I've been catching up on Gurren Lagann now that I have free time, and Gainax, as usual, has been cutting costs when it has to. Not to say that this is universally such an awful, inexcusable thing: most long-running anime TV series eventually hit this kind of wall. It's fucking hard making cartoons look pretty, and shamelessly taking a break is an old tradition. We, of course, the audience, hate this shit, which is why it's best to make your cost-cutting measures as painless as possible. Gurren Lagann has already run into this situation twice, and while the first one is over-reported news, let's discuss it anyway.
After the first three episodes of Gurren Lagann collectively shattered otaku brains worldwide, the staff had a hard act to follow. So what did they do? Guest episode time! The director for episode four was Osamu Kobayashi, who doesn't exclusively do weird, unconventional animation, but, well, he did it this time. Note the completely altered character designs as opposed to earlier episodes. I actually kind of like the jerky, scratchy look the characters got for this episode, but coupled with a five-minute shot of clouds while dialogue ran over it, there was no question that this was a cost-cutting measure. Needless to say, the fans were really displeased, and this episode sparked a bizarre Internet scandal whose end result-- I shit you not-- was the resignation of Gainax co-founder Takami Akai.
This guy made Princess Maker. Happy now, you shitbag otaku? See why we can't have nice things? YOU RUIN EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH.
Moving right along, then, two episodes later, we catch the show cutting costs again. After Simon and Kamina spend two minutes recapping last episode, events (rocks, the moon) lead them into a "hey, remember that time we..." conversation, and that leads us into a four-minute replay of more footage we've seen in earlier episodes. The episode is hardly a full clip show, but yes, about a third of it is.
If anything, you'd think this was a more shameless cost-cutting measure than the last one. You'd think this one would really piss off the fans. Wrong. And do you want to know why? The answer is "tits". See, this time Gainax went for an old anime standard: the hot springs episode. All naked, all the time! You wanna see Yoko lose her top? You got it! You want manservice (that's a mole-pig, and by that I mean it's actually a mole-pig, not, for example, a penis)? You got it!
There is a lesson to be taken from this if you ever find yourself, for example, in charge of any high-budget TV anime series directed at geeks and children: if your budget runs low, get everybody naked.
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