the plot is a mess, the characters underdeveloped, and the climax confusing, fans of the series will be… pleased. "Fans of the series will be pleased…" Don't you hate it when this statement appears in a review? It's inevitably part of some generic trade paper write-up of a movie made from a property with an intense fan following, irrespective of mainstream appeal.