In the future, humans live in small, isolated underground villages. In one, Giha village, young Simon works as a digger. He's friends with the delinquent Kamina, who he idolizes as an older brother figure. Kamina has dreams of leaving the village and going to the surface.

One day, Simon uncovers a small mecha with a face, which is dubbed Gurren. Soon afterwards, giant mecha called Gunmen crash into the village and start attacking them. Simon finds that he can activate Gurren and with the help of rifle-toting Yoko, they fight off the attackers.

With Yoko's help, they leave the village and get a crash course on the world. The outside world is ruled by beastmen in Gunmen who keep the humans in their underground villages. Kanima, after acquiring his own Gunman, Laagan, vows that he will fight the beastmen and take back the surface for humanity. He forms Team Dai-Gurren to make this fight.

To be honest, after seeing a bit of this on SyFy's broadcast, I wasn't overly impressed. Lots of macho posing and manly battles. But, I kept hearing it was a good show and decided to give it a try on NetFlix.

Rather than being a battle-a-week type of show, it is a show with a strong narrative flow that knows where it wants to go. Also, the story has a darker edge underneath it, with a major loss to the team early on and having to deal with the aftermath. A lot of the show has to do with having the will to go on and to push through instead of giving into dispair.

The 27 episode show is divided into two halves. The first half has to do with Team Dai-Gurren's fight against Lordgenome's beastmen. The second half takes place 7 years later with Simon seemingly having everything, then in one instant having it all taken away from him and having to get in a fight where not only humanity's fate is in the balance, but so is the fate of the universe. It gets somewhat dark at the end, and while our heroes win out, the price of victory is high. The ending is kinda bittersweet, in that you know what they sacrificed and what they can't get back, tho there are no regrets by the characters.

The show is an interesting balance between over-the-top action, silliness and real drama. Sometimes, I'm amazed it works, but it works quite well.