Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann – Yoko’s Rifle
Posted: July.1.07 Filed under: Anime, Musings, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann 16 Comments »Yoko Get Your Gun
We all the red haired heroine of what is turning out to be my favorite show running right now touts a large sniper rifle everywhere and is a damn fine marksmen (or should I say markswoman) with it. If you ever look at the pictures, that rifle is huge. It’s almost as tall as she is!! For a person who’s pretty obsessed with mecha, guns and most military (predominantly military history) related things, I started to wonder just exactly what kind of rifle it could possibly be. And so this post was born.
To begin with, we’re not going to dwell on technicalities, like whether it’s gas operated or blow back or recoil or whether it’s a semi automatic or full or both, I’m just judging by aesthetics to locate a possible inspiration. I’m obviously not going to find an exact copy of Yoko’s rifle, but I’m gonna try.
Yoko’s Rifle
Yoko’s rifle packs a lot of power, judging from the damage (namely blowing a gaping hole through Adine’s ganmen and destroying Nia’s hair,) I’m guessing it fires a pretty big caliber bullet. Think along the lines of a .50 cal or more. Anyways, it looks like the magazine is detachable and it can’t carry that many rounds even though she shoots and never seems to reload.
There are no good pictures (discounting screen shots because I’m too lazy) of Yoko and her actual rifle. I managed to find a picture of an action figure that will suffice for now.
Figure 1. Yoko and Rifle
The Light Fifty
Okay, so ignoring the stock design, the abnormally long barrel and other minor details the closest thing I could find that fired a .50 caliber bullet and looked remotely like her rifle is a Barrett M82.
To quote Wikipedia
The M82 rifle is a high-powered heavy sniper rifle developed by the American Barrett Firearms Company. It is currently used by many units and armies around the world, including the American Special Forces. It is also called the “Light Fifty” for its .50 caliber BMG (12.7 mm) load. The weapon is found in two variants — the original M82A1 (and A3) and the bullpup M82A2. The M82A2 is no longer manufactured, though XM500 can be seen as its spiritual successor, in that it also employs a bullpup configuration.
Anyways, it looks something like this
Figure 2. M82 ‘Light Fifty’
The M82 is about 31 pounds and depending on the variants 48 or 57 inches (almost five feet.) Assuming that Yoko is a bit over five feet, it’d come up to her chin or maybe shoulder, my math is shaky. Disregarding the detachable rear grip, it comes pretty close to Yoko’s rifle.
Figure 3. The .50 cal (12.7mm)
For a size reference, the .50 cal is about five inches. I’m not sure if fives will do that much damage to a pretty big ganmen and destroy a Nia’s pretty blue and yellow hair, but it can do some pretty series damage. There are other rifles that can fire higher caliber bullets, like the XM109 which fires a 25mm round, and also manufactured by Barrett. It’s about 46 inches, 33 pounds and has a range of about 2000 meters. A .50 cal is about 12.7mm. The XM109 fires a round that’s about twice the caliber of a .50, and a .50 is pretty big.
The Taste Test
Figure 4. M82 vs. Yoko’s Rifle
Alright, so it’s a very crudely cropped picture of Yoko’s rifle against an M82 with the bipod folded. The stock and butt of the rifles are pretty different and for our intended purposes it’s a pretty good match. The muzzle brake on Yoko’s a bit bigger, pretty sure it’s just for decoration.
Bottom line
This whole post was decidedly pointless. I’m pretty sure half the things I said here aren’t technically correct and no one will read, but, hell, I was bored, I like guns, I love Gurren Lagann, can’t blame me for wasting my own time. But if anyone ever wants to cosplay Yoko and has a thing for large caliber rifles that cost about $8000 a pop, buy a M82 or any of it’s variants.
I read it! Quite intereseting, actually.
Dude i found that very informative and making a diy version wouldn’t be that hard please email me so we can talk some more
email:gspanos9806@wowway.com
You have to keep in mind the various things Yoko does with the rifle, both before she lost it in episode 6 and after Leeron gives her the identical-looking souped-up replacement.
Considering how several shots from the original barely dented the ganmen in the first episode, I’m assuming that’s closer to the M82′s design, but we also have to keep in mind that Yoko also loaded arrows into it because the rifle was “powered by electricity” (quote from memory — my main computer’s down so I don’t have any of my fansubs on hand). Also, the muzzle flashes for Yoko’s rifle seem to be radically different from a typical gun’s as well, possibly due to the electric-powered operation, so I’m assuming it’s at the least very heavily modified from the start, if not outright different internally.
Heck, that larger rear-grip with the warning paint could be a battery pack or something, I dunno.
I doubt it shoots anything remotely close to .50cal it looks like the round resembles a 7.62×54 and a .338 lapua baby because when you see her with a round in her mouth at times I can bet my balls it’s not a .50. The gun seems terribly made, it completely lacks a reciever lower or upper so I assume this means the magazine feeds directly to the barrel so it must have some kind of internal bolt (I hope, even though it’s not possible or and seems very dirty and a pain to clean) and has a horribly alligned pistol grip and trigger group essentially it’s a barrel with a magazine catch glued on it and a grip…….oh yeah and it runs on batteries. In conclusion it SUCKS I’d feel safer with a grenade tied around my neck.
Length of a round is largely superfluous when thinking about damage caused by one. More important is muzzle velocity, width of the round (half an inch in terms of a .50 cal round) and the payload. In the case of the M82, which can be used to fire an armour-piercing incendiary round or standard ball ammunition, the results are very different with each round :)
I’ve only seen the first 2 eps of Gurenn Lagann so far but Yoko’s weapon does appear to be heavily based on the Light fifty. It’s good that they’ve taken a bit of artistic licence with it though to stop internet geeks like us arguing too much on the technicalities :P
Muzzle velocity depends on the amount of propellant the burnspeed and expansion of said propellant so a longer round does have a better chance of having a higher muzzle velocity this being said the mass of the round and the width account mostly towards the maximum range which of course is related to muzzle velocity. And thanks Cpt.Obvious I had no idea different rounds had different result… :P Slower larger rounds are more damaging then smaller faster rounds anyway. Last time I’m gonna say this……. NO WAY IN HELL DOES THIS GUN SHOOT ANYTHING LIKE .50 CAL and it looks nothing like an M82.
I have a friend in the US Navy and he told me of this radioactive bullets they use on 50 cal. machine guns. They travel so fast that the plutonium “plating” on the bullet start to heat up so much that when they hit armor plating or a large vessel in case of the navy, it pierces trough it melting the metal like butter. Maybe that’s how the latter version of Yoko’s rifle is able to destroy that couple o’ Ganmen in the Island where she teaches.
I find this topic quite interesting…. congrats on taking the time.
You mean Uranium coating they are depleted uranium rounds they have high penetration but aren’t explosive or all that terribly damaging they are anti-armor rounds and we’ve had them forever.
scratch the coating I meant a uranium core I was thinking about the teflon coated rounds and how awesome they are sorry about that.
It’s not pointless; I read it and smiled that somebody knowledgeable went to the trouble of analyzing Yoko’s rifle. Happy is a reason.
thank you! i was trying to get a picture of yoko’s rifle when i stumbled upon this! I favorite the page just now (i plan to show it to a friend of mine) i was trying to find a picture because i was going to draw a different version of yoko, change her look up a bit ^_^” i also need a good pick of a mecha for the background, tell me if you find one!
hola…soy de san luis y quiero hacer un cospley de yoko…ya q m parese un personaje espectacular…pero tengo un gran problema….como fabrico el rifle??? porfavor ayuda…el cospley es el 23…y no tengo demasiados recursos ya q yo sola costeo mi propio disfras….gracias….
:FACEPALM:
its not plutonium, its depleted uranium.
its not plating, its the core of the round
its doesn’t “heat up” to penetrate, it penetrates so effectively because its increasingly dense.
its not known to exists in a .50 cal form. usually 30mm rounds and tank rounds.
@Ceceil Felias you are thing of a railgun. “A railgun is an entirely electrical gun that accelerates a conductive projectile along a pair of metal rails using the same principles as the homopolar motor. Railguns use two sliding or rolling contacts[1] that permit a large electric current to pass through the projectile. This current interacts with the strong magnetic fields generated by the rails and this accelerates the projectile.” but i like this blog i was like to share it on FB….
ok its my again… it might be a Barrett XM109 with a longer rifle barrel witch a good gun smith can modify that.
Nope Yoko’s gun is impossible in the real world buddy