When a manga starts with "please let me have a normal life", I know that the manga is going to be filled with the craziest ideas ever. That would normally turn me away from a series, but when those words are coming out of the lips of Simon, and you know that Kamina's going to appear dramatically in the background in the next frame, you kind of have to keep reading, despite the fact you don't like him. Now, I'm not a big fan of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, but when I realized the story was taking place in a high school setting, even Icouldn't turn away. There's something about the appeal of seeing mecha characters in a high school setting that makes me feel a little gitty on the inside.

Now, jumping into this manga, I expected a lot of humor, and not a lot of emphasis on story. Not because I didn't have faith in the manga, but rather that every other high school based manga like this I've run into did the exact same thing. Low and behold, I was right. Well, sort of. The manga had some hilarious moments, with Kamina breaking windows and dramatic catch phrases at the worst moments. However, those jokes got old very quickly, and the rest of the humor was focused on fan service and the Mary-Sue like qualities of Nai, which I hated from the original series. When the manga was attempting a fight scene, I couldn't take the fight seriously, and the drawings for the fights only showed a lot of boobs and crotch shots that only the hard-core fan service fans would like. The amount of humor I expected wasn't delivered, and I felt extremely disappointed.

For characters, I wasn't expecting much of a change from the original series. Since I was still expecting the over the top jokes, I was expecting the over the top characters with them. I was excited to see that Simon was a little different, wishing for a normal life in the chaos surrounding him, but the craziness from the rest of the characters took away from that minor change, and everything fell to pieces. Kamina was still Kamina, trying to steal the spot light, even though the girls fighting were far more important to the artist. On the off chance that the villains would show up, they would act as they did at the very beginning of the original series. Viral, although he has such an important role in the original series, acted like a butler character and was very mistreated by everyone in the series. This made me very irritated with the series, not because Viral is my favorite, but that the manga could have been so much better if he, and other characters, were given more important roles to the story.

At the end of the manga, I was extremely disappointed. The only pages I actually laughed at were the first two or three, and the jokes that were littered in were based on fan service, large boobs, and Nai's mary-sue identity, which was not done very well. Most of the manga, I was just waiting for it to be over. If I had to recommend this manga to anyone, I would only recommend it to the hard-core Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fan, because they would be the only ones who would understand and respect everything going on. For everyone else, avoid the manga entirely. Unless you really love Gurren Lagann, you won't like the manga at all.