With the chess pieces in place, the show moves forward some melodrama no one asked for. With an annoyingly one-dimensional populace guiding his hand, Rossiu throws the ultimate punishment at Simon. Simply because someone needs to be held accountable. Oh and Rossiu actually wants kill Simon. Yup. It's stuff like this that makes wonder what happened in those seven years we didn't see. Rossiu's got a huge stick up his ass for whatever reason and though it's revealed that he weeps over his decision to sentence Simon to death, he goes through with it. This guy talks up a storm of following the law but gives Simon an unfair trial? Couldn't Rossiu just faked Simon's execution and sent him to a region where he could be in hiding? AREN'T THESE PEOPLE FRIENDS? What happened in those seven years we didn't see? Everyone, particularly Rossiu, went stupid. Building a spaceship to leave Earth when the anti-Spirals are obviously a force capable of intergalactic travel? After witnessing the anti-Spirals materialize out of thin air, everyone just thinks, "Sucks that the Earth's surface will uninhabitable but at least we've got a spaceship, to go into space, where we will obviously be safe." All the while, they've been desperately trying to take Gurren Lagann out of commission for whatever stupid reason?
/shrug, all of this stupidity was for the sole purpose of setting up Rossiu's dumb redemption moment, wasn't it?
Then the show devolves into "our enemies are big, so we gotta get bigger," nonsense. The anti-Spiral forces get big/powerful, the humans get bigger/more powerful and the process just keeps repeating itself. It's nothing like the conquering of gunmen in first half, where you could acknowledge that these ragtag band of humans were accomplishing something grand. Each gunmen taken felt earned because of the battles that preceded them. It doesn't feel like the first-half where Simon goes into discouraged (but logical) slumps. He was understandably scared/confused/intimidated for a lot of the first half, so it makes sense that he would utilize the help of Kamina and the others to boost his spirits and win the fight in the end. In the second-half, power levels are high but they're simply... not high enough. When they fight against the anti-Spiral, it's just Simon not being uplifted enough when he already has a ton of fighting spirit inside of him. It's just an unmitigated narrative barrage of, "We have to throw more coal into the fire!" Yes, it's inline with thematic approach of the series but irksome when, low and behold, they just need more fighting spirit on top of what they already have.
The anti-Spiral... leader, is another problem in and of itself. It's amazing how a villain with such power, such as bending probability itself, could be so ridiculous. Doing laughable attacks like throwing galaxies as if they're shuriken. Is his defeat in line with the show's allegorical objectives? Absolutely. Does this make the battle leading up to his defeat any less stupid? No. The guy was boarding the ship with ease, having chats with a humanoid Boota while everyone was experiencing Inception. With maximum cheese, our heroes break out from their psychological prison to rise up against illusions and defeat the anti-Spiral who fails at logic himself. Having acknowledged that no group of Spirals have made it so far, he decides to... fight them on an even playing field. K...
