Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Lagann Hen

Yesterday the Aoi matsuri was held, one of the main festivals in Kyoto.
I went directly after classes to Kamigamo-jinja, were the parade ends, but it was already late when I left, I did a train exchange in Kawaramachi and a 40 minutes of walk... At the end I arrived just in time for the closing moments:

After that, I went to a Japanese theather for the first time, to see the movie Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Lagann Hen.


Contrary to popular belief, anime is not a popular genre in Japan, and every anime except the main stream ones (One Piece, Meitantei Conan...) are considered way too otaku-ish. That is why most of the anime is airing between 11 P.M. and 4 A.M, because is not targeted toward "normal people".
Anyway, what I wanted to say is that Gurren Lagann is airing in only one cinema in Kyoto, and where only 14 persons, myself included, watching the movie...

With the trailers you can see that you are labeled as a geek for watching this movie: the new Evangelion movie, Summer Wars (directed by Hosoda with designs of Sadamoto), the new Star Trek movie and Transformers 2.

When you purchase the ticket, they give you a Stamp Card, and if you get stamped 3 times they give you a random film strip from the movie. It sounds tempting, but you must go to the cinema 3 times (1,500 yen each, and this being the "reducted fee" for university students) and the chances of getting a lousy strip are high (for the record, the strip that I got from the limited Evangelion Movie dvd was from this scene).


The movie itself was gorgeous. The EPICness in the series was high, but in the movie reaches another whole level. Unlike the previous film, fewer scenes are directly recycled from the TV series. There are several changes in the plot, some of them quite important.

It was really great and the last 30 minutes of the movie were one of the most memorable moments in anime history.


And now a few screenshots from the movie. HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD!!!:

In the movie Simon sees the transformation of Nia just after this scene.

Nia got several ecchi poses here and there, and even clearly visible nipples at one point.

EDIT: Here, I found a pic of it.

Dai-Gurren Dan members before the last battle.

Kamina and Kittan in the "awakening of the dream" part. The Dai-Gurren Dan members survives the battle, but Kittan still dies.

For the last battle, almost every Gurren Dan member gets his/her own Tengen Toppa and shows it in a minute of glory. In the pic is Nia's Tengen Toppa Sorubaania (ソルバーニア), that I think the correct romanized name is Solvernia.

Gurren Lagann last form, the bigger-than-ever Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, that resembles a blue Kamina with red cape. To get an idea of the size, those white dots in the background are galaxies.