Putting aside the oddball guest-directed episode 4, episode 5 features another underground society, and naturally Kamina gets riled up about their strict rules and closed-minded views. The villagers worship Ganmen as gods, and believe Kamina and co. are angels from “heaven”, and apparently have an affinity for grayscale. They also make Yoko wear a KKK robe to cover up all her skin. Impossible!
Due to limited resources, the population is capped at a fixed amount (maybe they need to learn to breed hogs like Simon’s village), and any time a baby is born, the villagers draw straws to see who has to be exiled to the overworld to maintain the cap. When one of the women gives birth to trips, it’s time for the deko-suke Rossiu and the scrappy orphans Gimmy and Darry to join our heroes in their technicolor adventure. Only after the obligatory Ganmen-Gurren fight, of course.
I’m breathing a sigh of relief that the production quality is back to normal again; the grainy monochrome of the village was well-done, with the sparse use of color around light sources. The beams of light streaming from the surface through the dust were very impressive as well. Is it just me or does that village elder look like the stone Ganmen? Must be the nose. Unintentionally hilarious part: Rossiu pulls the Ganmen’s nose hair to open the cockpit. WTF?
Have I ever mentioned that the eyecatch sequences are awesome?
P.S. Although to be fair, I thought everything else about episode 4 was great; I wouldn’t mind more guest directed episodes if the art was done well. The part where Simon and Kamina eat Buta’s butt to stave off their hunger was a massive WTFLOLZ moment.
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Ender – who has written 219 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the original founders, and the first to attempt a coups d'état.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I think resorting to grayscale animation was just another budget saving trick of GAINAX. Is there any series in which they didn’t use this trick? That’s also why I found the black and white ending animation self-ironic right when I watched the first episode. At least they had a bit of light at all. It could have been 20 minutes of pitch black.
You mean, kind of like the overture to 2001: A Space Odyssey?
That one wasn’t pitch black, you could see the sun rising from the viewpoint of the moon. I always thought it’s a metaphor for raising the curtain in a theatre. Well, maybe people will praise GAINAX in 30 years for their stunning and artsy black and white animation. It’s all a question of viewpoint and context.
Well I’dunno BW/greyscale Is like Sin City deep nowardays. Bastards mocking Greyscale are like… questioning Sin City too.
Idiotic budget save ramblers.
You don’t yell in pain when seeing an FMA flick being done half the framerate, double the amount of fanservice do you?
No, You Don’t.
There are certainly better tricks to save budget than resorting to greyscale animation. Sorry but what is deep about greyscale? Nothing is, it’s a technical artifact and nobody would use it if the first film had been color-capable. That doesn’t mean b&w movies are bad but you don’t add anything by using it as pretentious effect. If they think the same tricks work for animated and non-animated movies, then they have a real perception problem. B&W might have worked well for Sin City – or not, I’ve never watched it – but that doesn’t put everything else in B&W automatically on the same level. If you like salt and beer, do you like salty beer?
GAINAX has been pulling this B&W stunt since the 80s. Maybe that’s their trick to engrain themselves into anyone’s memory? Admittedly it was far from being as bad as in other series of them.