

Episode 1 of the second part of season 1 of Gurren Lagann features more
political themes than those seen in season one. However from episode two
onwards it returns to being more about action.

Is this to do with how they were aired? Was this change enforced, so as to
move away from the Mecha stereotype, by a 'higher up' in Gainax...and simply
ignored from episode 18 onwards? In western TV, ratings that are seen by
executives can influence the show...has something similar happened here?

Why is this?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-11T20:28:17.870
7971
2015-05-31T01:13:32.123
2014-03-11T22:05:44.057
4078
4078
question
anime-production gurren-lagann
Why does season 2 of Gurren Lagann start so differently compared to season 1?


Your question appears to be premised on a bit of a misunderstanding of how
anime in general (and Gurren Lagann in particular) is produced.

The two so-called "seasons" of Gurren Lagann (ep 1-15 vs. Lord Genome, and
then ep 17-27 vs. the Anti-Spiral) were not actually discrete seasons. They
were aired together as one continuous block of 27 episodes (with episode 16
being a recap of the first arc), from April to September of 2007.1 As such,
any changes in theme that you may have perceived immediately following the
time-skip cannot have anything to do with there being a break in the show -
because there was no break! (Besides the one week for the recap episode,
anyway.)

Furthermore, it isn't really possible that any changes in theme could have
resulted from public reaction to the first arc of the show (ratings/etc).
According to folk wisdom,2 a typical 1-2 cour anime spends over a year in
production before it airs, meaning that the vast majority of work
(storyboarding, character design, art, etc.) is done by the time the show
starts airing. Given the timeframes in question, it isn't feasible for a
studio to make significant changes to an anime _during_ a season.

Between seasons, of course, anything is possible - the classic example of this
is Code Geass, which saw some major changes in its second season, in part due
to a change in its airing time slot. But during a single few-cour season,
there are serious limits on how much the studio can change on the fly.3

In sum, whatever changes you may have noticed after the time-skip were almost
certainly present because that's how the producers planned for it to be; not
because of external factors like viewer opinion or high-level execs or
whatnot.

* * *

1 Note that a single ["cour"](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/7977/1908) of
anime will almost never be 15 episodes in length, which is another tip-off
that the two "seasons" weren't separate.

2 If you have something better than folk wisdom, please answer [this
question](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/5599/1908)!

3 Note that none of what I have said applies to super-long-running anime like
the big shounens (e.g. Naruto, One Piece, etc.). I don't know anything about
what production cycles look like for them, but it's pretty obvious that they
have to be running all the phases of production in parallel, meaning that they
should be able to react to viewer opinion (though I have no idea whether or
not they do, in practice).


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-12T02:17:18.590
7979
2014-03-12T02:17:18.590
2017-04-13T12:54:49.117
-1
1908
7971
answer