Gurren Lagann School Version – moe… the burning kind?

What do you get when you combine a man’s burning passion with girls in sailor uniforms? No, it’s not whatever sick thought you just had. It’s the first chapter of Gurren Lagann Gakuen Hen, the Gurren Lagann spin-off manga which drops the characters in an alternate high school setting.

It starts off as a normal school day for Simon, or at least as normal as things can get around a guy like Kamina who is still intent on breaking through anything standing in his way…

like bedroom windows. There’s still DRAMATIC POINTING

and Yoko. And of course Simon meets Nia and then they… er… “gattai” which is still the ultimate, blazing hot combinaton of two robots people.

I mean, really, things have hardly changed at all.

This first chapter is full of high school comedy cliches on every page and it’s winkingly self-aware of this fact. Simon fills the role of the hapless male lead who just wants a normal life, Yoko is the feisty, unattainable girl whose breasts make for a cushy pillow, Nia is the cute girl he can’t get rid of and Kamina is the childhood friend. These aren’t the only characters who make an appearance, either, and the others fall into similarly stereotypical roles. Yet each role suits the character. Kamina in particular seems born to get into schoolyard brawls and bust through windows like it’s no problem.

What makes this high school formula not only tolerable but downright hilarious is that it pokes fun at Gurren Lagann while still being genuinely for fans of the show. There is a plot involving Genome but no doubt that’s just an excuse for more silly hijinks and robots, perhaps, if it continues to borrow from the Otoko Ippiki drama CD (get that here).

I was going to call this a guilty pleasure but the first chapter has pleasantly surprised me by being significantly more funny and less stupid than expected. In short, if you’re a Gurren Lagann fan this is a fun read. If you’re not, well, you probably never made it to the end of this post anyway.