I will be honest with you.  I am very tempted to just write about how awesomely funny episode nine, or episode ten, of Kannagi was and just leave it at that.  I’ve actually been trawling the depths of my sick-addled mind for days, trying to think of anything I could use here other than, well, what I’m going to be using here.  Because to tell you about the end of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, I have to tell you a story.  My stories are usually about plucky, unprepared people confronting enormous danger, usually involving ghosts or giant clockwork machines.  This danger is more pedestrian, but easier to relate to.  I have to tell you about my first real relationship.

I say “first real relationship” because I’d had one other, when I was nineteen and the lady involved was eighteen.  I don’t really count it.  Most of it took place over a winter break, where we didn’t see each other, and was the sort of thing most people get out of the way in high school.

Anyway.  Relationship:  six months went by pretty well.  She said there were problems for the last month, not counting the bit where I was back home before coming to visit.  She said the week I spent visiting was one of the worst in her life.  In later conversation with friends, we came to the conclusion that she may actually be ret-conning our relationship, because I don’t think I’m so dense as to miss that sort of thing.  So she called me in July and broke up with me.  The rest of the summer kind of sucked.  I recall a moment, driving to a distant town to visit a friend, over a month later, finally feeling as though I could enjoy a summer sky again, and then not for very long.  I didn’t rage or break down, but I kept going in whatever tasteless state I was in for far longer than some might expect.

I already shocked Pontifus when I mentioned I couldn’t read for a week or so afterwards.  Anything that put me alone with my thoughts was rough for a while, watching anime included.  But I got back into it.  And then I took the hint that the otaku-rhombus was giving me, and started watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.  You already know a little about what that was like.  What I didn’t mention was the way I used it in my own life.  It gave me energy.  For the first time since July, I felt like there was a future.

[I'll pause here to let you know that yes, I understand this isn't a unique situation.  In the grand scheme of things it's not even all that important.  I knew all that the whole time, even that moment on the phone, but it never helped recover from the emotional trauma.]

I’d been excited with friends, playing Dungeons and Dragons or Smash Bros. Brawl, but not really by myself, here in this room I’m in right now, late at night.  In fact, I stopped staying up late for a while; I was afraid of the introspection that I knew from experience really late summer nights bring me.  So that’s what TTGL started to do for me.

Then I started to take even more.  When regret would numb or blindside me, I’d grimace, I’d mutter “who the hell do you think I am?” to no one.  When I got back to Memphis it got worse again, after having gotten a little better.  Because she was at parties, in my classes.  We had three (of four) classes together this past semester.  In the apartment I first moved into (which is not the house I live in while in Memphis now), I felt terrible.  It was a dark, lonesome sort of place, even with a roommate, as she was rarely around.  I was homesick and heartsick.  So I watched TTGL.  I saw Simon beat the little armadillo man, and listened to the soundtrack as I drove to campus and unpacked my things (only to pack them again several days later).

Now fast forward to last week.  Tuesday, I think.  I was sick (I’m still sick), and almost everyone had left the house but me.  My new girlfriend was coming over in the evenings to keep me company, and honestly, take care of me — I can be a huge, whiny brat while I’m sick.  I can also be a stubborn ass; I still haven’t been to a doctor.  So Tuesday I woke up, scrabbled around for some of the over-the-counter medicine I’d been taking, and made tea with my cereal, my usual morning.  And I decided to watch an episode of TTGL.  I had five episodes left.

And a few hours later I’d finished the series.  It was tragic and hopeful, funny — well, you probably know all that.  I haven’t seen a story more palbably about loss and the way we deal with it since The Lord of the Rings.  And like in Tolkien’s work, TTGL offers us something to help move on — never to fill in the loss, but to deal with it, make it something solid in you.

I’m going to be self-indulgent for a moment here.  Several years ago I wrote a short-short called, simply enough, “How to Save the World.”  It’s in second-person.  I’m going to quote a bit of it:

 When you’re bare, fragments of yourself littering the floor, friends, allies, and confused enemies cold in the earth, slumped under salt-water, eaten by fire, then you will be ready [. . .] Lift your fragments in a shaking hand, hold the dead close in your mind, and throw rocks. Scream, and cry, and fail to be strong enough, and wrap the flaw in your shaping around your perfections, and use the poison from that wound to stop the crawling darkness.

Aside from the obvious Lovecraftianism at the end there, I would like to think it taps into the same vein of experience and philosophy that drives TTGL, that we’re in a lot of trouble here, as humankind and as individuals; we all have problems and we have to deal with them in some way.  TTGL gives us a very simple way to deal with ourselves and the world:

“We’re evolving more with every passing minute.”  The turn of, in Simon’s words, a drill.

Let me be simple.  The end of TTGL capitulated six months of my life that, for many different reasons (I didn’t get into the problems with my creative writing courses) were some of the hardest I’ve ever had.  It ran throughout, even though I wasn’t consistently watching episodes.  When we’re just talking about TTGL it’s easy to dwell on the GAR, on the love stories — or strange occlusion they go through — the action, or even the mythic nature of sacrifice and the unlucky few (like Gilgamesh and, now Simon) who don’t have the option of sacrificing themselves, and instead have to lose those they love.  But what’s happening, for me, as the end goes by — as Simon seems to have survived twenty years without any of his friends, so well he gives up his trademark phrase, one of the things that tied him to Kamina, because it’s better for the child — is that I’m piecing Simon’s strength into my own cracks.  Given that I still cry, sometimes, at the thought of some of the losses of fictional characters in a cartoon, Simon might say I have a long way to go.  On the other hand, while I don’t yet look at the pictures of my ex and remember the good times (mostly I have to work to hide them so I don’t stumble across them), I don’t spend as much time thinking about the past as I did.  In part that’s simply time.  But then, I know, now and until always, that we evolve more with every passing minute.

Yeah, you know what’s coming. In fact, Cuchlann beat me to the punch with this moment. Perhaps needless to say, if you haven’t seen Gurren-Lagann, and you want to, you should not read on.

But if you have seen it, let’s revisit that part again.

I was not prepared for Kamina’s death. I watched the scene with staunch disbelief. I wouldn’t believe it; I couldn’t believe it.

While the dominant reaction seems to hover somewhere between sadness and outrage, and while I was certainly upset, I felt more shock than anything. As Cuchlann said, “we as audience members can understand why a group can build so readily around him — we want to be there too, being pushed by the force of his personality.” Thus far, the show had used Kamina to propel itself forward. His initiative was responsible for practically every ounce of progress the good guys had made up until the eighth episode. What the hell was the Gurren Brigade supposed to do without him — no, what the hell were we supposed to do without him?

I was wholly prepared to accept that Kamina would survive his grievous wounds.

But then he went ahead and died anyway.

I wasn’t any more pleased at this outcome than Simon. But I’ll be honest: after a bit of thought, it seemed quite sensible, in the context of the story.

For all his charisma, Kamina always irked me. He did his best to support Simon, certainly, but that did nothing to change his being a constant factor in the way of Simon’s progress. Kamina was the unbearably awesome older brother to whom Simon was forced to live up, and, when faced with this situation, Simon seemed to take the route of accepting his subordinate position. He wouldn’t try to match Kamina; how could he? It becomes obvious that he can as the show progresses, but would he have ever felt the need to as long as Kamina was alive? In order for Simon to grow in a way that would put him at the forefront of everything post-time skip, I figure that Kamina more or less had to die. He was a necessary victim of the plot.

It’s really quite tragic, I think — especially for me. I know what it’s like for the progress of a younger brother to possibly require my getting out of the way. Take it from Otouto.

Otouto-kun: I wouldn’t call you a roadblock. You’re more of a waypoint for me. Anyway, I hate to say I wanted Kamina to die, but he really had to. Alright, maybe it doesn’t pain me too much to say it, but the point is simple: he was a roadblock for Simon.

Pontifus: But did you really want him to die? From the beginning?

Otouto-kun: Nah, I didn’t want him to die, I simply understood the importance of his death. In a way, his death wasn’t only a way for Simon to grow up, but for himself as well. You could say that while he was dying he realized it wasn’t a game. He accepted his death and sort of passed the torch on to Simon. Although I could just be insane, since I’ve started looking at everything like a growing up story lately.

Pontifus: Which isn’t unreasonable, since so much anime deals with young people. But what makes me a waypoint and Kamina a roadblock? What’s the key difference there?

Otouto-kun: Well, Kamina was a leader. He took the spotlight and pretty much inspired everyone to follow him. This pushed Simon back and forced him to try to keep up. You’re more of a teacher; you have actually sat me down and taught me things. You aren’t really standing in my way. From what I’ve gathered you are perfectly fine with standing aside and letting me go when the time is right. I’m not too good at explaining things, but are you seeing what I’m saying?

Pontifus: I’m not much of a figurehead, I can tell you that much. When you go back and watch the early episodes of G-L, though, you see that Kamina was supportive of Simon all along; he always had a sense of Simon’s strengths, and seemed to rely on them. I’d agree that, in order for Simon to end up as the adult he became in the end, Kamina had to go, but I don’t think Kamina ever intended to get in the way. He genuinely seemed to want to be a good older brother figure.

Otouto-kun: You definitly speak the truth. I never saw Kamina as a bad person. The way everything played out put Simon in more of a background position though. Because of this, he was forced to try to keep up. I can understand how Simon must have felt in this situation. I think that, yes, Kamina was usually supportive of Simon, but I feel like it might have been hard for Simon to pick up on this. He probably felt kind of left out when matched up with someone like Kamina. At times I have felt, and sometimes still feel, this way about you, Aniki.

Pontifus: Simon definitely found himself in Kamina’s shadow — I think it’s safe to say that someone like Kamina casts a longer shadow than I do — but the reason this was a problem, the reason Kamina had to go, was because Simon had accepted his subordinate position. He didn’t really aspire to be anything else. And I think that Kamina even realized that Simon’s attitude wasn’t good for him, hence the “believe in you who believes in yourself” scene. Which was, incidentally, the last thing Kamina did before he died, with the exception of the Giga Drill Breaker.

The point is, we older brothers may not want to be these monolithic figures, but we really have no choice sometimes. It’s hard in a different way than being a younger sibling is hard. I have to sympathize with Kamina — I mean, it’s sad that death was literally his only option for the plot to work.

Otouto-kun: Let me just say, when you’ve lost your parents, literally or figuratively, you are going to look for the first thing that even slightly inspires you, and you’re going to follow it. When you are young, that is. Trust me. I must also say that, as a younger brother, I probably can’t truly understand the hardships of an older brother, but I feel like it’s hard for the older brother to truly understand how much his younger brother truly treasures their relationship.

It is sad that Kamina had to die, but it was because of his personality that it had to happen. If he had been more of a teacher than a role model, things may have been different.

Pontifus: The line between teacher and role model seems blurry to me. And besides, had Kamina not been Kamina, the Gurren Brigade never would’ve happened. There’s no question in my mind that Kamina had to die because of his role, but he couldn’t have been any other kind of character, either. He was doomed from the beginning, unfortunately, even if I didn’t see his death coming — I mean, I didn’t expect the show to have as much depth as it did.

You mention, though, that the older brother has a hard time understanding how the younger brother views the sibling relationship, and I think that’s probably true, but do you think Kamina’s lack of understanding was part of his “problem?”

Otouto-kun: I hate to say I’m truly sure about anything, but I feel that it was a contributing factor. I think that Kamina didn’t understand the effect his actions were having on Simon.

Pontifus: It’s the conundrum of being an older brother, I suppose. But the thing that elevates G-L beyond gar fanservice for me is that it lets people like us see the big picture. We can sit here and talk about Kamina and Simon in a way we’d never be able to manage with ourselves — we’re too close to our own situation. If I had to say Gurren-Lagann was “for” someone, I’d say it’s for us.

Otouto-kun: Well said, Aniki.

Or, at least, one who is god-like.  Pontifus had more sense than me, and spread his Aria posts throughout his twelve days.  I am now giving up entirely on a vertical scale here and just posting things; hopefully there will be enough gaps between my Gurren Lagann posts to keep them interesting.

Anyway, as you probably know already, this post is about the death of Kamina, or possibly 神な, the god-like one.

Yes, I did just get around to watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann this year, what of it?  The thing, I think, that appeals to me so much about GL is how brutally honest it is about everything that’s happening.  Horace Walpole, the creator of the Gothic novel, said of his creation that he wanted to put nice, normal characters into strange situations, straight out of a medieval romance, and see how they reacted, with something approaching psychological realism.

GL isn’t exactly fucking around with this idea, it’s what the show’s about.  I think just about every emotion one could write about gets into GL by the end — even the modern gun lust, through what’s-his-name, the bespectacled guy who’s always, uh, shooting his guns early.  Even he figures out what he’s doing by the end.

I’ve written about Gurren Lagann before, and I will again (I just finished the series on Wednesday).  You’ll find me generally quite honest about things, so I’m perfectly willing to admit I cried as I watched this show, several times, and this was probably the first.  The show doesn’t flinch from making Kamina a completely awesome character.  Watching him, at any moment in the series, is a delight.  We as audience members can understand why a group can build so readily around him — we want to be there too, being pushed by the force of his personality.  And then the show kills him, and guts everyone, cast and audience.  We’re forced to look at our own entrails hanging out, as though we’d tied them to Kamina to better anchor ourselves to his rising rocket and the rocket was thrown into a pit instead of leaping into the sky.

What’s different about this show, as compared to any other show where a character we love dies, is that GL models what we need to do.  Kamina’s death isn’t too far after he (and we) learn what happened to his own father, and Kamina uses this knowledge to go higher, as a place to plant his foot.  Much of the rest of the show charts Simon’s learning to do that, that one thing — it’s the only thing, at the show’s beginning, that Simon is actually unable to do that Kamina does.  It is the one skill that allows Simon to avert the death of the universe — he uses past loss to rise higher, rather than using his power to do so (but more on that later in the countdown, which is now more of a count, uh, sideways).