Something interesting: as you might know, Gainax are pretty strong ideon Fans.
Their mech Design is the key Indikator.
Ideon is also the anime who introduced psychoanalysis to anime (a trait later developed further in evangelion and xenogears.)
Ideon is basically forbidden Planet (scientist find an ancient alien machine by a lost civilization powered by the id) plus battlestar Galactica meats mecha.
Many people believed the time hideaki Anno Was introduced to psychoanalys was between Nadia and evangelion. But this is clearly false. Gunbuster has a character named jung Freud. A very obvious Name. Interestingly, that character is Russian and in ideon, Kasha imhof, the proto asuka, was Russian, too.
Gunbuster is also strongly influenced by starship troopers. In starship troopers, you can only become a full citizen by fighting the Bugs. This is clearly a metaphor for Growing up.
Now, in the end of the series and the end of the fight against the bugs in that series, something interesting happens. Noriko needs to Set up a bomb and let energy flow. To do that, she needs to tear down the armor of her mech to reveal the Reactor of her mech, a pulsating device sitting inside her chest. So, she needs to tear down her armor to reveal her heart to the world.
Interestingly, by tearing down her armor she also tears up her clothing and reveals her nude body.
This strongly reminds on theories by Freuds pupil wilhelm Reich. Similar to tantra, Reich described sexual energy and libido as flowing energy.
And he thought trauma causes humans to develop character armor which causes alienation from their true feelings and physical psychosomatic pain via muscle cramps. The main impulse of character armor is basically "the world is dangerous, I need to hide and protect myself". And it also causes problems with connecting to other humans. And character armor hinders the feeling of aexuality.Therapy is in reichian sense the losing of the character armor.
Norikos action is very close parallel to that.
The other obvious thing is that this theory clearly describes the AT field in evangelion. The description is almost a perfect match. And the human instrumentality project destroys the AT field in a highly sexualised, orgiastic manner.
Evangelion is also famous for frequent scenes of nudity but there, nudity is equated with weakness and vulnerability but also with brutal honesty and no filter. This fits as well.
One other aspect here, which will come important in the last anime spoken about in this text: in most psychoanalysis, libido is also equal to Nietzsches will to power. (Like I already explained. Will to power in Nietzsche is the drive to expand, to get better, to improve, to conquer your surroundings, to embrace life and to embrace life as struggle.)
By the way, before Freud uses libido as a sexual term, that term literally meant power.
As many people pointed out, Gurren Lagann is the epitome of this nietzschean mindest.
And the protagonists of gurenn lagann are the most unashamedly skimpy/nude protagonists in anime history. In a way, they are the free, healthy, cured individuals in a reichian sense who do not need character armor
