Anime can be a pretty chaotic medium. While it’s true that anime has a wide variety of more relaxed slice-of-life, romance, and light comedy offerings, no consideration of anime is complete without taking into account the over-the-top action, fighting, and comedy. With this in mind, one studio has made frenetic, nonstop action into not just a feature, but a defining characteristic.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Studio Trigger has produced some of the most intensely entertaining and popular anime content in recent years. For its combination of artistic stylization, intense action, and offbeat comedy, Trigger has become a household name in the anime world. With several iconic productions as well as a healthy spate of more niche cult classics, there are multiple good ways for getting into one of the anime industry’s most idiosyncratic yet iconic studios.

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Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The Show That Set the Foundation for Trigger

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Technically, Tengen Toppa Gurrenn Lagann (often just shortened to Gurren Lagann) isn’t a Studio Trigger production. Although the 2007 action-comedy series was animated at Studio Gainax, from which Trigger was founded by several of its leading animators. The series director, Hiroyuki Imaishi, went on to become one of Trigger’s co-founders, and the aesthetic and humor of Gurren Lagann has played an indelible role in setting the fast, stylized, irreverent tone that would dominate many of Trigger’s formal productions later on.

Gurren Lagann is a sci-fi comedy set in a dystopian future where humanity is forced to live in brutalist mining villages. When a shy youth in the village, Simon, is roped into joining the ranks of a charismatic drifter Kamina and his excitable girlfriend Yoko, the team goes forward to “pierce the heavens with their drill" on a series of adventures spanning up to the surface world and beyond. The series is remembered for its artistic stylization, saturated color pallet and eclectic rock-hip-hop soundtrack—many fans regard the soundtrack in particular as one of the best of any anime series. Likewise, the Gainax-animated Gurren Lagann is furthermore referenced via easter egg in several of Trigger’s productions, including Kill la Kill and Promare. Gurren Lagann isn’t just a “Trigger show in spirit”; it’s the show that created the spirit of Trigger.

Kill la Kill: Trigger’s Madcap School Comedy

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Gurren Lagann became something of a cult classic upon its release in 2007, and after a brief stint contributing to the likewise cult classic comedy Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Imaishi formally co-founded Studio Trigger in 2011. Trigger’s first short-form works, “Inferno Cop” and “Turning Girls,” were crude and semi-ironic over-the-top comedies originally put on Youtube for niche but dedicated audiences. While shorter works can definitely be entertaining, Trigger’s first longform series would be a remarkable extension of the intense animation and stylization that made Gurren Lagann famous, Kill la Kill, releasing in 2013.

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Kill la Kill takes the action-comedy aesthetic of Gurren Lagann and applies it to satirize many aspects of high school and shonen anime. Set in an over-the-top Tokyo high school run as a sort of authoritarian military regime by its student council. Kill la Kill follows Ryuko Matoi as she challenges the council establishment with the help of her kamui, a sentient school uniform that enables her to transform into a powered form in something of a comedically-sexualized magical girl transformation. Kill la Kill definitely amps up some of the lewder elements found previously in Gurren Lagann, although the action and the comedy still definitely take center-stage. As the show continues over 26 episodes, it satirizes several common action tropes fueled by the unique fighting styles engendered by different students’ uniforms. For the most intense combination of Trigger’s mix of style, action and comedy, Kill la Kill is regarded by fans as one of the studio’s best.

Other Studio Trigger Anime

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After the success of Kill la Kill, Trigger has expanded to a number of other series. In 2013 the studio animated ‘Little Witch Academia’, a fantasy comedy short film that spawned a sequel in 2015 and a full 25-episode series in 2017. Less violent and bawdy than Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill, both the Little Witch Academia films and series retain much of Trigger’s artistic charm in a somewhat more palatable form for younger audiences.

In 2016, Trigger also produced Space Patrol Luluco, a shorter 12-episode comedy anime about a 13-year-old living and working in deep space while using the more stylized comedy-aesthetic found in certain characters and scenes like Mako Mankanshoku’s in Kill la Kill. Also in 2016 was Kiznaiver, another 12-episode action series with a more grounded art style. In 2018, Trigger animated Darling in the Franxx in collaboration with the other legendary anime studio CloverWorks, which featured the action-high-school aesthetic found in many of its other works. In 2020 it released Brave New Animal as an original science-fantasy series for Netflix.

Finally, Trigger is also known for its 2 Gridman anime series, which are tangential extensions of the original Gridman tokusatsu series and distant cousins of the Ultraman tokusatsu universe developed by the legendary Japanese effects designer Eiji Tsubaraya. SSSS: Gridman was released for 12-episode in 2018, and SSSS: Dynazenon came out for another 12-episodes in 2020.

Promare: The Perfect Introduction to Trigger?

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Looking at the studio’s list of productions, there can definitely be an impression that Trigger is mostly known for its series rather than films. While series are definitely the studio’s main draw, its first feature film can actually serve as a perfect introduction to the studio’s style. Released in 2019, Promare is a CGI-animated feature film that uses many of the similar writing styles, aesthetics, and themes found in Trigger’s most iconic productions.

Similar to the student council of Kill la Kill or the mining colonies of Gurren Lagann, Trigger follows its theme of idiosyncratic dystopia in Promare with a world where certain humans are spontaneously given combustible superpowers. A war fought between the fire-powered “Burnish” and their rival mecha-firefighting force, Promare escalates to a massive, freeform battle that makes the perfect blend of CGI animation techniques and Trigger’s aesthetic. Likewise, Promare features many brief easter eggs to Trigger’s other properties, making it the perfect shorter-form introduction to the studio’s style as well as a treat for more dedicated fans of its other series.

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