Transformers Meets Silo In A Near-Perfect Dystopian Series With Just 27 Episodes

Published Aug 24, 2026, 10:59 AM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While a mix of Transformers and Silo might sound like a franchise-spawning must-watch, the actual anime series that fulfills this promise only lasted a mere 27 episodes. The Transformers franchise isn’t just home to a handful of major live-action blockbuster movies from the divisive director Michael Bay. All told, the mecha media franchise has countless toys, comics, animated movies, TV shows, and video games to its name. Although the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise is admittedly bigger than the Transformers series, Transformers remains one of the most lucrative sci-fi properties in the genre’s history. In contrast, the Apple TV series Silo might be critically acclaimed, but the show is hardly as massive a mainstream phenomenon. Based on author Hugh Howey’s trilogy of novels Wool, Shift, and Dust, Silo is set in the eponymous gigantic underground silo, home to 10,000 survivors across 144 floors in the show’s dystopian future. While Silo’s story focuses on the corruption and internal machinations behind the titular superstructure, the Transformers movies and shows tend to be more interested in the interstellar wars between two sets of sentient robots, the Autobots and the Decepticons. These two storylines might seem like they couldn’t possibly overlap, but on the contrary, the underrated 2007 anime series Gurren Lagann offered viewers a compelling blend of the two plots. Gurren Lagann Is One Of The Most Perfect Short Anime Series Around Set in the future, Gurren Lagann centers on Simon and Kamina, a pair of teens who live in an isolated underground community under the rule of the Spiral King, Lordgenome. Lordgenome’s Beastmen, mechas piloted by human soldiers, ruthlessly police the surface world, ensuring humans who escape their underground existence don’t last long. However, Simon and Kamina gain a chance to take on the Beastmen when they discover the titular mecha, Lagann, and use it to do battle with Lordgenome’s army of henchmen. While the show’s premise might call to mind the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew, wherein a group of unsuspecting kids is whisked off on an intergalactic adventure after accidentally uncovering a disused ship, a more apt comparison might be the Pacific Rim spinoff Pacific Rim: The Black. Like that later Netflix show, Gurren Lagann isn’t afraid to delve into the dark implications of its dystopian setting amid all the mecha action. That said, for all of its dark moments, Gurren Lagann is ultimately uplifting, upbeat, and fun, something it shares with the Transformers movies. While that franchise ultimately slid into outright silliness after its first movie, Gurren Lagann maintains a humorous, playful tone while the show’s story still has an unpredictable quality and a dark edge, infusing its fun adventures with some of Silo’s conspiratorial Mystery Box plotting. Gurren Lagann Has A Wider Franchise To Explore After The Main Series Even though Gurren Lagann was critically acclaimed upon its original release, the show only lasted for one 27-episode season in 2007. That said, there is plenty more content where the series came from. Like Apple TV’s Asimov adaptation Foundation, the show only had sufficient screen time to scratch the surface of the franchise’s immersive lore. The Gurren Lagann manga ran from 2007 until 2013, while its four-volume light novel ran from 2007 until 2008. Another, separate second one-volume manga ran from 2008 until 2009, while the movie Gurren Lagann: Childhood’s End was released in 2008 and its sequel, Gurren Lagann the Movie: The Lights in the Sky Are Stars, arrived in 2009. Thus, anyone who finds something to enjoy in the franchise’s mecha action and fun post-apocalyptic adventure story will have no shortage of follow-up media to explore. Meanwhile, the upcoming high profile movie adaptations of Gundam and Voltron from Netflix and Prime, respectively, mean that major streaming services may soon be on the lookout for more popular mecha anime to adapt into live-action movies. Thus, viewers should seek out the cult classic Gurren Lagann before this blend of Transformers and Silo becomes a mainstream sensation in years to come.