It’s Allegory: The Decline and Fall of the British Gundam

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‘Allegory’ is a word I hesitate to employ. Understandably, it is often used loosely on the internet, to mean something like ‘metaphorical’. I personally prefer to reserve it for a certain type of storytelling, and it’s a type which is relatively rare in anime. (Though perhaps more common in anime than in a lot of art after the ‘Rise of the Novel’.) It’s a kind of complex, extended and (over)developed metaphor or set of symbols which say something.

Frequently, allegory becomes so overtly symbolic that it ceases to feel like a normal story. The Bouge of Court, for example, has a set of characters named ‘Disdayne’, ‘Ryott’, ‘Suspycyon’ and so on, and it’s much more worthwhile to read their behaviour and speeches as examinations of the things they embody rather than as revelations of normal fictional character; Suspycyon’s eyes roll and his hands shake not because of some motive peculiar to him as a person (for he isn’t a person) but because (I think) the poem’s pointing out what suspicion does to anyone.

This sort of thing is, as I said, fairly rare in anime; Gluttony, Lust and Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist spring to mind, and Infinite Ryvius is (among other things) a sustained political allegory. (Is the Ryvius a Ship of Fools?) Another place where we can find something approaching allegory is Mobile Fighter G Gundam – yes, despite the fact that it’s a childish show about large robots, fighting. Or perhaps because it’s a childish show about large robots, fighting: allegory loves reductive simplicity.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann: Rebellion Perfected?

[Apparently Geasstards such as myself aren’t being pretentious enough about Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. Rather than produce a direct rebuttal, I thought I’d write 1700 words about TTGL, splashing a few of Dore’s illustrations for Paradise Lost around as I did so, making a sly joke about Haman Karn and icing the cake by linking a few other suitably pretentious articles.

I totally haven’t had this in my drafts for a month, waiting for an opportunity to use it. The Animanachronism is hardly that devious, nor is he able to see into the future.]

Anyhow . . .

The rebel is a seductive figure who crops up all over the place in popular (and unpopular) culture. Inasmuch as there is a coherent thread to Western thought, Milton is to blame for this. As someone steeped (too deeply) in the Western literary tradition, my instant response to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was to apply a rebellion stencil. Quite how well that works is another question, which will be considered below.

Spoilers ahead. Or rather, since this is Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann we’re talking about, GIGASPOILERS ahead.

Death of the Animator

A strange and twisted journey into methodology, during which I will kill off all animators, everywhere, namecheck the Father of Western Literature and (the ultimate challenge) talk about Gundam without boring people who aren’t interested in Gundam.

Why the busty succubus? Read on to find out, or perhaps to find out why that’s the wrong question. Alternatively, if you’re not very interested in ‘Theory’ with a capital ‘T’, go read another anime blog – there are plenty of good ones out there – and wait for my next entry.