One of the great super robot produce in the 2000s. Quite a major hit I must say after watching it online. I reckon it’s a certain must-have for those who are seriously looking for good quality mecha anime for a very long while. Especially for a show that’s quite smart in blending both elements of super and real robot genres under one roof. It couldn’t have performed so well if it wasn’t for this ‘groundbreaking’ success. I strongly recommend for everyone to watch it. It comes with plenty of great use of humor, mind-blowing action sequences, stupendous special effects, characters with incredible range of personalities we all could get used to love (or hate!!) and incredible foray of characters.
For those wanting to learn more about this show, here’s the info from Wikipedia.org and MyAnimelist.net.
Synopsis:
Gurren Lagann takes place in a fictional future in which human beings have been forced under Earth’s surface and live in isolated subterranean civilizations. These “villages” have no contact with the surface world or other villages.
Giha Village, one of the underground villages, regularly experiences earthquakes; because these earthquakes damage infrastructure, the village must constantly extend deeper into the earth—individuals relegated to this task are known as “Diggers”. Giha Village is the home of Simon, a fourteen-year-old digger who was orphaned when his parents were killed in an earthquake. Although Simon is respected by the village elders as the best of the diggers, he is ostracized by his peers. Simon discovers a special drill key deep in the ground and is soon recruited by an eccentric fellow orphan named Kamina into his group, the “Gurren Brigade”. Kamina dreams of the surface world, which he once visited as a child, though he had to return home as he was too young to survive there.
After a failed attempt at reaching the surface, Kamina is jailed by the village elder. Simon resumes digging, only to discover “a big face” deep in his tunnel. As he excitedly fetches Kamina to show him the discovery, Simon is also caught by the village elder. Kamina’s punishment is interrupted by the collapse of the ceiling over Giha Village, as an enormous mecha falls into the cavern. A woman named Yoko appears and tries to repel the machine with a large rifle. Simon takes Kamina and Yoko to the “big face” he found earlier and discovers that the small drill key can be used to activate it. Named “Lagann”, he uses it to destroy the invading mecha and effectively break through to the surface.
Once on the surface, Simon and Kamina discover there are more large mechas known as “Gunmen” (piloted by “Beastmen”) that terrorize the surface dwellers during the day. Simon and Kamina volunteer to help Yoko and her village; during the ensuing battle Kamina captures a gunmen and names it “Gurren” (meaning “crimson lotus”). Eventually, Simon and Kamina decide to embark on a journey to end the constant struggle between the Beastmen and humans, and are initially accompanied by Yoko and Leeron, a mechanic from Yoko’s village. As they head out to find the headquarters of the Beastmen’s Human Eradication Army, the group encounters various Beastmen warriors including the vicious beastman Viral.
Along the way, Simon and the others are joined by more humans, including the “Black Siblings”, led by Kittan, and Rossiu, a strict young man from an underground village, to form the “Dai (meaning “large” or “great”) Team Gurren”.
Team Dai-Gurren form a plan to hijack the giant fortress Gunmen the Beastmen have been using as a local base of operations. Kamina plans for Simon to steal the Gunmen using the Lagann. Later that night, while Kamina is talking, Yoko kisses him, and he reciprocates. Unseen, Simon follows Yoko and witnesses the event. This causes Simon a significant amount of psychological trauma and consequently he is distracted during the final battle, contributing to the death of his “brother”, Kamina.
Team Dai-Gurren continue on, adding the daughter of the king of the Beastmen, Nia, to their ranks, and encountering and defeating the remaining generals of the Human Eradication Army. They eventually reach the capital of the Beastmen and defeat the Beastmen’s king, Lordgenome. However, in doing so Simon learns of the power of the Spiral, and the destruction that it could cause. Lordgenome was once a spiral warrior who fought against the “Anti-Spirals” and failed. To preserve human kind, he forced all humans to live underground and keep their population to a minimum so they would not alert the anti-spirals to their presence.
The second half of the series takes place seven years later. Led by Simon and members of Team Dai-Gurren, mankind has become prosperous. Though all seems well, once one million humans have repopulated the surface, the anti-spirals arrive and begin attacking the humans, and Nia is suddenly transformed into their messenger. The conflict escalates, causing infighting within the Dai-Gurren members in the new capital government, and panic in the world’s population when it is learned that the anti-spirals have begun their plan to eradicate all life by crashing the moon into the earth. Simon, along with the rest of the Team and his old rival, Viral, lead the battle to defeat the Anti-Spirals and save Earth, first by averting the moon disaster, and then by confronting the anti-spirals in their home pocket dimension.
However, in destroying the Anti-Spiral, Nia’s fate is sealed. She holds onto life long enough to marry Simon before crumbling to dust. Simon then passes his core drill on to a new generation and spends the rest of his life wandering the earth as a nameless vagrant, while the human race begins to contact its fellow Spiral races throughout the galaxy.
Main characters
Simon (シモン Shimon?)
Simon is a fourteen year-old digger from Giha village. Although he is initially looked down upon because of it, Simon excels at drilling through the ground, and the drill quickly becomes his trademark symbol. One day, he finds a mysterious drill-shaped item, which is later revealed to be the “Core Drill” for a head-shaped Gunmen he also finds buried in the soil. With the help of the small Gunmen, Kamina, and Yoko, he fights off a much larger Gunmen that falls into the village. In the process of defeating the invader, they reach the surface world. Prior to the time-skip, Simon is mostly depicted as merely following Kamina’s lead and often acting as a counter-balance to Kamina’s impulsiveness, due to being very timid and weak. He is also shown to be somewhat jealous of Kamina’s strength of character. His personality changes to be more like that of Kamina, as he acquires his own fighting spirit and determination. His Gunmen “Lagann” has the power to produce drills from seemingly nowhere, which is handy, since they’re Simon’s weapon of choice. He can also produce a massive drill from the bottom to combine with Kamina’s Gurren to produce “Gurren Lagann” a much more powerful Gunmen.
Kamina (カミナ Kamina?)
Kamina is a young man from Giha Village who dreams of leaving the village and go to the surface, which he saw as a child. Ultimately, he can be summed up as “arrogant”. He is very passionate about his goals, expressing his wishes through energetic speeches which seem to affect all those who hear them. Kamina believes that with his manliness and honor, he can do anything he feels like, saying such quotes as “Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb!” and “Who the hell do you think I am?!”. The leader of the “Team Gurren ” he convinces Simon to aid him in his plan to drill through the roof of the village and get to the world above, but the plan fails and he is imprisoned. After defeating an invading Gunmen, he leaves the village with Simon and Yoko in the cockpit of a tiny but powerful Gunmen Simon unearths and Kamina names “Lagann”. He is extremely impulsive, and sometimes acts with little regard for his life. His plans are rarely well thought-out, often relying solely on brute strength and determination to win, but for some strange reason or another, they seem to work most of the time. It is revealed that Kamina’s impulsive confidence is mostly a show to give Simon the courage to act, telling his “Bro” (they aren’t actually brothers, but share such a close relationship that he insists they call each other such) “Simon, believe in yourself. Not in the Simon that you believe in, and not in the Simon that I believe in either. Believe in the Simon who believes in you.” Kamina never lives to see his dream of freeing the human race come to fruition as he is killed in battle while trying to seize the giant Gunman Dai-Gunzan.
Yoko Littner (ヨーコ・リットナー Yōko Rittonā?)
Yoko is a young woman from Giha’s neighboring village of Ritona. She had been tracking the Gunmen, which subsequently crashed through the surface and into Giha. She wields an extensive arsenal of weapons and has substantial experience fighting the enemy. She uses her outstanding soldiering skills and wise counsel to advance the war of liberation. She wears short shorts and a bikini top: as she states in episode 5, she avoids clothing which restricts her movement in combat situations. In early episodes, it is shown that she has feelings for Kamina. Due to her looks, several characters are instantly attracted to her including Simon and Kamina. She loves children and has a dream to become an elementary school teacher.
Nia Teppelin (ニア・テッペリン Nia Tepperin?)
Nia is a mysterious young girl found by Simon sleeping in a capsule in the middle of a dump site. She has had no prior contact with humans except her father. She is very curious, pure and innocent, because of a sheltered childhood in a peaceful environment away from all the battles occurring in the outside world, and because she had only recently gained sentience. During her travels with the Dai-Gurren Brigade, she discovers the harsh realities of the world and has a very close relationship with Simon throughout the story. The two fall in love, Simon proposing to her immediately after the time-skip, before discovering she is an agent for the Anti-Spirals and is being forced by another personality (Messenger Nia) to fight against Simon, ultimately fighting against her other self and regaining control of her body.
Gurren Lagan Mecha
Gurren Lagann
The Gurren Lagann (グレンラガン Guren Ragan?), the titular mech of the series, is piloted jointly by two pilots for most of the story, with the Lagann portion always operated by the series’ main protagonist Simon and the Gurren piloted by Kamina initially and then various other characters after his death. The mech was originally formed as a hotblooded response from Kamina to the Enki’s initial two-headed configuration. Later in the series the land-bound Gurren Lagann merges with another unnamed enemy Gunmen and gains a permanent set of wings. After the Battle of Tepplin, the Gurren Lagann is seen as a symbol of humanity’s triumph, and later, after the AntiSpirals, preserved as one of the last true Gunman and the personal machine of Gimmy and Darry.
Its powers and fighting capabilities are almost entirely based on its ability to generate drills of greatly varying size, shape and usage from multiple points on its body. Over the course of the series Gurren Lagann produced dozens of different uses for its drills, ranging from projectiles and missiles to shields, water screws and various melee applications. The most powerful attack seen used by Gurren Lagann is the Giga Drill Break and its variants, where the pilot forms a huge amount of spiral energy into an enormous drill or number of drills bigger than the mech itself. This special trait and its status as a fused machine (with two exceptionally spirited pilots) makes it one of, if not, the most powerful entity of its size seen in the series.
Its additional abilities shown in the series include a durable energy shield, which can deflect energy blasts even at short range, the ability to wield the sunglasses on the Gurren’s chest as a melee weapon (a sword or boomerang usually), a short-term regenerative function which can restore accumulated damage for the duration of the Gurren and the Lagann’s union and the power to rip open a wormhole in space to travel great distances.
Lagann
The Lagann (ラガン Ragan?) is Simon’s personal Gunmen which he finds in the first episode while digging tunnels in his village. It received its name, Lagann (羅顔), meaning “enveloping face”, from Kamina and draws power from the Core Drill, a small golden drill Simon uses similar to an ignition key. Unlike any other Gunmen in the series, the Lagann sports a unique cockpit and stands just short of an average human adult as opposed to the others which are all mostly the sizes of small buildings or larger. This physical handicap, in tandem with the usually average level of fighting spirit supplied to it by Simon, puts the Lagann at a considerable disadvantage in single combat against enemy Gunmen. However, when Simon is driven to give his best during combat the Lagann’s power increases exponentially, giving it the unique ability to generate drills from nearly any part of its frame. Lagann’s other and most notable power is the “Lagann Impact”, its trademark ability to combine with other machines by piercing them with its drills. It is through this ability that the titular Gurren Lagann is created, along with the other more large-scale mechas in the series. Physically, Lagann resembles a large statue-like head with arms and legs.
In Gurren Lagann Parallel Works episode 8, it is revealed that the first Laganns were found by Lordgenome as a child during the Anti-Spirals’ initial assault on Earth long before the series’ story begins and as such were used as a basis in the creation of the all Gunmen that appear in the show to use against their enemies. While most were cast into the Galactic Spiral Abyss by the Anti-Spiral, a maddened Lordgenome seemingly destroyed all the remaining Lagann except for the one that was placed deep underground until Simon finds it. Currently it is unknown who created the first Laganns, but it is speculated to be the Anti-Spirals (when they were still a spiral race).
In the second film, when Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is torn apart by the Anti-Spiral, the head sprouts a set of legs and arms of its own and continues to fight, just as Lagann would on the original mecha. Tengen Toppa Lagann is soon joined by the other new Tengen Toppa Gunmen and combines with the aid of Lordgenome, forming Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Lagann shows signs of sentience. At one point, Lagann comes to Simon without any pilot. The most obvious evidence is in the second film. Lagann, becoming more and more damaged, grabs Simon, and throws him at the Anti-Spiral. Nia is shocked at this, and apparently was not controlling this action, meaning Lagann was doing this action on its own. Moreover, Lagann’s eyes are shown to have glowing green spirals.
Gurren
The Gurren (グレン Guren?), originally named the “Gunzar” as mentioned by other Beastmen in the manga, is initially an above-average sized Beastmen-piloted mecha, which attacked Litner Village the morning after Team Gurren’s arrival early in the series. The mech is subsequently captured, rebuilt, stylized and named by its eventual pilot, Kamina, who had the Gurren’s original swords converted into massive sunglasses similar to his own that could be used as a blade or boomerang in combat. Kamina took a liking to the Gurren the first time he saw it because it looked fearsome. Being of typical Gunmen proportions, the Gurren is able to fight without the Lagann’s power. While its individual power was initially not on the same level as advanced Gunmen/pilot pairs, such as Viral and his Enki, Kamina eventually became experienced enough to hold his own against multiple enemies. After Kamina’s death, the Gurren was mainly piloted by Rossiu and one-time pilots until the aftermath of the battle of Tepplin, pilotless until Viral becomes the Gurren’s official pilot during the battle against the AntiSpirals. Gurren (紅蓮) means “Crimson Lotus”. As homage to it, a white Gunzar unit is seen during the battle of Tepplin, sporting a pair of pistols rather than blades.
Gurren made a cameo in an issue of DC Comics’ Countdown to Final Crisis, appearing as a Green Lantern construct of Kyle Rayner’s.
Arc-Gurren
Named Arc-Gurren (アークグレン Āku-Guren?) by Rossiu, this is one of Lordgenome’s Gunmen battleships, a Dai-Gun, which his armies used when he was a Spiral Warrior in events prior to the series. Enormous in size, it is initially used to gather as hundreds of thousands of animals and people onto it as possible to escape world-destroying events later in the series. It uses Spiral Energy to run and only recognizes Lordgenome as its operator. It is capable of going into space for at least a year, and contains an array of large-scale defensive systems and weaponry.
When Simon uses the Gurren Lagann to merge into the Arc-Gurren, he converts the Dai-Gun into a Dai-Gunman called the Arc-Gurren Lagann (アークグレンラガン Āku-Guren Ragan?), powered up by one of the Gurren Lagann’s Giga Drills similar to how the Lagann is powered by Simon’s Core Drill. The power of this Gunmen isn’t fully displayed in the series, but it has the ability to rip the fabric of space-time itself through its sheer brute force on its debut. The Arc-Gurren Lagann is usually used exclusively by Simon and Viral, in the Gurren-Lagann, but was also operated by Gimmy and Darry, using both of their Grapearls. It can form massive drills or fight with punches.
The Arc Gurren-Lagann resembles the Gunbuster, another giant mecha produced by GAINAX.
Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren
The Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren (超銀河ダイグレン Chōginga Daiguren?), christened by Simon, is another colossal battleship-type Gunmen akin to the Arc-Gurren and first appeared in the prologue of the first episode before being formally introduced near the end of the third part of the series. Originally, it was called the Cathedral Terra and it was Lordgenome’s flag ship against the Anti-Spirals in the past and assumed the form of moon until the climatic battle during the Anti Spirals’ attack on the Arc-Gurren reveals its true identity and becomes Team Dai-Gurren’s flagship for the final part of the series on their crusade to defeat the Anti-Spirals and save Nia.
Because of its size, the people on board use teleportation technology to move around the ship. Its combat abilities are unparalleled by any other battleship-type mecha in the series, sporting an enormous array of missiles, beam weapons and shielding capabilities. It also has the capability to transverse to other dimensions and universes and has the manufacturing capabilities to create hundreds of Arc-Gurren Lagann-sized mecha in a small period of time.
During the final battle with the Anti-Spirals, when dealing with larger Ashtanga, Simon channeled enough massive Spiral Energy, with aid from the spiral energy of those before Team Dai-Gurren to battle the Anti-Spiral, to transform the battleship into a humanoid shape similar to the method that created the Arc-Gurren Lagann, the Transcendent Super Spiral Dreadnought Gunmen Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann (超銀河グレンラガン Chōginga Guren-Ragan?). Planetary in size, the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann is piloted by a cascading interface of Simon piloting the Gurren Lagann, which is in turn piloting the Arc-Gurren Lagann which controls the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann. Because it is so massive to be controlled by a single Gunman, it contains the bridge originally seen on the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren, in order to alleviate some of the stress in piloting such a powerful mecha (although Lordgenome displayed the ability to singlehandedly control it during his reign, as he either killed or ejected anyone else on board during his takeover). Similar to the Gurren Lagann itself, The Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann sports a colossal pair of sunglasses on its torso materialized during transformation along with a smaller pair for the head.
The sheer power of this mecha shows it to be what is almost certainly the third most powerful machine in the series, capable of both deflecting and destroying objects on a planetary scale with relative ease. Like the Gurren Lagann, it also has the power to create drills from many points on its body at once and even uses a colossal version of its signature Giga Drill Breaker attack. On top of this, the mecha is equipped with thousands of cannons that appear from the threads of the mecha’s drills (and, in some cases, within the threads of those cannons, which resembled drills), each capable of shooting a beam straight through the time-space continuum, used for hitting targets regardless of their locality and temporality in the multiverse, being able to hit targets in the past, present and future all at once. Leeron also noted that “a galaxy is being born from within the engines” of the mecha due to its large amount of spiral energy.
In Gurren Lagann Parallel Works episode 8, which focused on Lordgenome’s era as a Spiral Warrior, he used the Cathedral Terra in Gunman mode to wipe out the human race. Though it resembled the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann, it lacked the sunglasses and generally resembled Lazengann. It was piloted by Lazengann inside the Dekabutsu rather than the Gurren Lagann inside the Arc-Gurren Lagann. While in battleship mode, Cathedral Terra’s abilities are even more destructive, able to take down several Ashtangas and their escorts in a single blast of its mighty cannon, albeit with help from the surrounding ships. Also, it appears that the Cathedral Terra is a unique ship in the Spiral Warrior’s arsenal, as no other ships of this class are ever seen. In 8, Lordgenome also demonstrated his ability to use a Giga Drill Break with Cathedral Terra, hinting that this attack is an innate skill of all spiral beings, rather than a finishing move of any particular individual (as evident how Kittan’s one and only attack involving spiral energy was also a Giga Drill Break).
This version of the Gurren Lagann has a canny likeness to the Buster Machine 07. collective form: Diebuster from Top Wo Nerae 2, also called Gunbuster 2.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
By combining his own Spiral Energy with his comrades’, Simon created the ultimate entity, the titular Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the final battle against the Anti-Spirals. Not actually a mecha at all, it is a mass of materialized Spiral Energy on the scale of a large galaxy. Though being similar to the Gurren Lagann, its design is overall very different from other mecha in the series, its armor being made up of red skulls bound together by Spiral Energy that burns continuously from its core, giving it the appearance of Team Dai-Gurren’s emblem. Each of its many faces has one cockpit containing: Simon and Nia being the head, Viral the torso and the rest of Team Dai-Gurren in the limbs and joints placed in Lagann-style cockpits. Its abdominal mouth is clenched onto the head of the Lazengann, containing a fully resurrected Lordgenome. It has been confirmed in the data books that the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is more than 10 million light years in height. This makes it more than one hundred times the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy, and also made it the largest mecha seen in animation to date, until the debut of the Chou Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the second movie.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann draws jointly on abilities from its many pilots, including Simon’s drills, Viral’s swords, Yoko’s rifle and so on. The actual limit of the mecha’s abilities is immeasurable, as it gains an infinite amount of power depending on the pilots’ will to win. At points, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and the Anti-Spirals’ Grand Zamboa fight at forces powerful enough to destroy entire universes; for example, the Infinity Big Bang Storm used by the Grand Zamboa had, according to Leeron, the “energy capable of creating universes.” The battle was so intense that it was shown to rip holes through various dimensions showing that the power of each was on a God-like scale. This is furthered by the fact that they can alter the fundamental laws of reality, such as altering probability and creating matter out of thin air (which is no small feat even by the series’ own standard, as the various drills and weapons materialized are larger than most galaxies). According to the creators of the Gurren Lagann anime, the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann also has the ability to create an entire Super Spiral Space universe within itself, allowing the pilots’ recognition to become reality.[2]
Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Released only in the second movie of the series, titled Lagann-Hen [Ragan-Hen], this form was the peak of the aforementioned Gurren Lagann forms. After Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann had been destroyed by the Grand Zamboa, Team Dai-Gurren split its power and pieces to form their own separate Tengen Toppa Gunmen, including Tengen Toppa’s head becoming Tengen Toppa Lagann. The rest of said team was composed of a Tengen Toppa gunmen for all surviving members as well as Nia [Note that in the film, all members of Team Dai-Gurren who had died in the final battle other than Kittan had been spared]. Those who normally piloted Dai-Gurren in the first half of the series then worked together to pilot Tengen Toppa Dai-Gurren, which was essentially the body of Dai-Gurren added on top of Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren with demonic features similar to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, holding the nose of Dai-Gurren as a weapon in its left hand and a Dai-Gurren flag made of spiral energy in the right. After a lengthy battle, Lord Genome sacrificed himself to create a mass of spiral energy, which Tengen Toppa Lagann split between the team and then used it to combine into Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. This form resembled a mass of spiral energy in the form of a faceless entity resembling both Simon (the current main pilot of the Gurren Lagann) and Kamina (the former pilot of Gurren, creator of the brigade, and Simon’s ‘brother’), complete with crimson cape and glasses. Its size is 30 times larger than its preceding form (itself previously regarded as the largest mecha in animation), with the Grand Zamboa and all the galaxies looking tiny in comparison.
Just as the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann contained all the smaller incarnations one inside the other, the final form does as well, with the original Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann restored and standing inside the head. During the short battle involving this form, its only notable attack was the powerful Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill Break, which appears to be many times larger than the Super Tengen Toppa itself, almost approaching the size of a universe. Said attack, when collided with a similar and equal attack from the Super Grand Zamboa (the evolution of the Grand Zamboa), caused the very universe the fight was held in to collapse on itself as a side-effect caused by the ripples from their drills. A moment later the Giga Drill shattered, only to be replaced with a Tengen Toppa Giga Drill, then slowly downgrading until once again reaching simply Gurren Lagann, which alone gained enough power to destroy the massive Giga Drill created by the Super Grand Zamboa. In the end, the Super Grand Zamboa and Anti-Spiral are defeated by Simon alone, without his Lagann; in a fist fight with the Anti-Spiral, Simon uses some of his own blood to create a drill powerful enough to defeat the Anti-Spiral.
(More to add shortly…)
