I might have to accept that I view the world in a very different way from everyone else. That won’t surprise anyone, I guess, but I was surprised to be reminded of a common opinion regarding Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: that Kamina is a failure. I disagree. In fact, I believe Kamina is a success, a resounding one. He’s nearly the most successful character in Gurren Lagann.
If I understand the “other side” correctly, Kamina is considered a failure mostly because he dies. But also because he doesn’t live to see the ultimate success of the Gurren-dan or Simon’s growth into an adult. His advice is nonsensical and – horrifying, to me – I’ve seen recently that he’s a failure because he’s all talk, no business.
No way. There are two ways I think I can make my point. Allow me to go through each in turn. First, most obviously, Kamina is a mentor figure. We all remember that Kamina feared for his life in that tunnel collapse and the Simon drilled everyone to safety. But Simon could only do that because Kamina trusted him. And Kamina does, implicitly. When Simon chokes in the battle for the new Gurren-dan flagship, Kamina trusts that it’s not an inherent truth of Simon’s character. Simply, Kamina trusts that Simon can succeed, and pushes him to do so. You can’t push someone you don’t really think will pull it off, the person will feel that flakiness, that weakness in your opinion. There isn’t anything like that in Kamina’s regard for Simon. Yes, in a big way Simon surpasses Kamina, but not because he lives, but because he becomes what Kamina was aiming for. He becomes a mentor in turn, but with Kamina’s teaching to reinforce his own strength, he can live where Kamina dies. Kamina is basically Merlin in this story, or Gandalf – whatever you like. He almost has to die by fiat of the narrative logic: he’s more powerful, stronger, more willful, and forceful than Simon. But he’s grown up too long in the society that fostered him. He fights against air, thinking he can feel chains. He’s fighting for freedom, but because he hasn’t had it.
Even underground Simon was freer than Kamina, because Kamina shielded him from the worst his society had to offer. He led Simon into being what he could be, even if that meant he was “just” a digger. Nothing is mere anything. What is Kamina in society, what is his role? There isn’t one for him. His image smacks of the ronin for a reason: he can’t serve a master, even if it’s society itself – the one thing Simon is willing to serve, represented usually by his circle of friends.
The other reason – and the one that’s stronger emotionally for me – is that Kamina does everything he sets out to do. He doesn’t live to see Simon go into space like he wanted, but that’s his legacy. I’ve rarely seen anyone point to the space program as a failure for JFK because he didn’t live to see the Moon landing. Kamina is the animating force, the pure spirit of the Gurren-dan. He haunts the brigade long after his death, and it’s his spirit that wakens Simon from his grief. Simon takes on Kamina’s spirit, he lets Kamina ride him like a Vudun loa. Simon is the only cast member more successful than Kamina, and that’s solely because he can see a vision of a society that works, that isn’t terrible and terrifying – and that’s because Kamina made that society, with his bare hands, underground and in the wasteland. The only times anyone had to be afraid of Kamina were if they were trying to hurt one of his friends or if they refused to act on their desires. That’s Yoko’s sin, the flaw in her character that breaks her – she fights her own urges, and fights the Beast Gunmen half-heartedly. She never thinks to pursue them. She uses a sniper rifle, keeping her as far away from things as possible. She can influence the world with the smallest action possible: pulling a trigger. It’s not weak or meaningless, but literally small.
You can start to see how the iconography of the show supports its spirit. We all know about Yoko’s, erm, assets. Her big boobs, that’s what I’m describing here. She has potential – sexual as well as social. But she creates a front of realizing her potential to hide behind. She flaunts her sexuality that isn’t there. She can’t make a connection to the man she apparently loves because she’s too busy building up the image of her own power.
Kamina and especially Simon, though, are bare-chested in a desert. They expose themselves. Simon’s weapon is also a tool, he can create (tunnels, passages, ways forward) or fight with it. Kamina has a sword, but also a cape, a shielding device – he is the sword and shield of the brigade, pushing everyone forward.
Have you ever read All-Star Superman? This same theme is beginning to show up in the current Action Comics as well. By the end of All-Star people, bad people, feckless people, begin to stand up for themselves and others. Superman’s legacy in that comic isn’t his deeds – though he suffers twelve deeds, like Hercules before him – it’s his gift of his image before everyone’s eyes. The office jackass, constantly belittling who else but Clark Kent, stands up in an unconscious imitation of Superman’s physical pose, stands up to Lex Luthor with his machines and his new superpowers, in an act of defiance that would have been unlikely, but not impossible, before he saw Superman.
Kamina is the Superman of the Gurren-dan. Everyone could have done what they ended up doing, but they weren’t on course to do so. Kamina put them there. He made people better, despite themselves. His deadly rival, Viral, supports Simon in the end, because he saw what a person could be in Kamina – and he saw Simon recreating and improving on what Kamina had done.
People believe Superman looks down on humans – in JLA he revealed that he looks up to them, that his strength comes from his faith in them, and their faith in him. But in the end he gives to us and Metropolis what Kamina gives to us and the Gurren-dan: faith in ourselves. Simon’s and our trust in Kamina becomes trust in ourselves when we realize Kamina’s spirit can be ours. We know who the hell we are. We’re Kamina, fighting because everyone knows we can. And we know we can, too, now.
r042
/ 6 July 2012That’s one hell of a way of looking at it and I don’t entirely disagree; it’s undeniable that Kamina is the forward-moving force of the series that gets everybody out of their shell and doing something.
However, I equally think he’s, if not an absolute failure, a failed leader; under his leadership they win victories but the journey of advancement can’t be completed until Simon learns to temper Kamina’s ideals with a bit more logic (through embracing the utter destruction of logic in the final battles).
As well as this, the second half of the series, if not denting Kamina’s character, dents his ideals by setting them in contrast with an enemy with the same bloody-minded determination to wipe out its enemies; when two unstoppable forces collide, the winner is shown to be the one who looks for a compromise.
cuchlann
/ 6 July 2012You’re right in your analysis of events to some extent, but not quite in Kamina’s ambitions. Kamina is superficially similar to the invaders, but he wants life where they don’t (to compare with American comics again, it’s like how both Darkseid and Superman want order — but only Darkseid will use the Anti-Life Equation).
He achieves or helps to achieve everything he sets out to do. He doesn’t set out to be a leader — people flock to him, and when he notices them there he takes it in stride and says “Yes, we have a brigade now, excellent.” But he would do the same things alone.
Simon is the ultimate success of the story, yes, but because he moderates between different forces — he compromises. Which means he doesn’t discard anyone’s way of doing things. Rossiu is actually the biggest failure in the series, because he does turn to the figurative Anti-Life Equation. He values order over anything else, sees it as an end rather than a means.
annwyd
/ 11 July 2012This seems like a thing that might ultimately come down to “it depends on what your definition of ‘failure’ is.” Assuming that the people who describe Kamina as a failure aren’t doing so because they perceived him as the hero rather than the mentor figure, anyway.
In a sense, this particular mentor archetype that crops up so much in mecha anime (and probably other places too) is inherently predicated on failure. Earlier iterations of the mentor figure often simply die to move the plot forward and make way for the heroes’ eventual surpassing of them, without the text examining what this says about their own characters, but this version’s death is an outgrowth of his own characterization as well. He realizes on some level that he is incapable of fulfilling his own dreams and ideals as himself, incapable of working through his fears and stumbling blocks to become a fully actualized human being, and so instead of attempting to do so, he invests his energy in another character, the hero (who he usually casts in the role of a little brother), in order to ensure they can do what he cannot, and he dies in the process. The hero then surpasses him and succeeds as an individual where the mentor figure didn’t, but only because the mentor figure sacrificed himself to help him do so. So if you want to be a success as this kind of mentor figure, you have to first accept that you’re a failure on the terms you initially set for yourself. And Kamina’s a stellar success at being this kind of mentor figure.
In the context of Gurren Lagann it’s kind of funny additionally because this use of the sacrificial mentor figure echoes evolutionary theories about sacrifice in kin selection, and Gurren Lagann persistently uses evolution as an overarching metaphor.
cuchlann
/ 12 July 2012^ This guy gets it. : )
In all seriousness, though, you’re right I think. It’s been a long while since I’ve watched the latter portion of the show. I’m rewatching it (with my GF, who’s watching for the first time) and the last episode we watched was Kamina’s death. Her statement was “how can there be a show? The main character’s dead.” So early on there certainly is a tendency to miss Kamina as mentor. I think I watched it first as a buddy show, like an old cop movie, but with mechas.
And since it’s been so long, I forgot about the evolutionary commentary. It’s great you brought it up. There’s an image of “moving past” in our conceptions of evolution, tied to the idea that the world evolved “towards” something. There’s not really a “towards” in Gurren Lagann, though there is an “up.” There’s a ladder the characters are climbing, but it’s not necessarily better to be on the top than on the bottom. They just seem to want to climb it anyway. Which is what makes the anti-Spirals such an excellent villain: they’re not wrong.