The Ultimate Pronatalist Anime: Gurren Lagann



We analyze the hyper-optimistic mecha anime Gurren Lagann through a pronatalist lens, seeing its themes of spiral energy, intergenerational improvement, and struggle as virtues aligning with our philosophy. We discuss how it frames the expansion of human potentiality as the highest good, with forces that limit this potentiality as evil. It also models healthy ambition balanced by diligent work, irreverent humor lifting the low, and inspiration over coercion in leadership.

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26 thoughts on “The Ultimate Pronatalist Anime: Gurren Lagann”

  1. I actually got to watch the 2 films again in theatres. Got semi emotional thinking about our current situation and how beautiful the message of TTGL is. I'm so glad you all are spreading awareness about this classic 🥹

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  2. That religion part remind me of an ep of Star Gate Atlantis, where on a planet the people killed themselves on ur 18th birthday cuz they believed the wrath out come and get them if they didnt when all long it was just population control cuz the shield generator only protected a small area.

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  3. Can't believe it's been 17 years since I saw Gurren Lagann. I was impressed how they used the spiral as a motif for progress and evolution and expansion and struggle through the series. Even back then the optimistic, anti-Malthusian sentiment stood out, and I expected it to be more than a throwaway scene in Trigger's later work Darling in the Franxx.

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  4. Heya S&M! I would like to humbly request some topics for a future video:
    1. A Simone-focused exploration of your fertility issues & the solutions you've been utilising to actually have your family. I ask for this because I will be pursuing likely a very similar path myself. ASAP, thanks to y'all.
    2. A budgeting-focused video. I find the relationship contract template extremely useful, and would be very interested in a financial / budgetting-related video with ideally a similar template to accompany it.

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  5. Kamina and Simon are springtime heroes, while Shinji is a winter hero. Unfortunately we live in a civilisational age of winter.

    I gurren lagann the people start with nothing, but harness their vital rugged spirit to go out and conquer the world. In evangelion, we are presented with a world of abundance in decline. Forget incremental growth, they are struggling to care about the maintenance of what they have.

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  6. I've been saying for years that this show's underrated. Everyone thinks it's awesome; everyone loves Kamina, but they don't recognize that it's got depth to it, because of how unpretentiously it's presented.

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  7. This is actually what I consider to be the afterlife: the immortality of a boundless will. There are selfish things I can want to experience, but outside of that area of reality, there are things I can want that my conscious will never experience where it isn't, and I should not sacrifice the latter for the former, because the former will always end/is contained within the latter and pales in comparison, and beyond it, success in the latter is all that remains, and in the latter still, my will extending beyond where my conscious ends. And whatever I can want to come to pass, there has to be a reality for it to occur in (hence why it's rational to side with God, the whole that contains all, the cause of all existence and that on which it rests). Whenever what passes for "me" dies, whether during my life through change or after this body starts to decompose, the closest thing that remains is what I become/becomes me and inherits my self-interest (which is why I consider acting morally to be compatible with egoism as long as one isn't under the impression that one's will is mortal and limited to what one can experience). And all our self-interests eventually either fail miserably or converge towards the will of God, to whom what we become draws ever closer. That is my pantheist faith, and why the God of Spinoza is sufficient to provide meaning, and what distinguishes what I've come to believe from atheism.

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  8. Humans have a spectacular ability to miss the message, as you can see in the comments section full of people who found the message obvious in retrospect.

    This is constantly emphasized in both Torah and New Testament. The Jews/disciples are constantly not understanding what's going on, or only understanding in retrospect. They also carry forward messages they don't understand with high fidelity – maybe their descendants will understand from a future perspective.

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  9. Note that Christianity explicitly warns about the perils of organized religion and legalism and self-importance among the priest caste through stories about the Pharisees and the Temple.

    The presence of these warnings wasn't enough to stop the problem, but arguably they're key as a corrective. God himself dropped by and humans tortured God to death for heresy, and I'll suggest that this priesthood hygiene protocol was key to so many self-corrective mechanisms becoming embedded in governance structures of Christian-derived cultures.

    Cultural hygiene protocols are imperfect. Plan accordingly.

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