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1New entries on the bottom. Beware spoilers.
2
3[[foldercontrol]]
4
5[[folder:Why did Simon even bother?]]
6
7* If he knew that Nia would be erased after the death of the Anti-Spiral and never intended to use Spiral Power to either turn her into a full human or some other method to prevent her death, then why did he rush off to save her the first chance he got? Think about it. It wouldn't have made any difference if he had rescued her or not.
8** Because he didn't know that. However, if he just didn't bother, they'd have no way to find the Anti-Spirals at all and almost certainly be wiped out when they inevitably came to Earth for a large scale attack. Even if he did know she would fade out with them, do you seriously think he would care? The woman he loved was suffering as a pawn for a malicious group of aliens. Why would he let her suffer a second longer if he had any power to put a stop to it? Yeah, he didn't get to fully ride off into the sunset with her, but that doesn't mean what he and she did share wasn't meaningful.
9
10[[/folder]]
11
12[[folder:Nia Sue]]
13
14* Does nobody else think that Nia, at least pre-timeskip Nia, is a total Mary Sue? I don't hate her, but her blatant perfection has been bugging me since she appeared. She's beautiful, has flowing hair that's different from everyone else's, has multi-coloured eyes, has a child-like innocence that makes everyone fall in love with her, has a tragic backstory, but is kind to everyone, and yet is super strong and extremely brave, AND is a princess. I have never seen a character like this that isn't an OC in a fanfic. Her only notable flaw/weakness is that she can't cook, and really, it kinda falls into the whole "clumsiness is not a character flaw," since it only makes her seem more cute/innocent. I really hope I'm not the only one who thinks this.
15** She's hardly a princess, to be fair. Also, her inability to perceive anything negative could itself be seen as a character flaw. As you can see not everybody found it endearing how she treated Kamina's death.
16** She's incredibly naive, for one thing, and does prove to have a temper later on. Plus, she's a massive Cloudcuckoolander, and it seems the main reason Team Gurren liked her (at least initially) was more because they pitied her than because they found her endearing. I wouldn't call her 'perfect' by any means.
17** She also doesn't really accomplish anything once she's helped guide the group towards a new goal and helped Simon out of his funk. Her role in the first half of the story is to act as a catalyst for character development of the other characters and not much else; a Mary Sue usually tends to completely derail the story and have it revolve around her. That doesn't happen to Nia until post time-skip, and at that point she's a well enough established character that her relationship with Simon being the core of the second half of the story doesn't raise a ton of narrative red flags.
18
19[[/folder]]
20
21[[folder:Spiral Nemesis versus entropy]]
22
23* Shouldn't a Spiral nemesis be able prevent the universe from going into heat death? They could just use excessive amounts of spiral energy to send every living thing in the universe out of reality, cause a big crunch and make a big bang to restart the world?
24** You are referring to using Spiral Energy to generate more energy and matter in the universe, counteracting entropy. This would be possible, yes. Even trivial, it's suggested, given the amounts of Spiral Energy that a civilization can produce. But Spiral Nemesis is what happens when that goes too far (essentially the exact opposite of heat death), and also results in the destruction of everything, so it's hardly a good outcome. Even if you ''could'' send everything out of the universe and allow for a new Big Bang, it would be billions of years before anywhere in the reset universe was habitable.
25** Waaaaait, heat death? Are you sure you're not confusing this with ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica''?
26** Yes it would, but at the cost of causing a Big Crunch. The Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the universe will eventually die. Being able to create energy out of nothing without being able to reverse entropy at best only delays the death of the universe.
27
28[[/folder]]
29
30[[folder:Escaping in Lagann]]
31
32* About Rossiu's plan to keep Simon from running off in Gurren Lagann. Doesn't he realize that Simon could simply detach in Lagann and fly off? Before it gets said, I doubt that Kinon really would have blown herself up, and I doubt Rossiu would have let her anyways. He's too efficient to waste effective personnel like that.
33** He probably did know that. He also knew that Simon wouldn't abandon people and probably set up the explosives to reassure the public. Kinon went with him as Gurren's pilot so Simon wouldn't get himself killed on purpose. People really don't give Rossiu enough credit.
34** It's not about hating Rossiu. I have real respect for him as the OnlySaneMan. I just can't get why he wouldn't have a contingency for that, when it was indeed a possibility that Simon would do so. Rossiu just doesn't strike me as the type who would rely on others' motives and emotions. He'd have a plan for every single possibility.
35** Yeah, he would. If he needed one. Need I remind you that Rossiu still trusted Simon to some degree? He hated having to throw him in jail and take over. He said the his sentence would be execution but I doubt that he would have gone through with it even if the moon wasn't about to fall. He knew that Simon wouldn't abandon everyone before the fight and after it he and Gurren Lagann were too beat up to do anything. Even if GL wasn't then were would Simon go? If I recall correctly, he still hadn't given up on saving Nia and if she appeared in Kamina City before hand then the chances were quite good that she would again.
36** More importantly, ''why'' the hell did Simon give Rossiu that idea? It wasn't Rossiu's idea, it was Simon's. If Simon knew that Rossiu had no choice, he should have used that as more leverage for bargaining. I guess this is more of a Just Bugs Me than a headscratcher.
37** You can say you don't think it would happen, but the stated reason in the show is Kinon would blow them both to hell if Simon tries anything like that. Actually, that might have been the point. The idea was originally Simon's, so Rossiu put Kinon in there to ensure that Simon doesn't try any funny business since it would kill her. Whether they would actually pull the trigger is irrelevant to whether or not Simon would risk it, and he wouldn't.
38** Simon showed that he cared so little about risking his own life that he would happily accept having his mech loaded with bombs. Meaning that the bombs aren't effective as a threat because Simon is comfortable with the risk. So Rossiu put Kinon as his co-pilot to add an additional layer of insurance that he knows Simon wouldn't be comfortable with. Now he can be absolutely sure that Simon wouldn't dare risk her life by doing anything except completeing the mission and returning to base. He should know Simon well enough to realize none of this was necessary, but he's gotten so paranoid that he's not going to take any chances.
39
40[[/folder]]
41
42[[folder:High-Ranking Unique Gunmen]]
43
44* So...how come we never see any other high-ranking beastmen with Gunmen like Viral? He has the only unique Gunmen among an army of mooks (excluding the Generals, who are presumably the highest ranking beastmen of them all). You'd think if a human stealing a Gunmen is enough to send one high-ranking soldier after them, a whole bunch of humans doing it and attacking a battleship is enough to send them all! Think about it, how much more awesome would the already awesome Episode 7 be if Viral, instead of calling out the same mooks recycled yet again, called out a whole team of Gunmen as strong as Enki, only to be curb-stomped by the timely arrival of Kittan and his crew? It never made sense to me on my first watch-through. Not even the other Generals have beastmen of Viral's rank in their armies!
45** ConservationOfDetail. Why bother creating original desings that would lead the audiance to think that they are important just to blow them up three seconds later? This show already had a lot of [[CastOfSnowflakes fully fleshed out characters]] [[OvershadowedByAwesome (even if most of them are forgettable for not being overly awesome)]]. Why would they add more? Also, it's not the only show to do this.
46** As for in story, I would suggest that, after Viral's defeat, other Generals amy have hesitated to give possibly-expensive custom Gunmen to underlings. Other than that, it's possible that Thympilph may be the only one to have a high-ranked underling with a custom. Certainly it's true that Viral doesn't seem to be replacing anyone when he fights under Adiane, nor when he fights under Cytomandra.
47** I assumed that Kittan and everyone stole their Gunmen from Viral's peer's just like Kamina did.
48** I like that assumption (there's also the special multi-head Gunmen design). Plus, I think it would be excellent if Viral was on track to being a 'replacement' general in case something went wrong with one of the four, and he's upset because he sees his defeat as losing that chance.
49
50[[/folder]]
51
52[[folder:Underground tan]]
53
54* How is Kamina so tan after being underground basically his whole life?
55** Because he's Kamina. Are you going to argue he can't?
56** Excellent point.
57** Maybe Kamina is naturally like that? Or had a job that required him to stay under more lighting?
58** Gainax logic could say he's tan because he's been on the surface. Even if that was years ago.
59
60[[/folder]]
61
62[[folder:Infinity Big Bang Storm]]
63
64* Why did the Infinity Big Bang Storm clearly hit the Tengen Toppa, but is shown a few seconds later to be headed towards them? It's clear they're hit, what with the Dai-Gurren falling back and recoiling in pain, along with the explosion of galaxies that erupt from it when it's hit! Why is it not only fine in the next scene, but hasn' been hit yet?
65** ...? They ''were'' hit. Then Lordgenome bounced out and pushed it away.
66** Notice the cutaway to Earth, the part before the ThemeMusicPowerUp. TTGL is holding back the Storm's light, allowing Lordgenome an opening for his BigDamnHeroes moment.
67
68[[/folder]]
69
70[[folder:Yoko's gun shooting arrows]]
71
72* I know that any physics question will lead to the answer "spiral energy" but I'm still wondering about something. How is it that Yoko's gun is able to fire arrows? It's powered by electricity (not sure how you could fling an arrow with that) and an arrow isn't going to fit in the barrel properly so it wouldn't fly straight. I know it's really unimportant in the scheme of things, but it... just bugs me.
73** Metal arrows and a magnetic accelerator.
74** That only solves the problem of the arrows being able to be shot away, not the problem that an arrow would probably wobble around while in a gun barrel and ruin the accuracy.
75** It's an airgun then. It sounds like one anyway.
76** It doesn't matter what type of gun it is: the problem is that an arrow, which would not fit perfectly into the barrel of a gun, would not be stationary in the gun, greatly reducing the accuracy (and power) of an anything launched out. Air would follow the path of least resistance, which is to go around an arrow instead of launching it, and a railgun launching an arrow, while possible, would still need a barrel specifically designed for arrows.
77** Sabots. Alternatively, a firing mechanism more akin to a crossbow than a firing pin.
78** [[HandWave The magnetic accelerator holds the metal arrow precisely in the centre of its magnetic field before shooting it up along the barrel, thus it is perfectly stabilized before it is fired. Thus no wobbling and almost anything that can fit down the barrel of a suitable material can be fired in that fashion. Which sounds handy.]]
79** You know, [[RealityIsUnrealistic that is exactly how a real life coil gun works]].
80** Well, based on what her normal shots look like Yoko's gun SHOOTS electricity. I mean, I could be a thin barrel, with the electrical energy being built up inside, then shot out via trigger pull. Optionally, she can manually fill up magazines with arrows or bullets, and have them fired out with more power due to the electrical power pushing them forwards. But that's about all I can think of at the moment.
81** Yoko's rifle has a barrel a lot wider than a real one (it looks at least a half inch wide), because it's not designed to fire bullets using a chemical propellant, it's designed to fire whatever the hell she puts in their using electricity/magnetism. As for how it can fire things that are clearly not magnetic, I'm just going to have to chalk it up to LostTechnology of diamagnetism.
82** "Half inch wide barrel? You mean, like a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_M82 Barret M82]]?
83** Confirmed from the intro exposition in episode 2, it mentions that the rifle is "superconducting" so I'd assume it's some sort of LIM or railgun or whatever.
84** Maybe there are grooves on the inside of the barrel and it just widens towards the end?
85** Ah, screw this. It's a Spiral Energy Rifle, it can do whatever the hell Yoko wants it to do. This also explains why sometimes it harms Gunmen and others it doesn't.
86
87[[/folder]]
88
89[[folder:Beach episode and Nia]]
90
91* The beach episode bugged the hell out of me because of how every single character ignored Yoko over Nia. I don't get it, a little girl with absolutely no body is fawned and lusted after over Yoko simply because Yoko wore a rather conservative swimsuit? They even say that she has nothing going for her when it's completely obvious what she does have going for her. I know, rule of funny, but it still just bugs me.
92** They're ogling Nia simply because it's something they haven't seen before. On the other hand, the sight of Yoko in a skimpy two-piece doesn't exactly have any rarity value. Hell, it's even noted that her beach wear actually shows ''less'' skin than her regular outfit.
93** {{Lolicon|AndShotacon}}s.
94** Also, Nia is "cute" and "new", while Yoko is so "first episodes' news" and, if memory serves me right, quite agressive to people showing affection to her. If that doesn't do it for you, then all I have to say is this: She's Kamina's hoe, you sure you wanna go after the girl belonging to the only man who could seriously get out of the screen and punch the telespectator in the face??
95** This bugged Rossiu too in the manga adaptation. He says in one of the 4koma: "Does this mean..... that in this day and age, flat-chested lolitas tend to be more universally popular among the consumers?"
96** I thought it them fawning over her being impossibly cute than a lolita.
97
98[[/folder]]
99
100[[folder:Lack of character development after timeskip]]
101
102* Am I honestly the only one bugged by some of the character interactions that take place early in the post-timeskip episodes? Seriously, some of the ways that these characters behave around each other makes it feel less like they've been working together, striving to build a stable new society for seven years and more like they were all stuck into plot-induced, isolated incubation chambers, then plopped into the shiny new setting with similarly plot-convenient roles to play.
103** A lot changes in, what... seven years?
104** But that's exactly the point. Either the characters haven't changed or if they have, almost all of the ways in which the characters and their relationships are different feel unnatural and forced (Simon and Rossiu are probably the worst offenders in this respect). Seven years IS a long time for people to get to know each other, and I have a difficult time buying into the idea that the Gurren Dan has been governing Kamina City with relative peace and stability without becoming a more mature, tight-nit, cohesive group of people whose interaction has grown naturally and realistically. But we don't get that, with a few exceptions, instead we get what amount to basically about half of the main cast virtually unchanged, while the rest have been shoddily retooled with no consideration given to realism in their CharacterDevelopment, which ultimately makes the way they interact with the rest of the cast that much more questionable.
105** I think their problem is more that they don't know how to be politicians, and aren't comfortable in the role. When outside the role, it's clear that they are, at least somewhat, more comfortable with each other. Also, nobody said they were a democracy, they just happen to be the group with both the biggest stick and the most popular support.
106** Funny how it's supposed to be a democracy and yet Rossiu always seemed to be telling everyone what to do and how to do it, even prior to the initial Anti-Spiral attack.
107** I think that was the point, when Simon makes a big deal to Viral about how they have a court-system to fairly try criminals, and yet when Simon himself is put in the same court the Judge's girlfriend is the sole jury member and everybody makes a big stink about how obviously unfair that was.
108** The whole thing still bugs me regardless. It just feels unrealistic, and no do not try to retort that realism doesn't matter because Gurren Lagann doesn't care about the laws of physics. Subverting the laws of physics for the sake of a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome is irrelevant with regards character interaction and world building.
109** Actually, it wasn't Simon and Rossiu working together to create a new work. It was Rossiu working to create a new world by himself with Simon as merely an icon to represent freedom. Simon was never a man of authority and the only reason he stayed in Kamina City was for Nia. It's a pretty logical progression to the storytelling. People grow apart, Simon's interactions with Rossiu weren't abundant as the only person he had a close relationship with was Nia. I have no idea of what kind of "unnatural and forced" interactions are you talking about. Gimmy and Darry themselves remark that the Gang was too immersed in their own glory and larger-than-life ideals to truly "grow-up and throw away their past" like Rossiu did. It seems to me like you're trying to force the characters into a mold they were never meant to fit. Simon was always shy, never very social and even after growing up he was more of a down-to-earth character that only really related to Nia. Expecting him to become a close buddy with the other characters would have been unbelievable.
110** If I remember correctly, the whole "new vs. old" thing was an actual theme that was brought up on several occasions. When Rossiu arrests Simon, he even remarks that Simon hasn't changed a bit, and that he'll never understand. Kittan also remarks how Kinon's personality has completely changed. As for the above-mentioned point about Team Dai-Gurren being unable to govern anything, it's pretty obvious that they aren't doing jack. Rossiu's really the one pulling the strings.
111** For me it just ultimately boils down to the length of the timeskip. Seven years is a long time for a group of characters to spend away from the eyes of the audience and it just doesn't feel like the writing treats some of the characters like they've been living their lives realistically, but rather, like their personalities were snap-shotted from episode 15 and then put on hold for seven years. Rossiu is a can of worms I won't get into, but to better illustrate my point, I'll offer up a contrasting example. In the seven years between episodes 15 and 17, Dayakka got married and had a kid, and his personality changed appropriately. Kittan, on the other hand, doesn't seem like he's changed a lick since the day Teppelin fell. I know it's weird and pretty subjective, but it boils down to that: I think the timeskip is too long and it does weird things to the way the characters come off.
112** You can't expect someone like Kittan to change no matter how much time passes. He himself basically admits he's ill-suited for the job they gave him. There are basically two camps among the Gurren-dan post time skip: People like Rossiu, Yoko, and Dayakka who changed in some way in the seven years, and people like Kittan, Simon, Nia, and Viral who really didn't change all that much. In fact, although it's not really easy to see between the mind blowing battles, there is the overarching theme of "growing up" present in the post-time skip world. The problem is it's a lot more subtle (and in Simon's case with refusing to even try to bring back Nia at the end, mindblowingly misguided...personally if I heard someone say to let the girl who went poof stay poofed because it was time to move on and leave it to the next generation, I'd sock him in the face and ask "What about YOUR next generation? You just saved the Goddamn universe, be a little selfish just this once!") in that it addresses a problem with 20-somethings moving forward in life. Most of the protagonists have this stagnation in their lives as a character flaw. This growth, however, is incredibly hard to portray in any form of media, since almost everyone is still going through it in their own lives. It's like a 10 year old writing about puberty.
113** You have just won the internet. The only major logic hole in Gurren Lagann that cannot be explained through spiral power or its awesome abilities is Simon's decision to let Nia stay dead, for some half explained reason. "What about YOUR next generation? You just saved the Goddamn universe, be a little selfish just this once!" indeed.
114** If Simon ''did'' bring her back, who would it be for? For her sake, or his own? I've recently come to realized that that I, and I suspect most people who defend the ending, have been looking at it from the wrong perspective. All my arguments up to this point have been focused on the fact that bringing Nia back would set mankind down the path of the Spiral Nemesis, but there's something much more important that reviving Nia would destroy: Nia herself. Consider, for a moment, what almost everyone in the story saw her as: her own father had her for the sake of his own amusement, the Anti-Spirals' used her as a tool, and even most of the Gurren Gang saw rescuing her as their goal for its own sake. Throughout her life, for one reason or another, selfish or not, she was always merely an object, whether to be used or fought for. But when she died, when she ''accepted that fate, of her own will, in order to meet to her own ideals'', that all changed. It is unquestionably tragic, but in the end, Simon accepting Nia's decision isn't just him once more shouldering the universe's own moral problems: it's him accepting Nia's sole selfish request.
115** Also, bringing Nia, and anyone else, back to life would have been a clear abuse of spiral power, which Simon basically told Anti-Spiral he wouldn't do since it causes that whole death of the universe thing.
116** Bullshit! They abuse spiral power to win, and they do it on levels that render a single person, a planet full of people, hell, a GALAXY full of people irrelevant. By the end of Lagann-hen, they've abused it so much that bringing back everyone all the way from Lordgenome's time would have been largely irrelevant. All of this to take down the the Anti-Spiral, which apparently requires building mechs large enough that galaxies are motes of dust. Even supposing that you bring back everyone who died merely in the series and movie (which ranges from a dozen or so to a mere three), and they all turned out to be crazy excellent at using Spiral power (only Kittan actually demonstrates this before the Tengen Toppa is generated, not even Kamina), that's only a few more galaxies to deal with (since each person becomes a galaxy during Spiral Nemesis). Certainly, this risk is relatively low, given how many god damn people there are on Earth alone (at least a million, assuming no one died after we hit this mark), and realistically, given there is no reason to fight, there is no real reason to use spiral power except for this exact purpose! Oh, and lucky us, only Simon can actually use it on that scale! It's bullshit to say that "Oh, we can't bring back my brother, my love, and my friends because it'd be abuse" when you've already DESTROYED AN ENTIRE DIMENSION USING IT.
117** That's the whole point. they realized the destructive power of spiral energy so they limited their use of it. the abuse earlier was necessary. but, now that the threat is gone, they can limit the use of spiral energy to prevent the destruction of any dimensions
118** I think that lot of people are missing the point of the series' messages and themes. If they had tried to bring Nia back to life then they would started down the path of the Anti-Spirals. There's a reason that the Anti-Spirals are largely represented by circles. They want to keep things going, no matter what. What is the fundamental difference between a circle and a spiral? A spiral ends.
119** Nia would end eventually. She'd die. Would it be so bad to just keep her going until she dies a normal, ''justified'' death?
120*** What the Hell is a "justified" death? There is no such thing. Death from old age and death from bleeding out in an alley have the same result: a cold corpse and mournful loved ones. Dead is dead, assuming that you'll find some idealized death scenario for yourself or a loved one is idiotic. Nia's death was sad and unfair, but so were those of all the friends they lost in their battles, yet I don't see people raging that Simon isn't furiously trying to bring them all back. Unlike so many here, Simon realizes that the power he wields isn't so great that he can expect to fix everything in his life with it. Instead of wallowing in what he lost or raging like a child that he should be all-powerful, he wants to move forward even with the sadness because he believes that there is always a future beyond it.
121** Yes because now you're always going to find justification to extend someone's life until the universe collapses under the mass of living people. Personally I don't agree with the theory, I assume they'd always be able to find or make more universe as needed or if nothing else see what it's like to live inside a black hole, but the characters are completely convinced of this. Consider that up until now the ''only'' reason they've been using spiral power, and the only thing they've used it ''for'', is in response to a series of escalating threats against mankind's continued existence. The correct, responsible thing to do when you're done fighting is to put your weapons down.
122** How exactly ''could'' Simon bring her back? All we ever see Spiral Power do is fueling giant robots, energy beams, making drills, etc. That scene is Gimmy asking why not bring the dead back, Yoko telling him Simon can't do that, and Simon explaining why it's fine anyway.
123** If he brought Nia back, they'd expect him to do the same for all the other characters who died. Since Nia's an altogether different kind of being, even if Simon COULD revive Nia, he likely couldn't replicate that resurrection on the rest of the dead characters. I don't think Team Gurren would quite understand that. They'd think they could bring everyone else back to and set themselves up to be disappointed and enraged, more likely than not.
124** Spiral Energy isn't magic. It's incredible, but it has limits. You can't simply undo everything bad because you want to. The final battle took place in a realm with a ludicrous amount of the stuff and they still didn't just wish all their old friends who died moments before back to life. [[AllDeathsFinal Dead is dead in this world.]] Spiral Energy just can't fix it. At least no nearly as easily as some people seem to think it can. Simon accepting Nia's death is no different than him accepting the others. It's showing that he realizes he isn't a god and that he can't let tragedy stop him from living. Even if he tried to remake her, it would almost certainly be just a sort of clone that isn't really her. Effectively a doll that only exists for his own self-indulgence, rather than the one he loved and an insult to her memory. Simon accepting her death is both a sign of maturity and a direct refutation of the Anti-Spiral's rant that he and others would let the power of the Spiral delude them into thinking they were gods.
125
126[[/folder]]
127
128[[folder:Kittan and Yoko]]
129
130* What was up with the sudden relationship between Kittan and Yoko? They barely talk to each other when they were young, don't see each other for seven years, she appears again and Kittan thinks she's married with kids and yet out of nowhere one of them falls in love with the other and he kisses her. Why would he kiss her first of all, and second why kiss her especially thinking that she had kids?
131** In case you haven't noticed, Kittan and Kamina are a lot alike - that's why they don't get along. It stands to reason that Kittan would be attracted to the same sort of person as Kamina. He didn't go after her at first because they were occupied with defeating Lordgenome, and when she came back after the timeskip they were focused on the Anti-Spiral. He probably knew he was going to die in that final attack, so decided to snatch his last chance for a kiss.
132** Also, it's pretty obvious from fairly early that he had a thing for her, but just didn't think he had a chance with her and so didn't say anything until then.
133** Kittan had a pretty major superiority[[note]]A superiority complex is not feeling superior to someone else, it's feeling inferior to someone/everyone else and asserting yourself as superior to them to compensate[[/note]] complex about Kamina, going back almost to the time they met. He didn't go after Yoko before because he didn't think he could compete with Kamina, and especially not with Kamina's memory - at least, not until he'd resolved to go out with an even bigger bang.
134** As far as the kiss goes, as said, Kittan even admits it's more a selfish move on his part than anything else - he steals a kiss from the woman he's loved but unable to have for a good seven years before going into a mission that he knew was pretty much suicidal.
135** I think the relationship between Kamina and Yoko was actually more rushed than Kittan's. Kamina and Yoko knew each other for, what, a couple of months? And Kamina really didn't show any affection towards her until she kissed him.
136
137[[/folder]]
138
139[[folder:"Combining" knowledge]]
140
141* How is it that Kamina knew about combining when they tried it for the first time? (This may actually be an idiotic question - it's been awhile and I also often miss things when I'm watching it subbed (and I didn't catch anything explaining it in the dub, either).
142** He didn't. He just got the idea that if two Gunmen were individually awesome, one combined Gunmen would be even MORE awesome. He's an IdiotHero, remember? It could just as easily not have worked, but he decided that that's the way it SHOULD work - and luckily for him and Simon, it did.
143** Just felt that [[http://manga.bleachexile.com/tengen-toppa-gurren-lagann-chapter-3-page-32.html this little part]] from the manga should be referenced here. An excellent humorous subversion of Kamina's first combine. It's just a joke, so it doesn't exactly happen, but still, it is funny enough to get mentioned here.
144** Hilariously put into video form [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnDa7bLg8QY here.]] Warning. Mild spoilers.
145** He saw Enkidu had a second head, Lagann is proportionate size of a head for Gurren and can sprout a giant drill where a neck should be, and he was all about working with Simon. So, being the [[IdiotHero impulsive nut]] he is, he stabbed Lagann on top of Gurren and called it a combination. It was pure dumb luck that Lagann was designed with the power to make his stupid plan actually work.
146
147[[/folder]]
148
149[[folder:Yoko's age]]
150
151* How is it that Yoko is 14? Seriously.
152** I never really bothered to notice her age, I thought she was 18 years old. I mean no one THAT young can have that much baggage.
153** Speak for yourself. I had a classmate in middle school with Yoko's figure.
154** Yeah, me too. To add she was japanese and, according to her, yes they were real (they looked real enough to me).
155** I'm incredulous and somewhat skeptical myself, but my best guess is that her figure's a parody of [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Asuka]]'s. This does mean that those guys complaining about her swimwear in episode 12 are drooling over a 14-year-old girl. (And Nia's ''also'' supposed to be 14.) Then there's the DistantFinale, which seems to suggest that people suddenly age ten effective years upon turning 40.
156** Quite frankly, Yoko's figure is completely within the normal range for an anime character, even one who is supposed to be 14.
157** Truth in Television: I, when I was 18 asked out a girl that was 14, but because of her attitude, her looks and her ginormous breasts, assumed, just like anyone else that didn't know her, that she was 21.
158** A year may have more than 365 days on that planet (or future earth, or whatever).
159** I always assumed that it had something to do with the underground villages having longer years, since they can't see the Sun and all.
160** I always wondered how you can even pretend to have a calendar system when the initial tenants of all of them are formed around stars, the sun and other heavenly bodies. I therefore make the argument that neither Simon, Kamina nor anyone who ever lived underground for most of their lives could ever know their actual ages. But still Simon is 14 and Yoko is 14? AND KAMINA IS 16?! WHAT THE HELL, GAINAX? Simon actually LOOKS 14. Kamina is 18 at the youngest. Yoko being 17 I could accept maybe... also, wouldn't this make Kittan like 15? Gaaah, screw it. Ages do not work well in Gurren Lagann.
161** Simon is said to be unusually stunted in growth, for some reason or other.
162** If, they were unable to observe astronomical objects they obviously based it around something else. For instance, they could use when the lights are turned off for the basis of "days".
163** They're the ones turning the lights off. It happens whenever the chief of Giha Village gets tired and decides it's time for curfew. Additionally, Adai Village doesn't have electricity, and travel to the surface is prohibited except to winners of their religious ascension lottery. A calendar can't be based on the sleeping habits of cave dwellers -- especially not cave dwellers who don't believe in the sky.
164** I, when 20, was interested in a girl, assumed be 18+ by her large beasts and mature body shape, only to back down ''fast'' when finding out she was only 15. It's far from impossible.
165** Yoko's age isn't set in stone. She's ''around'' Simon's age, which could be anywhere from 12 to 16. Then, there's also the possible difference in time between the years underground and above ground, so Yoko could be older than 16 or younger than 12 (highly unlikely that she's under the age of 12).
166** WordOfGod is that the way years are counted underground doesn't match up to actual solar years, given that they don't even know the sun exists.
167** Except Yoko's village did, and has, apparently for quite some time.
168** They kept useing the "years" they used before going to the surface. Not hard to believe at all.
169** Would Yoko's village even know how to properly track the passage of a year if they'd started out underground? They wouldn't necessarily understand the Earth's rotation around the sun if they'd started out having never seen the sun, would they? So they'd likely just stick with tracking years in a way that was familiar to them.
170
171[[/folder]]
172
173[[folder:Hand drills and dirt]]
174
175* Where does the dirt go when it's drilled through?
176** It's being drilled out of space time.
177** It's vaporized and converted into concentrated awesome. It is then stored in either Simon's drill-necklace or Kamina's glasses where it can be called upon later (like when one needs to produce, for example, a galaxy sized giant robot out of thin air to defeat the BigBad). Admit it, it makes perfect sense.
178** You're asking for this by asking a fairly mundane physics question in a show where Mechs larger than galaxies exist, anything that could conceivably have a drill has one, THINGS THAT COULDN'T CONCIEVABLY HAVE ONE STILL DO, and our heroes defeat their enemies through their SHEER AWESOME.
179** For episodes past 1, consult the above answers. For episode 1, it's probably just compressing the dirt into the tunnel's wall - after all, it never collapses and suffocates the diggers.
180** Digging doesn't work that way. Remember ''Literature/{{Holes}}''? Subsurface soil is pretty tightly packed, and removing it usually makes it take up much more space. (Some of the non-simplified shots of digging, like when Simon digs out Lagann, show the dirt flying around too.) And this isn't taking account where the air to fill the space comes from.
181** Since Lordgenome wanted humans to survive underground, he may have supplied them with spiral drills when he first imprisoned them there.
182** If Spiral Energy can create matter, who's to say it can't destroy it too?
183
184[[/folder]]
185
186[[folder:Scale of Mechs compared]]
187
188* If Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann is the size of a galaxy, why isn't Chouginga GL toe-high to an ant by comparison? Not to mention the Anti-Spiral planet?
189** Because Gainax has no sense of scale.
190** Another valid question is, "How does one assemble a galaxy-sized mecha from the equivalent mass of the moon? Though given the very unserious nature of the show one could handwave it as TTGL being an "energy entity".
191** It has been explicitly stated that Spiral power can actually create matter, rather than convert it from one form to another - that's the cause of the Spiral Nemesis.
192** For a SERIOUS answer, it's NOT the size of galaxies. They're fighting in a sort of non-space area. Their ENERGY signatures are beyond that of galaxies, but there's no real size or space component to what they're doing-it's just a projection of their opposing wills upon the sub-space.
193** Been {{Jossed}} by WordOfGod. Yes, they ''really are'' the size of galaxies. I chalk it up to physics being extremely mutable in a crack between dimensions. Also Spiral Power. Spiral Power is the explanation for everything.
194** Hell Energy signatures "larger than galaxies" breaks physics as much as just being larger than galaxies anyways. As energy = mass, so they would have to have more mass than a galaxy which if they weren't on a ridiculously massive scale would create a black hole from sheer density.
195** ''Physics?'' Physics was crying in the corner by the end of the first episode. By the finale it had hung itself with its own bootlaces.
196** By the end? Most likely its rotten corpse was locked up in a, literally, bloody room with multiple ways of suicide, not discluding cyanide pills, a noose made out of chains, etc., etc.
197** Nah. Physics is still there, it's just gone passive-aggressive from lack of attention. "Fine, create galaxy-sized mecha and hurl around big bangs. All that extra mass will swallow the universe eventually." Physics is the Spiral Nemesis. Fortunately, no-one awesome listens to it.
198** It has been changed so that one can make Spiral Energy into matter and back at will. It's fine, really. Just changed a little.
199** For scale comparison, the Grand Zamboa is wearing the Anti-Spiral homeworld in its headdress. Chouginga GL ''is'' massively dwarfed in comparison, but the objects they're standing on aren't really the same as galaxies from this universe. What bugs '''me''' is: why does the Anti-Spirals' artificial universe have spiral-galaxy-like objects in it at all?
200** Because it reminds them of their original home.
201** Easy access. It's stated that the Anti-Spirals suppress all the evolution that they can, and what better way to keep whole galaxies under control than to drag them into your own space so you can keep an eye on them?
202** That's really not it, the massive amount of power that TTGL generates upon transforming created the Super Spiral Space. The Anti-Spiral King just enters the SSS to fight them on their grounds.
203
204[[/folder]]
205
206[[folder:Boota as food]]
207
208* When Boota cuts off his own ass to feed Simon and friends, why doesn't he bleed to death, and how the hell does it grow back? He does it LONG before he develops manliness superpowers.
209** Apparently, he'd been a mainstay of Spiral energy the whole time. If it says "Spiral", just... don't question it.
210** Or it could just be a quirk of pig-mole biology.
211** Obviously, Boota is the Holy Spirit. Think about it--he's a fountain of massive power. He DOESN'T AGE. And he's a cute little critter. (Well, I think doves are cute). So slicing off a God's ass is not going to be lasting problem. Crucifying one certainly wasn't.
212** It was episode 4. There's your answer.
213** Aside from this being episode 4 and all, actual lizards can sever their tail at will and grow a new one, so why shouldn't Boota be able to do something like that?
214** Well, first, Boota is a mole-pig, no lizard in there. Second, it wasn't just the tail, it was EVERYTHING REAR OF HIS HIND LEGS. You could see a red circle with a white hole in it representing his innards and spine, like someone had taken a knife to the rear eighth of his body.
215** These are far-future creatures we're talking about. He's already a combination of mole and pig. What's to say there might not be some sort of regenerative power in there? Also, Spiral Power.
216** Of course, it could be that Boota's rear is mostly fat and cartilage, but then again, WHY are we arguing over a abstractly cartoonish scene? I'm pretty sure that scene was done for laughs, and to parody the trope of self sacrifice in anime, and having pets who are loyal enough to be emergency food sources.
217** [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment We don't really talk about when Boota did that...]]
218** It wasn't a BigLippedAlligatorMoment. Kamina ends up wanting more at the end of the fourth episode and the start of the fifth.
219** The fifth episode also has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of Boota's rump half-recovered. If we assume that pigmoles were genetically engineered, it makes sense: allowing your livestock to regrow parts you've cut off decreases the energy required for a steak.
220
221[[/folder]]
222
223[[folder:Transforming into a beastman]]
224
225* Did anybody else find it odd that Boota essentially became a Beastman for ten minutes in episode 26 and then went back to being a mole-pig? Granted it was probably just to show him looking like the aide in the teaser in the first episode and make people even more anxious for the finale.
226** It was his dream in the LotusEaterMachine to become human-like. Didn't you catch him joining with the others in the big spiral... drill... mass... thing? His dream just happened to stay on the ship, face-to-face with the Anti-Spiral King, so it was a great place to put exposition.
227** I'm more confused about how he doesn't grow or age in the slightest over the course of 27 years.
228** I'm more concerned about why ''Leeron'' doesn't grow or age in the slightest over the course of 27 years. The characters who started as teenagers are in their forties now...
229** The Boota thing, I've heard, was mainly out of Boota's subconscious desire to fight alongside Simon and co. as more than just a molepig -- he wanted to be more helpful to his team and willed himself into beastman-mode. That, and the Anti-Spiral ''was'' influencing their thoughts at the time. As for Leeron, well... he's fabulous. I'm sure he'd have invented ''some'' kind of technology to keep himself beautiful for life.
230** I thought Leeron looked like he had aged a little at the end. He probably just hides it really well with make-up.
231** This is one of the reasons I call discontinuity on the DistantFinale. Loads of plot holes, in addition to the wholly unnecessary (and contrary to the theme of the entire series) death of [[spoiler: Nia]] and Simon's essentially being PutOnABus.
232** Leeron is simply the Eternal Queer. He will forever be fabulous.
233** It is stated somewhere, from the studio, that Leeron uses a lot of plastic surgery after the Time Skip. It may just be a justifiable excuse, but it does make sense.
234** He wasn't a beastman, just a beast [[EvolutionaryLevels evolved]] into a sort of man. The definitive quality of beastmen is sterility; they're genetically engineered to be incapable of breeding. Boota, in contrast, is the Wilt Chamberlain of molepigs.
235** Didn't they say something about being able to manifest Spiral Energy as physical mass in Anti-Spiral Space? (or maybe more along the lines of "Spiral Energy as whatever the hell you want in Anti-Spiral Space." They were already manifesting Spiral Energy as drills by the first episode) Hence Boota the Spiral Knight, Genome getting his body back after being a disembodied head, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann itself. But then this begs the question of whether "Team Dai-Gurren vs. The Universe" at the start of episode 1 takes place in their universe or Anti-Spiral dimension because Spiral Knight Boota was there too.
236** I think that the answer is that Boota never actually became humanoid at all. He evolved to the point where he was intelligent enough to be trapped in the Labyrinth, at which point he froze and had a dream of punching the Anti-Spiral King into oblivion. (Dream? Vision? Parallel...? You know, whatever the hell you call the LotusEaterMachine effect they had going on there.)
237** He was using Spiral Energy to turn into a humaniod just like how Gurren Lagann's damage is fixed in battle yet afterword both return to normal.
238
239[[/folder]]
240
241[[folder:Painting Dai-Gurren Red]]
242
243* How did they paint the Dai-Gurren red? It was still grey when Lagann took it over, and was red the next day. Did they stay up all night painting, or did it have a "color" knob in the cockpit somewhere?
244** The same way the helmet changes colors in episode 3?
245** That was instant, attributable to Lagann's regeneration and modification of assimilated parts. The Dai-Gurren changed between episodes, and was unchanged by Lagann's takeover. It DOES however, bring up the issue of where the helmet goes when the Gurren and the Lagann are separate...
246** Hammerspace.
247** They rented some space in Optimus Prime's cargo trailer.
248** Spiral Energy.
249** Actually, IIRC, the helmet is stored in a compartment behind the "back plate" of Gurren (the same plate that has those 4 drills that are used to carry the travelling compartment and attach one of the beastman planes to so that it can fly) and is launched out as part of the transformation sequence in a similar manner to R2-D2's lightsaber launcher.
250** Clearly, Reite knew that painting Dai-Gurren red would make it run three times faster, and therefore made doing so top priority. As for the time, Kinon actually mentioned that it's been a week since they hijacked the thing in episode 9, so that would give them some opportunity to paint it.
251
252[[/folder]]
253
254[[folder:Batman can breathe in space]]
255
256* I know this is more or less a moot point in any series involving mecha and space, but how the hell did the Ganmen pilots not ''choke and die'' when they were in space before they got the Space Ganmen?
257** Spiral energy.
258** Specifically, spiral energy [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace created by Batman.]]
259** IIRC It's mentioned in one of the ending episodes. Ganmen were always designed for space combat. The "Space Ganmen" just made them bigger and stronger.
260** And yet they were shown not to be waterproof earlier in the series?
261** The novels explain this, saying that they weren't waterproof due to lack of upkeep. After they had been repaired and maintained by the Dai Gurren, they were fit to use in space again.
262** Not sure about the details of this, but compressive strength and tensile strength are two different things. Maybe the Ganmen are designed primarily for greater internal pressure.
263** Re-watching the episode where they fought underwater says Spiral energy fixes them up to make them airtight. So yeah, first person was right.
264** Actually, the fourth person was closer. Only Gurren-Lagann was fixed up to be airtight by spiral power. The rest had trouble operating in water. There's a large difference between something being space-capable (where the pressure is ''internal'' - all that air inside, pushing hard to get out) and water-capable (where the pressure is ''external'' - all that water outside trying to get in, and water can exert a lot more pressure than air. Something like 30 meters of water exerts the same pressure as our entire atmosphere). The Ganmen were explicitly said to have been designed for space battle.
265** Best explained with this ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'' quote for when the Planet Express ship gets dragged far below the ocean:
266--->'''Professor Farnsworth''': My God, that's over 500 atmospheres of pressure!\
267'''Fry''': Well how many can the ship take?\
268'''Professor Farnsworth''': Well it's a ''space''ship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one.
269** It could also be explained by the assumption that the other humans didn't have access to anywhere near the same level of Spiral Energy that Gurren-Lagann did. I can't remember if it was ever specifically shown/stated that they were using Spiral Energy that early in the series... and even if they were, it seemed to be just enough to power the mechs. It could be that nobody was capable of that sort of thing without whatever weird advantages that Lagann and the Core Drill (which seems to function as some sort of Spiral-focusing device) impart. After all, it wasn't until [[spoiler:KING KITTAN GIGA DRILL BREAKER!]] that we saw anyone other than Lordgenome, Arc-Gurren (for the shields; presumably powered by the combined Spiral emissions of all aboard) and Gurren-Lagann itself using enough Spiral Energy to do anything other than move.
270
271[[/folder]]
272
273[[folder:Viral's hybrid]]
274
275* Anybody have any idea what kind of animal Viral is supposed to be a hybrid of?
276** Wolf (hands and eyes) and Shark (teeth) according to WordOfGod.
277** Actually that's cat and shark. WordOfGod also added that if you pull out his teeth, they'll grow back. In case you wanted to know, I guess.
278** I figured he was their attempt at making a Cat Boy. [[spoiler: Just look at his wife for proof.]]
279** Until that episode I was thinking monkey.
280** The cat/shark thing does check out if you factor in that his grin is pretty shark-like and his eyes do look a lot like a feline's, even down to the eye color.
281
282[[/folder]]
283
284[[folder:Placement in Chouginga Gurren Lagann]]
285
286* When the Chouginga Gurren Lagann is doing the gigantic laser-drill deal to counter the Anti-Spiral's screwing around with probability, we see a quick zoom-out from Simon in the Lagann's cockpit to the Gurren Lagann and then the Arc Gurren Lagann both in some sort of energy-axis-system somewhere in the middle of each larger robo. Doesn't that completely defy the placement of GL in the AGL in both its first appearance and the final episode in the AGL's mouth? As well as the AGL's placement in the CGL's mouth in the final episode (or maybe the contradiction there is the other way around)? Still, [[RuleOfCool it did look cool.]]
287** Okay, formation one is when the AGL is fighting - then it has to be ''piloted'' by GL (in the mouth). Formation two is when CGL is doing its extra-long transformation, in which there's another formation designed for making the Spiral-power-collection process as efficient as possible - this is when GL and AGL are fixed in place. The final episode had TTGL running off the most ridiculous amounts of Spiral power EVER, and I suspect that ''all'' the components of the Matrioska Mecha were running off that one inferno, which was why they were rearranged into the less efficient formation.
288** Right, thanks I just re-watched Episode 24, so now I get it.
289** On the same note, why does Arc Gurren Lagann have to be involved at all? In its first appearance, it's shown AGL can be piloted by Gimmy and Darry; and since all CGL needs is spiral energy, which is coming from Simon anyway, why couldn't Gurren Lagann alone charge the ship? Perhaps if Arc Gurren Lagann were fighting, half the Dai-Gurren Brigade wouldn't have died.
290** Presumably because Gurren Lagann couldn't sustain drills large enough to match up with the "receivers." And bear in mind that Gimmy and Darry likely couldn't have pulled off the kind of feats of Spiral Power that would have been needed to take on so many enemies at once - Arc Gurren Lagann is capable of many things, but being in multiple places at once is not on its resume.
291** It's proven in Parallel Works 8 that a Space Ganman is needed to allow a normal Ganman to work with Chouginga Gurren Lagann (or Cathedral Terra, as the case may be in the aforementioned video).
292
293[[/folder]]
294
295[[folder:Gurren and Beastmen]]
296
297* If Beastmen have no Spiral energy, why does the Gurren respond to it?
298** Gurren itself was designed as a beastman ganmen, so Viral can control it, it's ''Lagann'' that runs on spiral energy, and most often Simon is enough to power it (On the one occasion that wasn't enough, Boota jumps into Gurren's cockpit to contribute).
299** I don't like this explanation. It doesn't really satisfy, nor does it explain how the Ganmen could have been developed to fight anti-spirals, but are operational when the beastmen use it. Here's an idea: The Ganmen were made to fight he anti-spirals like Lordgenome said,but when the beastmen use them they can't harness the spiral energy powers, and operate them through purely mechanical means. but when the humans start taking them, they activate the spiral power and use them to their full potential. This has the nice advantage of explaining why all the trained beastmen are so easily defeated by humans who got their Ganmen a short time before.
300** Um...yes, this is basically stated by WordOfGod.
301** This ''is'' addressed, actually. Ganmen can be powered by Spiral Energy (I assume Genome retroengineered them from his own mecha, which was created to kill Anti-Spirals indeed, after landing on Earth) but they ''do'' have a electric engine as well. This is what the beastmen use. This is also, as you say, why Ganmen are much more powerful when piloted by humans than beastmen.
302** Aren't the Ganmen powered by Solar Cells(I'm sure this is WordOfGod )? This would explain why Beastmen don't go out at night, though it does not explain how they sometimes operate in low light conditions
303** This is WordOfGod, yes. Ganmen run on solar power when used by Beastmen. That's why the hot spring Ganmen in ep 6 being able to move at night due to geothermal power is such a big deal.
304** Viral is a special case - I think that somewhere they {lampshaded} that he SHOULDN'T be able to generate Spiral Energy, but IIRC WordOfGod says that Viral somehow does (Sprial Energy can be more 'drive to improve oneself' than 'ability to mutate' at times, anyway.) How the OTHER beastmen manage, on the other hand...
305** Terapin can be seen falling to Earth again. I think, following the Eva parallels of the series, it can be described that the Beastmen are the "Dummy Plugs". Ganmen are designed to be used by spirals, and thus are far more powerful when powered by spirals. Whence the solar cells mentioned above. It provides just enough power to operate the machine and Beastmen are capable of the "basic" functions. Note that the questionable if Beastman, Gaume (see WMG), does a spiral like ability in episode 14.
306** Or, an even more simple explanation: Lordgenome was powering all the ganmen by himself. This explains why they suddenly deactivated when he was defeated. The fact that this would mean he had a downright UNHOLY amount of spiral energy but still got defeated by Simon can be attributed to the same theory: because he was powering all the ganmen he didn't have all his energy at his disposal, and disabeling the other ganmen would leave him to be pretty much zerg rushed by the resistance, making a three-on-seven (Rossiu, Mia and Simon versus Lordgenome and his six... utterly unexplained women) battle a much more favorable option.
307** Actually this is explained in the series when the Space King Kittan goes out into the super high density [[InSpace space ocean.]] That doctor woman, whose name escapes me, says to, I'm pretty sure, Dayakka after he wonders how the ganmen are functioning in the ocean despite spiral energy being absorbed, "It ran with electricty when it was on the ground." [[RuleOfCool Also, the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann was able to still run on]] [[AppliedPhlebotinum spiral energy]] [[RuleOfCool because Simon just produces that much.]]
308** Some level of Spiral energy must've been used to make him immortal.
309
310[[/folder]]
311
312[[folder:Discovering Spiral Energy]]
313
314* Are we ever going to [[AllThereInTheManual find out]] about the initial discovery of Spiral energy and/or the initial development of the Ganmen (or proto-Ganmen mecha)? If not, I'd really like to see a FanFic explore this.
315** Parallel Works number 8. NEXT!
316
317[[/folder]]
318
319[[folder:Core Drill]]
320* What's the deal with that necklace anyway? Lagann's origin gets explained, but we never find out where that core drill came from.
321** Simon found it digging. I think this was in the first episode.
322** Isn't it pretty much classifiable as part of Lagann? Like the key to a car. I'm guessing Simon found the two near each other, and they had been buried together.
323** Yep, Simon found it within seconds of his first actual appearance.
324** The core is implied to be a generic, relatively for Laganns, spiral focusing device that channel it into devices like Lagann and the box Nia came from.
325
326[[/folder]]
327
328[[folder:Other Spiral clans]]
329* How did all the other Spiral clans contact them immediately after [[spoiler: the defeat of the Anti-Spirals?]] The only reason the humans had any technology at all was because they managed to fight off all attacks after a long period of subjugation. If the Anti-spirals had defense systems on all planets, then they should have kept the others too beaten-down to be able to get into space.
330** If every Spiral world has a guy like Leeron (er.. okay.. sort of like Leeron, at least) floating around somewhere in the population, the technological knowledge would remain even if they're being murdered too hard to put it to good use.
331** No one can be like Leeron. He's just too fabulous.
332** The "Earth" of TTGL is probably more regressed than the average world as Lordgenome did his best to prevent technology and humans from advancing enough again to attract Anti-spiral attention. Many worlds might have just begun their own fights, didn't hide and "all" was probably a bit of an exaggeration.
333** The Anti-spiral avatar mentioned that all of this, down to how Nia rebelled in the end, had happened before (minus the part where they actually got beaten). Probably on many of the worlds there was still a Lordgenome-like figure oppressing their inhabitants, but when they suddenly sensed the death of the Anti-spirals, they all simultaniously contacted Earth (which was basically put on a galactic screen by the AS as an example) and rejoiced at being able to free their races again.
334
335[[/folder]]
336
337[[folder:Collapse of Automated Systems]]
338
339* Why did [[spoiler: all the Anti-Spirals' planetary suppression systems]] collapse after [[spoiler:the main Anti-Spiral was defeated?]] Aren't these supposed to be automated systems?
340** Same reason Nia did.
341** Okay, that just pissed me off. [[spoiler: Why in the nine hells did Nia vanish? Or rather... argh. How did a 'program in her DNA' convert her into an energy-being-Faceless-One-thing from being a (relatively) normal half-human-half-whatever-Lord-genome-was female? And why didn't she just explode like all the other Faceless Ones as soon as that happened, since she obviously didn't have an energy shield like they did? And if she was 'corrupted' with Spiral Energy... gaaaaah... Stupid-plot-hole-to-achieve-downer-ending-thing.]]
342** [[spoiler: The best explanation I can give is one part OntologicalInertia and two parts {{Handwave}}.]]
343** [[spoiler: Actually, she should have exploded. Remember how she starting fading out during the final battle? The only reason why she didn't, and why she survived long enough to make it to the wedding, was that she was holding herself together through sheer willpower.]]
344** [[spoiler: I always thought of it as the messengers being some sort of a "genetic program", so to speak, and the Anti-Spiral Homeworld as a database. Without the database, the program disappears. That's why she began to fade a little when Yoko shot the Homeworld. She held on as a ghost through sheer badass.]]]
345** Anti-Spiral energy? Anti-Spirals seemed to use it or something very much like it to replace spiral energy, though pinkish Spiral Energy was shown before on occaisons. Over the series we see disheartened Spiral beings lose all power immediately with a similar result as pulling the plug on a machine. The Anti-spirals were just advance enough to last until they at least died instead of being demotivated.
346** Another possibility is simply this: Spiral energy is basically the desire to do better, to go "you beat me down now, but I will improve a bit, and a bit, and a bit till I break through that wall." A point of view that even allows Viral to have it, according to one of the entries near the top, despite being a Beastman. So assume the following:
347###Anti-spirals die, all "anti-spiral" energy is cut off leading to their creations turning off or self-destructing if they need the energy to be maintained.
348###Nia can use spiral energy to suppliment this, but as we see she "fades" before the Anti-Spiral King is even defeated, already coming to terms she is going to die if the ASK is killed. Basically, she is going against the principle of spiral energy by accepting defeat/death.
349###Nia keeps willing to live, willing to exist to marry Simon. Marriage occurs, she gives up, and thus cuts the spiral energy umbilical cord she was providing for herself. All goals achieved, she dies.
350All in accordance to TTGL philosphy. Nia gave up. She didn't try touch the untouchable.
351** That's because Nia thought it was unfair. For her to live unfairly abusing of Spiral Energy and unnaturally prolonging life.
352** Simple answer, finely explained. Nia was a human the Antispiral created that had an implant of anti-spiral energy in her. When the 1000000 mark hit, a trigger was activated that reconfigured her into an Anti-Spiral being, but she had been around Simon so much it didn't turn her completely. The AS King implies this normally happens, but not to this extent. Normally he says the other messengers have given in to their anti-spiral processes by the time he analyzes her. As the AS king had created all Anti-Spiral energy, the only thing holding her together was a tiny bit of spiral energy. Like Viral said, it was amazing she was able to hold herself together for a full week.
353
354[[/folder]]
355
356[[folder:The End]]
357
358* The End. [[spoiler:Just... I really, really wish everything after they kiss didn't exist. I am now seriously more depressed than I was with Evangelion... how could Simon lose himself so badly?]]
359** I have heard a friend humorously rationalize it as [[spoiler: Simon]] becoming the "priest of the Drill God," rather than, you know, a ''hobo''. While it doesn't at ''all'' take the sting out of this [[FanonDiscontinuity supposed and obviously mythical ending]], the fundamental principle still applies- perhaps rather than him being a homeless, failed and forgotten vagabond (and how could that happen to the savior of the friggin' universe?) he is instead more of a wandering hero, living out his days on earth doing good and inspiring others while patiently waiting for his reunion with [[spoiler: Nia, Kamina, and the other fallen]] in the afterlife he knows exists? (Of course, too, this begs the question of why he ''didn't'' take high office or at least use his prestige to do good, like [[spoiler:Viral.]])
360** Don't get me wrong, I understand why he did it, had he kept hanging around, [[spoiler: The post-Anti-Spiral Government]] would have been completely undermined by his mere presence (see: Act III). I'm just saying it's horribly depressing to hear him say [[spoiler: "Who do you think I am?... That's right... I'm nothing"]] Speaking of Afterlife... how does he know it exists? Or are we extrapolating from the random apperance of [[spoiler: Kamina]] in the [[spoiler: Lotus Eater Machine Dreams]] of those he cared about, and the massive build up of Spiral Power from all the dead?
361** Ah, but you're forgetting something very, very important here. This universe (pretty much literaly) runs on RuleOfCool, right? Let me offer the alternatives: [[spoiler: Simon is just a 'hobo' and there is no afterlife.]] Is that cool/awesome, at all? No, of course not, so naturally, [[spoiler: the only interpretation is that Kamina actually intervined, although dead, to help out everyone at that crucial moment]], which is certainly more badass and cool than the alternative! From that, [[spoiler:it's no strech to imagine that Simon is pretty much just doing as described]].
362** He said, "I guess I'm nothing." And he said it to a very young and very distracted kid, I think of it as him not telling a story, that to him, is boring and the kid isn't interested in.
363** It's very possible Simon is officially immortal actually. He's, by the end of the final battle, gained the spiral eyes. By the end of the timeskip, he looks older, but not near-50 old. Late 30s at the most, and nowhere NEAR as aged as the rest, though he should be, of course. His left eye appears to be permanently in a spiral pattern, something that he now shares with another ageless immortal, Lordgenome. Besides, I like the wandering hero idea as well. It seems... very Simon. Not wanting to be hounded about his past, what he's done, but to move forward, and embrace the lifestyle Kamina gave him, he wanders the countryside, bringing happiness to whoever he can, whereever he can. He helps a land, and wanders on, to help another. I like that, myself, so I always assumed it was a mixture of the two. Then again, I actually liked the ending. It felt appropriate to me. A quiet farewell sort of thing, no massive celebration, no carrying the hero on your shoulders. A final bit of quiet peace, something Simon devoted his life to finally having.
364** Simon doesn't look like he's in his 50's because he isn't. He's only 41.
365** I just presumed it was because with the sheer amount of Spiral Energy he'd built up by then, he thought it would be best if he didn't go around using it, as that would risk causing the [[spoiler:Spiral Nemesis]] thing.
366** I hated it at first, but then came to the conclusion that there was nothing more epic left for Simon to do, so the rest of his life was pointless by definition. He'd already pierced the heavens with his drill, so what else was there to do? [[spoiler: Sure, he says he's 'nothing', but his era has come and gone. Since he isn't using his Epic levels in Badass, he isn't anybody. The next generation of Spirals are the ones going around asking who the hell people think they are now.]]
367** Besides, what's he got to prove to this little kid? Or to anyone, really?
368** Maybe it's sarcastic, "Oh I guess I'm no body." He was talking to a disinterested kid, who wasn't paying any attention to him.
369** The way I see it, it's what's best for Simon. I mean, think about Part 3--he was absolutely ''miserable'' in a position of power, and honestly didn't seem all that good at it. He's a war hero, but there's not much of a place for war heroes in the new, unified galaxy. He ''could'' have stayed as some sort of figurehead, but would he be happy? Besides, after spending all his life trying to pierce the heavens over and over, searching for more and more, bigger and bigger things...did he ever step back and look at the home he had, look at the world he had been fighting so hard to save? Maybe I'm seeing something that isn't there, but it seems to me that Simon, all out of heavens to pierce, decided to look around at the world he already had. Simon's become a wandering sage, a Retired Badass, if you will. He's still out there, ready to help the world if he's needed...but for now, he's content to be Walking the Earth, sharing his wisdom where it's needed.
370** "And Caesar came to the shore and wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer". Only Simon was not as good at retirement as Caesar.
371** Watch the very beginning of episode 1 and then the very end. [[spoiler:"All the lights in heaven are our enemies" / "All the lights in heaven are stars"]]
372** Although at first I wasn't happy with Simons declaration of being no-one, it does make sense. It follows on from his earlier statement that he just drills the hole, it's up to someone else to go through once he's opened the way. So in this world, he's right, he ISN'T someone incredibly important. He's done his job and is happy in that. As shown by the early stuff after timeskip, he's not cut out to lead the world. He's just Simon the Digger, who is no-one/nothing to this kid. And thats as it should be. Perhaps bittersweet, but it's up to the rest of the people to follow on from him, without living in his shadow.
373** I never understood this complaint. There's been peace for twenty years or more. They have defeated everything evil in the universe. All the main characters are over 40. Aren't they entitled to let themselves go? Why do they need to keep up their epic levels of sexiness unto old age? After all the shit they went through, they are perfectly entitled to relax. Simon walked the Earth of his own volition. In the epilogue, nobody was doing anything they didn't want to. Simon wanted to walk the Earth, Yoko wanted to be a teacher, Rossiu wanted to lead the city. Everyone was happy, it was great to be able to see them all get nice conclusions.
374** Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the ultimate proof that Gainax hates their fans. Think about it, the story is totally awesome, but the art and animation is so inconsistent, and often bad, that the show is nearly unwatchable. And they finish it off with what might be the worst Gainax ending of them all... They even promised us an uncut episode 6, and still no nudity (and it isn't like they've been shy about that before).
375** The animation settles down about half-way through, though the initial half is pretty rough, alas. However, with the exception of episode 4 it never comes anywhere near "unwatchable", and post-timeskip it never drops below average. As for the final episode, [[spoiler:Nia's]] death was pretty much a standard "Let's add needless drama", but it did, at least, have a bit of a point, namely that sometimes sacrifices have to be made, that the Roussius of the world are not entirely wrong. It's against the rest of the show, so it feels very out of place, but it's not wrong. Finally, as for episode 6, you're citing the lack of nudity on a kid's cartoon show as a strike against it? Seriously? Me, I'd be happy if there was no episode 6, makes it really awkward to watch with the family.
376** I thought the uncut episode 6 was hilarious, particularly with regards to nudity (or lack thereof).
377** There is an uncut episode 6. "Uncut" in this instance meaning "all the stuff that was originally in the episode but got censored on TV," not "we added in MORE NUDITY for the horny fans."
378** It all goes back to "Don't believe in the me who believes in you, believe in the you who believes in yourself." Simon's come to the same realization that Kamina finally did; he doesn't finish saying "Who the hell do you think I am?!" because he doesn't want to take credit for the kid's victory. Simon's not a failure, he's not giving up on the spiral philosophy, but he's already pierced the heavens and he wants to get out of the way so that others can be heroes now. His fading out of public life is his way of telling humanity "Don't believe in the Simon who believes in you. Believe in yourselves."
379** The ending actually ties in with the Spiral philosophy even more. Spiral beings become more powerful with successive generations, right? Simon given everything he had. He'd made his revolution, his rotation of the drill. Now it was time for the younger generation to make their rotation, which would carve humanity's path through evolution even further than he did. The ending wasn't bad at all. It completely exemplified the theme of the show and the idea of spiral energy.
380** Also, in ''Lagann-hen'' they show that Simon is not really a "hobo". He just wanders the world anonymously, doing good for people using his awesome digging skills. He went back to just being Simon the Digger. So yeah, "wandering hero" as stated above is pretty close, only his new brand of heroism is much more subtle.
381
382[[/folder]]
383
384[[folder:"New Spiral Energy"]]
385
386* What was the "new type of Spiral energy" the Anti-Spiral King was investigating?
387** It was [[spoiler:Boota's Spiral energy]], I think.
388** I thought so too, but after rewatching the scene I suspect it was Simon. Boota and Lordgenome provided just enough "interesting..." to convince the Anti-Spiral King it was them.
389** Alternative theory: The odd source of Spiral Energy was Kamina's ghost/whatever that snapped Simon out of the LotusEaterMachine. The Anti-Spiral calls Team Dai Gurren escaping impossible, but also says that the unknown energy could throw a wrench in his plan, exactly as Kamina does.
390
391[[/folder]]
392
393[[folder:Viral's mech]]
394
395* Enki/Enkidu/Enkidudu. Okay, seriously. ''Why in the hell'' did the customization of that particular mecha move more towards uselessness as the series progressed? Viral's first loss happened when he ''switched to his only melee weapon.'' The missiles and shooting blades and whatnot were shown to be very effective before Gurren Lagann showed up, so why did subsequent upgrades use only one projectile at most? ([[ThrowingYourSwordAlwaysWorks throwing the head-blade]]) Did he just get put on the Teppelin's shit-list for the first loss or what?
396** The meta reason would be VillainDecay. The in-universe one... No idea.
397** Just re-watched Episode 17, which makes this even worse; he uses the aforementioned projectiles in the battle against the [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Grappals/Gulaparls]], so he clearly ''did'' have those things; he's just an ''[[PlotInducedStupidity idiot.]]''
398** The in-universe one could even be VillainDecay as that is a plot point using Viral in comparison to Spiral Energy. The original attacks were against basically noobs at fighting. So they were extra effective then. Still, think about the progression. The first battle he is/was a soldier out on the field. Till his defeat and the loss of Dai Gurren he had been bent on retrieving his helmet, his honor and using a weakened robot. From Dai Gurren to Telepin he is scrounging for favors and begging to fight again. The Big Four were most likely not wanting to waste their good range projectiles on a loser. He was defeated too quickly at Lordgenome's throne room to be certain if he had any again now that he had Lordgenome's favor. Either he did, and was just wiped out too quickly or he scavanged them in the intervening years.
399** I favour a far simpler explanation. Viral was a worthy opponent in the beginning, even taking into account that Kamina was using Spiral Energy and Viral wasn't. Then his commanding officer is killed, and Viral is handed from CO to CO who all love nothing more than taking him down every chance they get, with Adiane making a point to physically abuse him because he's too honorable to defend himself from an officer. All while the Dai Gurren Dan get stronger all the time. Hell, I'm impressed he was still able to hold his own.
400** Lordgenome's explanation of how Beastmen were inferior to humans is probably the in-universe reason. Viral had all of it, just that Kamina (and later Simon) had already surpassed him through their use of Spiral energy. Plus in the first episode, they did little more than annoy GL, much less do any noticable damage. Viral himself might not even be used to using them as an offensive weapon, resorting them to only as an escape plan or as a last-ditch effort.
401
402[[/folder]]
403
404[[folder:Bringing back the dead]]
405
406* So... if they were so certain that they could bring [[spoiler:Nia]] back from the dead with spiral energy, couldn't they just have used it to [[spoiler:change her from the Anti-Spiral energy being whateverness back to a human?]]
407** In this [[FanonDiscontinuity obviously hypothetical and nonexistent ending]], yes, they absolutely could've. That's exactly the kind of impossible thing Spiral energy ''does''. It was a DiabolusExMachina, nothing more, nothing less.
408** Then isn't the lesson "Whoops, I guess humans really ARE that foolish after all?"
409** This. Doing so would basically be the path of "They dare challenge me? Fine, I'll screw them all out of space in time! Mwahahaha."
410** I really feel that the point is that while they could have [[spoiler:saved Nia]], this would have been exactly the kind of thing that the [[spoiler:Antispirals knew would cause Spiral Nemesis.]] Spiral Energy is used consistently for amazing feats of awesomeness, but cause tremendous damage to their immediate surroundings. Among other things, Fullmetal Alchemist suggests that there is a very big difference between creating/altering matter and [[spoiler:bringing back the dead]]; even Spiral Power has its limits.
411** That's not the point. He's not asking "why didn't they?", he's asking "why would they have needed to?". They ''didn't need to'' [[spoiler:bring her back from the dead]]! They didn't seem that concerned after they made a mech the size (and what must have been many times the mass) of ''a friggin' galaxy''. If they could do that without any significant concern, then how in the hell could [[spoiler:changing an Anti-Spiral into a human]] or [[spoiler:doing whatever the hell she did to withstand [[NoOntologicalInertia the lack of ontological inertia]] but for the rest of her life]] have caused Spiral Nemesis? That ''would'' just be altering matter. I can't even imagine that needing as much as running the Chouginga Gurren Lagann for a couple minutes! If I understood right, [[spoiler:their primary reason to go after the Anti-Spirals in the first place was to save Nia]], so why would they suddenly be ''that'' stingy with Spiral Power, especially considering they are still apparently using it to power mechs in the future?
412** Precedent. They were founding a new world, possibly galactic, order, remember, so anything they do has drastic implications. If they bring Nia back, the precident is set for it to be permissible for anyone to bring a loved one back- and thus, nobody to ever die. No problem in the short term, but long term, it means trillions of pounds of mass being created, as people create mass to have both children and ancestors at once, and thus, eventual spiral nemesis. Even before that, there'd probably be resource issues, and in any case it'd contribute towards creation of a Spiral-based aristocracy, where placement in society, and even lifespan, is based on what emotions you're predisposed towards. Plus, TTGL looked to be more energy than mass, anyway.
413** Similarly, if they were so certain they could have [[spoiler:brought Nia BackFromTheDead]], why did they not think the same for [[spoiler:Kamina]]? Yes, it would sort of defeat the purpose of the ensuing CharacterDevelopment, but still...
414** That probably would've been even harder considering how long he was gone (it would have been easier to [[spoiler:ressurrect any of the other people that just died]]). Again, they probably figured they didn't want to do something that would require so much Spiral Energy, because they would either have to let anyone else do it (which could quickly cause Spiral Nemesis and/or massively upset the balance of life) or to selfishly hoard it.
415** My interpretation of the ending is that Simon and Dai-Gurren basically realized [[ComesGreatResponsibility the Spider-Man Credo]]. Throughout the series, Spiral Power was shown capable of doing damn near ''anything.'' But at the end Simon, and through him the other characters, realized that just because you ''can'' do something does not necessarily mean you ''should.'' In their defeat of the Anti-Spiral, Simon basically put responsibility for the universe's fate in the Spiral races' hands. That responsibility requires them to manage Spiral Energy cautiously, to be used only when necessary. Raising the dead for someone's personal desire can not, in any terms, be deemed necessary.
416** Because it's a FantasticAesop. In real life we can't bring the dead back to life, so we are taught to accept and come to terms with death. However the idea of accepting death has become detached from the fact that bringing back the dead is impossible, so people think that it is good in and of itself, rather than simply a coping mechanism. The Gurren Lagann writers, being human, fell prey to this misconception like anyone else (although in the translation that I watched it sounded more like they were speculating about should they do it ''if'' they could do it, not explicitly stating that they could). I think that, in the future, when we finally do figure out how to resurrect the dead, there will be a lot of idiots who will insist we should accept their deaths, for this reason.
417** This is idiotic of course, unless you have infinite resources. We don't have anything like Spiral Energy here in the real world kid.
418** Simon spells it out in the last episode. It's because bringing someone back to life is against both the characters' whole ethos and the entire point of Spiral Power. Spiral Power is all about evolving and moving ahead - the spiral of a sperm flagellum propels it towards the ovum to create new life, the double helix of DNA is the very basis of life, and galaxies evolve by taking spiral shapes. Spiral energy moves things forward and drives evolution - for those to occur, new life must appear. Bringing back old life such as [[spoiler:Nia or Kamina]] goes against that, as well as stifling youth and stagnating the path of evolution. That's also why he gives Lagann's starter key to Gimmy.
419** Yeah, they could have kept [[spoiler:Nia alive. But she was dead. She died when they killed the Anti-Spiral. That's what many people fail to get. Simon married her ghost. A ghost kept around by sheer willpower and badassery. He would have been bringing her back to life, not prolonging her life.. And what the hell, bring Kamina and all the rest back too.]] In fact, why should ANYBODY die? Let's just all remain statically alive and not allow any growth. Oh, woops, Simon just became Lordgenome. I guess humans really are dumb. There's a difference between giving up and letting go. They made that clear 15 episodes ago.
420** All the philosophical and societal issues created by the whole "raising the dead" thing could have been solved with a few simple words from Simon: "I have now saved A) the planet, twice, B) All other spiral life in existence, and C) the entire freaking universe. And now all I want is a happy life with the woman I love. It that really too much to ask?! Didn't think so."
421** This. A million times this. Simon EARNED it. Also, I don't think Nia would be too sad about coming back and raising a family with Simon. She's not freakin' Jesus, people.
422** Why do people have such trouble accepting this: Nia '''CHOSE''' to not let people bring her back. It was her decision, Simon ignoring that because he wanted her back would be little more than a tantrum. Nia's death was unfair, but no more than anyone else's. Simon wasn't allowing her to die, he was honoring her will and working it out from there. Life ain't all gumdrops and lollipops, winners in war still get killed. From all of this debate, I'm glad that we don't have the ability to rip physics a new one in real life: we'd start Spiral Nemesis in a week.
423** Well duh. [[Creator/TerryPratchett If there was a button labeled "do not press or world will end", the paint wouldn't have time to dry]]. As a species, we tend to learn what works and what doesn't by trial and error, which is fine when the trial is over fire makes a good loincloth adornment, but doesn't when it comes to altering fundamental constants of the universe or working out significant moral dilemmas.
424** But this isn't that kind of series! In a series all about SerialEscalation, characters flinging galaxies about and the like, the main character bringing one character back to life is suddenly a bad thing? Nia's death was DeusAngstMachina and you all know it, but tell us to accept it because TrueArtIsAngsty. It's enough to nearly make me a FanHater toward anything with any angst at all.
425** Arguments like this are why I hate it when people claim FanonDiscontinuity. Does [[spoiler: Nia's death]] suck? Yes. Should it have not been written? Yes. From a writing perspective, having this happen was a dick move because they could have just as easily written it otherwise and not had a [[TearJerker Tear jerking]] [[DownerEnding downer ending]]. Is it unjustified in universe and written poorly afterwards? No. In context, this all fits. Bringing back the dead is an abuse of spiral power. It causes the death of the universe, which we know is fact because Simon and Lordgenome confirm it. Timeline wise, Simon would have said he wouldn't do just that about yesterday. Keeping her alive is the same kind of abuse. All of that leads to a slippery slope where the universe implodes. Stop making the universe implode.
426** Yes, it would implode if EVERYONE did it. But as savior of the universe and its God for a period of time, Simon was in a unique position to claim his prize for saving everyone. Why couldn't he have just said "yes, I'm bringing Nia back to life. I saved the universe. I EARNED it." and make it so no one else can do what he did?
427*** As I believe was mentioned elsewhere on this page: ''precedent.'' If Simon's allowed to do it, who's to say any of Team Dai-Gurren isn't allowed to do it? You think the Black Sisters would mind having their brother back? You think Kamina would've minded having his dad back if he were in any position to bring him back? Hell, you think any of the Team would mind bringing Kamina back? But that's not what Spiral Power is for. '''''We keep on moving forward.''''' There are people waiting behind you and if you just stand there in the middle of the road like some kinda moron you ruin things for everyone who follows and you spit on everything those who came before you have worked for. '''Just who in the hell do you think you are?'''
428*** By refusing to do it, he made the very important statement that it was not okay for anyone else to do it. If it was okay for him, someone would have inevitably considered it okay to repeat. And gain enough Spiral Power to do it. Not exactly safe for the universe.
429** God. That's who I think Simon is. He's God and he and ONLY he is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants, and what he wanted or what he should have wanted is to bring Nia back. Anyone who disagrees is ingrateful and deserves to (and must be) eradicated in order to prevent the Spiral Nemesis that would result if everyone just decided to bring back their loved ones willy-nilly. But Simon earned it and you can't deny him that. '''Who the hell do YOU think you are to deny him that?'''
430** There is something wrong with you. No one here is denying ''him'' anything. He made the decision himself, (if the possibility is even ''there'' "potential of evolution" does not equate to "screw causality" any more than [[HumanPopsicle cryogenics]] equate to [[SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong time travel]]) and he would not be never has been that presumptuous. There is a ''very big difference'' between [[BadassBoast "Who the hell do you think I am?"]] and [[AGodAmI "I will become the god of the new world."]] That you think for some reason that that level of ''assholery'' is acceptable proves nothing about the characters. All it shows is that you weren't paying attention.
431** Well, technically, he's a fictional character, so it's the creators screwing him over. What pissed me off is that Nia only died because she was the antispiral's puppet or whatever; instead of waiting for her to die and then bringing her back (which I agree he shouldn't do), he could just take away the antispiral part of her so she's a normal human, and thus wouldn't have any reason to die. In fact, why didn't he do that right at the start?
432** That line of thought has been brought up elsewhere on this page, and the answer is the same: ''it's not "moving forward."'' Basically, there is not and never was any way they could have prevented Nia's death without a level of foreknowledge that would break the entirety of the plot--we're talking "knowing what she was/would be as soon as they met her"-level precognizance here.
433** Absolutely. Spiral Energy cannot 'do anything'.\
434** Yes, and neither can modern medicine. But she died because her, for lack of a better word, "power source" was cut. She was obviously capable of generating spiral energy on her own; she used it to keep herself alive until the wedding. Which begs the question of HOW COME SIMON DIDN'T JUST USE HIMSELF AS A POWER SOURCE. We can argue precedents all we want, but the fact of the matter is this was an unprecedented event, impossible to occur again. People die of old age, of disease, etc etc, not of loss of the entire race sustaining them. Saving Nia would NOT be a precedent; it would be aiding what is effectively a WAR victim. For that matter, the amount of spiral energy they expend merely lighting up Gurren Lagann or Tengen Toppa or god forgive SUPER Tengen Toppa is far more than what a single person would use in their entire life time. This is not Nia giving up and accepting her fate, or failure to establish precedents or (as the in universe explanation is) "not standing in the way of the future"; this is sheer bullheadedness. They went to war; people who are caught up in wars, or who are casualties of war almost always get priority treatment, especially in a situation like this. Nia would be easy; just make her how she was before the anti-spirals activated her. She obviously was doing fine then; it was the activation process that made her dependent. Just undo it. Bringing Kitten and Kamina back is a little more iffy, but Kitten is pretty fresh in the grave, and Kamina inspired the whole thing. It's not unjust, the circumstances will never appear again, and the power required is not nearly as much as what was already expended. Case closed.
435** It pretty much boils down to "Spiral Energy does not work that way! Goodnight!"
436** Right, people here seem to be wanting to shoehorn an Aesop into Nia's death. Since no one ever said that spiral power could bring people back from the dead, we can't just assume that it would.
437** The whole basis of the "bring Nia back" argument seems to be based solely on "Simon saved the universe, he is god and he deserves one selfish wish". Simon made it clear that he never saw himself as anything more than a "driller", which was also the basis of his entire hotblooded, emo-exorcising speech to Guame. He's content with being just who he is, and taking what fate has handed to him. Saying that he should do otherwise means going out of character for him, which is the same as saying that the ending does not suit the series (it's "out of character"). Nia dying also wasn't some way for the writers to screw the characters over, it was (as many people have ALREADY pointed out here) a way to reinforce the AESOP and the ending, since this way we know Simon will not be tempted to abuse Spiral Power until accidentally causing Spiral Nemesis. This is also reinforced during the time where the entire Dai-Gurren team was in the dream world, where they saw their "ideal" life and realized how wrong it was. Simon and Yoko's were the best examples, Simon knew that the Kamina bowing before the cops wasn't really the type of person he wanted to be, while Yoko saw the idealized version of herself, and realized it wasn't her at all.
438** Speaking for myself and only myself, if I saved the universe but lost the woman I loved in the process, I ''would not'' consider it a fair trade. Probably a good thing I'm not in charge of these things...
439** So, you would rather let a group of maniacs oppress the universe and probably destroy all life on Earth just because you'd lose the love of your life in the process? [[WhatTheHellHero Dude, what is wrong with you?]]
440** I'm a firm believer in YouAreWorthHell.
441** But the question here is: Is she worth ''everyone in the universe'' going through hell? Is she worth the destruction of Earth? Would she really want that? You morality aside, if the Dai-Gurren Dan had quite there then the ASK would just kill them anyway.
442** Everybody can rest easy on this because:
443** I'm a CelibateHero who's (basically) AllergicToLove.
444** The chance of this situation [[FantasticAesop actually coming up]] is pretty darn unlikely.
445** First: The {{Aesop}} isn't really that fantastic. You've already read what I've had to say about that at the top of the page though. Second: It still comes down to the fact that the choice isn't just personal, it would effect more than yourself in such a situation. Really, if there was even the smallest chance that I could save her, I'd go through hell [[ToHellAndBack and back]]. You're right though, it's a redundant argument considering that the chances of something like this coming up is nigh impossible.
446** On further reflection, I probably ''would'' make the sacrifice if I had to...I'd just end up hating myself for the rest of my life for it. I would then say to go forward and make your glorious future, just that there's NoPlaceForMeThere.
447** Actually, that's pretty much the exact reason as to why Simon left. Once Kamina City was built, the only reason he even stayed there is because of Nia.
448** If I may give my reason for hating the ending? I hated the fact that Simon and Nia just accepted it without a fight. Kamina died and still got up and took down an army and inspired his troops. Kittan knew he was going to die but he went out the way he wanted not giving up until he finally reached the center with spiral energy. Hell the entire Gurren Brigade went down taking as many of the Anti-Spirals as they could or they saved their friends, dying like heroes or at the least not just accepting their deaths lying down. Nia's death wasn't a critical part of the story until after the story was pretty mch finished, it wasn't needed. The writers just wanted to make us sad to create more of an impact instead of it being uplifting and inspirational. Instead of Simon and Nia going "I may die but I'm going to go down kicking and screaming at death, flipping it off, and yelling 'fuck you' in its face" they went 'Well...can't fight fate huh?'. It just seemed to undercut the whole 'kick reason to the curb' feeling because they do the reasonable thing and just accep it unwilling to look at alternatives and not even bothering to 'go beyond the impossible'. The ending slapped the whole ideal of never giving up even when the odds seem tremendous. Thats why I hated Nia's death.
449** And some more if I may, also wasn't there, you know, a SMALL WEDDING. The only ones being at it were the former members of the brigade. And so the only ones who would have seen him bring back Nia would be them. Now my point is, its heavily HEAVILY implied in the exty years from now ending that no one from the brigade had ANY contact with Simon during that time. This means the only ones who would know about Simon's resurrection of Nia would be, the brigade, who never see Simon again, and Simon and Nia themselves. So the whole 'bring back everyone who died' thing would be easily rectified with the fact that no one would know he could bring people back to life and that Simon would never use spiral energy again, again implied he does that anyway.
450** I agree with you. The very fact that it was somehow necessary to have Nia die and make Simon walk the Earth is a bad move in the story and by the writers. For the story outside the Aesop, the death was wrong because it ends the story on a DownerEnding disguised as a message to move on. It removes the aspect of a proper narrative towards an acceptable climax and causes the ending to falter into a very depressing move for the audience. Narratively, Creator/StudioGainax has done this before; ruined a good ending after everything is achieved-when it would make sense. To add to that fact alongside the additions from the movie, it is rather clear they either have no respect for Nia, or no respect for her archetype; a strong-willed and incredibly sweet female characters. Add alongside the fact [[spoiler: that she established her eternal love for Simon early, then used RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil in a truly disgusting way by the Not-In-Character Anti-Spirals against this character, and finally kill her off in the end after all the shit they did!?]]. Even using that hated Trope was WRONG, and it should have NEVER been used in terms of her or any character! This is the prime reason I absolutely refuse to see the second movie, and also the prime reason why I feel she should have been allowed to live only based on the original anime itself. Nia's forced death was not only a message detracting the NiceGirl and GirlNextDoor, but it also reeked of a festering, immoral and completely disrespectful notion towards all character-based narrative. Her life meant more than that, dammit.
451** I thought it was that the gang grew a little during the final battle. They learned that "abusing" Spiral Power ''would'' create the Spiral Nemesis (if they heard it before, this confirmed it), and decided not to let that happen. As such, they figured that they wouldn't use SP again after the battle if at all possible, no matter how much it pained them to do so. It hurt Simon like hell, but he stuck to what he believed in.
452** The problem is that they are not never using Spiral Power again. We see them using tons of it to power all of their technology and Ganmen, including the all powerful Gurren Lagann itself, are still in use a decade later. I get the whole precedence thing but still that doesn’t answer everything. For one thing why is Simon stabilizing her body considered bringing her back from the dead? She was still alive through sheer force of will. The argument that she was already dead falls apart when no one has a problem with her hanging on for a week. Why is her using Spiral Power to stay alive for a week not considered “not moving forward” any more than her living a natural lifespan? Nia wasn’t dead yet. And while I get the whole death is permanent and they are not gods things, why can’t they save her life BEFORE she dies. Humans are always trying to save lives and prevent deaths and that is considered fine. How can one thing be considered letting the new generation take over but the other one is evil that will immediately lead to the Spiral Nemesis? If she is not gonna be made immortal and people aren’t going to resurrect everyone to stop the cycle of life, how is prolonging the life of one person considered so bad? And I refuse to believe that it is impossible for Spiral Energy to do this. We have not been given any indication of a limit on what Spiral Energy can do. What is to say that a limitless energy source that can create matter can’t return Nia’s body to its pre-Anti-Spiral form or make her a more stable body. I am not saying this because I think Simon is a god who deserves to break the rules because he saved the universe as some people argue. I just think that it is horribly depressing that he (and by extension us) should accept that he goes through so much to rescue her and then has to let her die anyway. It makes his fight seem pointless. In a show about kicking reason to the curb and going Beyond The Impossible it is a dick move to have all of his hard work be in vain. Of course Simon wanted to save the universe but he explicitly says that he is going to save Nia, immediately after learning of the Spiral Nemesis truth. He cares for her too much to just give up like that.
453** You could say he saved Nia just by restoring her non-Messenger self. Even "in a show about kicking reason to the curb and going Beyond The Impossible" people still have to die. Also, it's not like Nia "just gave up", just the fact that she was able to hold herself alive so long shows that. Just because it doesn't take as much power as sustaining the TTGL doesn't mean it's not a power abuse. The TTGL was necessary to ensure the continuation of evolution, keeping someone alive beyond their time would go against that idea completely. It's not just "saving someone's life". It's "keeping a terminally ill patient alive through absurd amounts of chemicals against his will".
454** The problem with the "terminally ill patient" analogy is that it implies that there's no cure for the disease. You're just keeping them alive to suffer rather than letting them pass in peace. But with Nia, this seems more like a case where a you have a cure that can save someone's life, but refuse to give it to them. Simon could have at least tried to save Nia's life, but apparently he didn't even try. Why not? Because he's afraid of causing the Spiral Nemesis. Isn't it that the same fear that caused Lordgenome to turn against his comrades and suppress humanity? So by just giving up and letting Nia die because of something that "might" happen, Simon's taking a giant step backwards from his progression as a character. The whole point of TTGL is evolution, moving forward rather than going backwards or standing still. The idea that Simon just accepts and lets Nia die even though he could save her from dying (without the need of spiral phoenix down) is contrary to his character and it makes the sacrifice of his dead comrades in vain. Sure, the galaxy is safe, but they went all in against the Anti-Spirals to save Nia. Now that Simon's just let Nia die anyway then what was the point? And even if Simon couldn't save Nia, then he owes it to her to at least try. If Nia dies anyway, then at least don't abandon the rest of your friends who've been by you since you were a kid. Especially Yoko.
455** Another thing to consider is all the lights in the sky had their eyes on him, both as the savior who defeated the anti-spiral and as the leader of humanity. Even if he wanted to be selfish like that he couldn't exactly at that point. In-fact my fannon is that they staged Nia's death to show that if Simon the man who most deserved an exemption didn't take it no one should, and after becoming a hermit on no one's radar he revived Nia away from the prying eyes of the spiral races.
456** first of all only 1 person said it was possible to bring back the dead and yoko told him simon CANT do it 2nd all of you who want her back are not treating nia as a person but as a sex object for simon you dont care what she wants just that simon get's his "prize" and that is disgusting
457* Not sure if people are still debating this but I felt I should offer my reasons. Like a lot of viewers, I HATED TTGL's ending. For both personal and impersonal reasons:
458** Personal Reasons
459*** Simon's reaction to her death. He may have known it was coming, but you do not go through all of that and not even shed a single tear. No. Human emotion does not work that way. If the person I loved was kidnapped, brainwashed, tortured to the brink of death, and then after risking life and limb to save her and losing more than a few comrades I found out she was going to die in a week; I would either spend the rest of my life drinking myself into a stupor or snap and go Joker on the world.
460** Impersonal Reasons
461*** I don't mind bittersweet or even tragic endings. In fact, a lot of my favorite anime titles ended on a note like that (Fatal Fury:The Motion Picture, Ninja Scroll, Basilisk). The difference between them and Gurren Lagann is that their bittersweet ending served a purpose. It either motivated the characters or it brought closure to certain plot elements. Nia's death did not serve a purpose and was done just for the sake of cheap drama. If it was written as a heroic sacrifice where her death allowed Simon to defeat the Anti-Spiral, then I would be more forgiving and I might even like it.
462*** It was completely unnecessary. Granted, I agree with the point that bringing back the dead is in the long term not a good idea. But there is a big difference between playing god and treating a medical condition. And even if using Spiral Energy to keep Nia from fading away does for some reason offset the balance of the universe, people seem to forget that Nia was technically half human/half anti-spiral. So even if her anti-spiral half faded away due to lack of Ontological Inertia, her human half should still have remained.
463
464[[/folder]]
465
466[[folder:Extra people in Lagann]]
467
468* Yet another [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale scale complaint:]] Pre-TimeSkip, we can see Simon lying in a fetal position sideways in the Lagann. He takes up almost all of the horizontal space in it. Compare this with the first episode, where they managed to get three people inside with it being "a bit cramped," the HotSpringsEpisode where they somehow managed to squeeze ''[[RuleOfFunny six ]]''[[RuleOfFunny people in there]], and the final episode, where Post-TimeSkip Nia and Simon both manage to fit in with room to spare. [[AlienGeometries My brain hurts now.]]
469** That last can be explained by the Lagann being modified. Look closely: it even has a second set of handle-things for Nia to hold. There's no reason it can't also be larger. Heck, considering the series, you could probably rationalise all of them with Spiral Energy.
470** Which then brings up the problem of the Gurren being required to get bigger or else be slightly disproportionate or-- [[MST3KMantra ah, screw it.]]
471** Well, when they combine Lagann restores any damaged limbs etc, so changing gurren's size to fit isn't all that improbable.
472
473[[/folder]]
474
475[[folder:Rossiu and the attack]]
476
477* Why does no one ever blame Rossiu for the Anti-Spiral attack? They know and are told that the "Human Extermination System" is counting the number of people on the surface of the Earth. That means if Rossiu hadn't dragged all the people still living underground to the surface for his census, the HES wouldn't have been triggered, and they might have had a months or even years to enact population controls or something of the sort to prevent all this. Rossiu was the cause, not Simon!
478** It wasn't really a rational thing (I mean hell, they imprisoned their best pilot on the verge of a war), but just a matter of needing a scapegoat.
479** There's also that even though he didn't want Rossiu to ''drag'' people there, it ''was'' Simon's idea, originally, to move mankind up to the surface and build cities.
480** My understanding was that it didn't matter ''where'' the people were when the population reached one million. That was one of Rossiu's reasons for forcing people up in the first place: The concern that undergrounders could push them past the one million mark with no one being aware until it was too late. Lordgenome's reasons for keeping them underground was likely the inverse: By keeping humans in confined areas like underground villages their numbers were more or less guaranteed to remain low. If a population got too large, they'd more likely than not expand to the surface where the beastmen would be waiting.
481** Problem with that explanation: Lordgenome put everyone underground because the ExactWords of the Spiral Race Annihilation System was number of humans ''on the surface.'' And it says in the very first episode that they expand ''downward.''
482** There is also mention of all the earthquakes, the deaths caused by that and the possibility of a whole village collapsing from over-expansion.
483** Also worth noting is that, while Simon dealt the final blow, Rossiu was right there with him during the face-off with Lordgenome. Rossiu was just as responsible for humanity's surface movement from the very beginning.
484
485[[/folder]]
486
487[[folder:Techno Babble]]
488
489* The TechnoBabble in the last few episodes confuses me just a bit. I mean... just... pocket universes, evolution leading to the death of the universe... how does any of it make the least bit of sense?
490** The reason evolution would lead to the death of the universe is because spiral energy allows one to ''create'' matter thus increasing the mass of universe, if the universe became to dense it would begin to condense and eventually cause a Big Crunch.
491** Of course, this is arguably a better fate for the Universe than letting it expand forever until everything freezes, which is what would currently happen now, since a Big Crunch might allow another Big Bang to Happen and for the Universe to be reborn. But then, the Anti-Spiral's logic is flawed in a lot of ways.
492** I am under the impression that the reason the Anti-spirals waited until there were one million humans before attempting to destroy them was because the Anti-spirals were trying to ration the use of Spiral Energy (i.e. have enough mass generated to prevent the heat death of the universe, but not so much that the universe is destroyed in a Big Crunch) rather then prevent its use entirely.
493** E=MC^2. Energy has mass. Build up enough energy and its mass will increase. That's why nothing can go faster than the sppeed of light - as you approach the speed of light, your energy has to increase so much that your mass becomes near-infinite (though this doesn't happen to photons due to them being massless). It's the same thing for Spiral beings. As their Spiral Energy increases, it generates its own mass and gravity field, eventually building up until it starts to fall in on itself and BOOM! Black hole.
494
495[[/folder]]
496
497[[folder:Rossiu's father]]
498
499* Is Rossiu's father his village's High Priest? Their facial structures are, for a series with no look alikes I can think off and lots of unique designs, really similar (compare High Priest from episode 5 to Rossiu from episode 27's epilogue). Add that the High Priest seems to break down when recognizing that making Rossiu's mother leave the village is the one thing he regrets the most...
500** I found that pretty obvious, myself; that the High Priest was Rossiu's father.
501** Depending on which version of the sub you're watching, Rossiu calls the guy "Father" once or twice, but I figured that was because he was a priest and that's generally how you address one. It's not like he said "Otou-san". Also, aren't priests supposed to be celibate or something? Having a child kind of belies the fact that he isn't.
502** But that's only going by Catholic doctrine (which given the setting, we can rule out)
503** It's a church that worships a gunmen. Who knows what practices they have?
504** For what it's worth, Father Magin and Epilogue Rossiu have the same voice actors in both the Japanese and English versions. If it were just one or the other, I'd chalk it up to simple coincidence, but combined with the facial similarity, it definitely appears to imply a deeper connection between the two.
505
506[[/folder]]
507
508[[folder:Lordgenome's drill girls]]
509
510* Who are those drill-chicks that Lordgenome always has draped over him? We see them used as drills when Lazengann activates, and we see the same effect when TTGL activates for the first time, so are they actual people, say ex-Spiral Soldiers under Lordgenome, or just beast-menesque ho-constructs?
511** They're from a surface village populated entirely by cute girls, who Team Dai-Gurren saves in one episode. Lordgenome uses them for genetic experiments - that's where Nia came from.
512** Yes. Genetic experiments...
513** They are apparently used as Spiral power batteries for Lazengann, so probably human girls Lordgenome modified.
514** Personal theory (WMG, probably) is that they were Lazengann’s actual batteries, transformed into women so Lordgenome could have some company. The guy seemed perfectly capable of running Lazengann by himself in the finale, and the ‘girls’ seemed...a bit off. They didn’t seem to have normal human skin tone (though that may be due to color filters), and giggled when they swallowed by the drills. Not to mention, Spiral Energy is highest amongst those with hot-blooded passion; a handful of mentally broken consorts don’t seem like they’d generate much, especially since Lordgenome could have used Guame as a partner like in the past. If they are Nia’s ‘aunts?’ and one of them was, presumably, her mother, this does imply Lordgenome knocked up his own mecha...
515
516[[/folder]]
517
518[[folder:Continents]]
519
520* Why does the world map in episode 20 have no recognizable continents?
521** It's set in the future, so appreciable continental drift ''might'' have occured. Also, in TTGL, Earth has been bombarded back to the stone age from space at least ''twice''. The underground villages have been implied to originally be ''bomb shelters'', after all.
522** It does, if you look closely. The outlines are distorted but all the land mass is in about the right place.
523
524[[/folder]]
525
526[[folder:Well-Intentioned Extremist]]
527
528* If Spiral Energy really might destroy the Universe, what was wrong with the Anti-Spiral's actions, besides that they probably used excessive force to accomplish their goals?
529** The Anti-Spirals ''think'' that Spiral Energy will destroy the universe, but it is nowhere near a one-hundred percent certainty. Simon realizes that if the human race can overcome the challenges it has faced so far, it can overcome the risk of destroying the universe too, and find a way to use Spiral energy safely. I think that this is intended to be a metaphor for human history, people have always warned that the human race is using up all its resources and will destroy the earth and wipe itself out. But we always end up inventing new ways to use our resources more efficiently or to recover them, so we that the human race can constantly grow and expand but not use up or destroy the world. In Simon's words, "Humans aren't that foolish." This keeps with the idea of Gurren Lagann being a Reconstruction that rejects all the despairing mecha series that were made before it.
530** Same reason you would fight a WellIntentionedExtremist. True, Spiral Energy can trigger the end of the universe. But what the Anti-Spirals did have basically made it a [[CrapsackWorld crapsack universe.]] Conserving energy, while it doesn't have a 100% chance of preventing the end, is still a better way to deal with the problem.
531** Everything was wrong, really. AS tried to save the universe, true, but they chose worst possible way to do so - by defying the very nature of universe. They forced the neverending cycle of birth, growth and death, the way of evolution to stop - first for themselves, literally, then for everyone else. They didn't even try to find other solution. So I have to ask: what was ''right'' with the AS's actions?
532
533[[/folder]]
534
535[[folder:Anti-Spirals and Spiral Energy]]
536
537* If the Anti-Spirals are so opposed to the use of Spiral Energy, where do they get the ability to manipulate their own universe and create all those weird hand/foot/face things?
538** Leftover technology from their time as a Spiral race powered by conventional non-Spiral tech? Alternatively, nothing that transpired in the Anti-Spiral universe really happened and it's all a virtual reality. It's unclear to me what exactly the Anti-Spiral universe or the "Super Spiral space" actually ''are'', but the fact that once the [[spoiler:Grand Zamboa]] is destroyed the Chouginga and Arc revert to their non-Lagann forms suggests that something's going on.
539** It's possible that they do use '''some''' Spiral Energy for the sake of bringing down Spiral races that have become "too powerful". They seem to think along the lines of "the end justifies the means", so it's not unreasonable to assume.
540** Anti-Spiral energy. Aka energy powered by their desire to stay put. Also, the Anti-Spirals are essentially ''gods'' in their pocket universe. They could easily turn planets into giant head things.
541** So is the name of their power source really Anti-spiral Energy? I've actually been wondering about that recently.
542
543[[/folder]]
544
545[[folder:Papa Kamina]]
546
547* We have near the beginning of the series a scene of little Kamina and his dad, with his dad asking if Kamina wants to live on the surface or to go down below in the underground village. Kamina chooses to live below. There just seems to be a couple problems with this -- if Kamina had originally lived on the surface, wouldn't the villagers wonder where the heck he had come from? Even if they didn't believe 'the surface,' wouldn't that have opened up questions of other humans living near them? If he had originally come from Giha and his father left, and yet there was still Kamina left and rambling about the surface. Wouldn't there have had to be some passage to the surface from Giha? Wouldn't the villagers have thought anything of this?
548** If I remember correctly, they originally came from Jiha. Papa Kamina gave young Kamina the choice of staying underground or to go exploring with him. Being sick or frail or whatever, Kamina stayed behind while papa went off to get himself killed.
549** In the first episode, the village chief actually refers to Kamina's dad, calling him stupid or insane to try stop Kamina from causing trouble following in his footsteps. So, Kamina and his dad found the surface, but Kamina declined to explore. As to how the guy got to the surface to begin with, I'll just put it this way. This guy, with an unknown-but-certainly-heroic woman, made Kamina.
550
551[[/folder]]
552
553[[folder:What is Spiral Nemesis]]
554
555* Just what the hell IS the spiral nemesis?
556** A Big Crunch caused by overuse of spiral energy causing the universe's mass-energy to exceed the maximum quantity it can hold before gravity pulls everything together into a single cartesian point/massive black hole. To be specific, the Nemesis is the aforementioned black hole, although the phrase presumably can also refer to the hole ''before'' it consumes the universe, and is merely in ''the process' of doing so.
557** ...Alright then. I was kind of hoping it would be something that, when it became a problem, could be solved like all of the other problems in the series. That is, by punching the problem.
558** Just so. The only weapon the Spirals can use against Spiral Nemesis is ''self-restraint''. And in the last episode, we see Simon master this ultimate weapon.
559** I always thought it was a grey goo thing, given the relation to spontaneous matter creation.
560
561[[/folder]]
562
563[[folder:Physics of Spiral Nemesis]]
564
565* The spiral nemesis bugs me. (Warning, physics) Ok, apparently by abusing Spiral Power you can create enough mass to generate a black hole, fine. But the thing is, even if you made enough mass to make a black hole, this black hole would at most consume a galaxy before there is nothing left for it to consume and thus grow larger. More than that, at the heart of our galaxy (and it is thought most/all galaxies.) is a super massive black hole, the mass of which contains more mass than the rest of the galaxy. So we're talking creating Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and crushing it into an infinitely small point to make something that compares to something both safe and common on a universal scale. Simply put, it is mind boggling, even with the absurd scale of the anime, to create a black hole that could threaten the universe, since gravity still propagates at the speed of light, at most you wipe out a galaxy. However, you fight entropy via the creation of new mass, so there is no real threat to spiral power unless you intentionally misuse it and a real benefit to using it for all your power needs.
566** Maybe Spiral Energy nullifies the Dark Energy that accelerates expansion and/or reverses said energy?
567** From the explanation the Anti-Spiral gives, the fear seems to be that the Spiral Nemesis would be formed from multiple Spirals generating the energy equivalent of galaxies simultaneously. This would result in a multi-galaxy level black hole. Possibly still not enough to consume more than one galaxy in real world physics, but real world physics has nothing to do with TTGL.
568** Spiral Power destroys and breaks down the laws of physics. These may not be ordinary galaxies, but spiral-infused ones. It would likely trigger a domino effects, accelerating the amount of matter until the cosmos collapses in on itself.
569
570[[/folder]]
571
572[[folder:Resurrection?]]
573
574* Was it ever suggested Spiral Energy can bring someone back from the dead other than one kid in shock? My interpretation was less "he could have brought her back but refused" and more "Simon and Nia knew this was coming, so Simon is just grateful for the time he had with her."
575** Simon's reaction and response suggested that bringing Nia back was something he could do but wouldn't, as opposed to something that just isn't possible with Spiral energy.
576** The scene goes Gimmy asks why not bring the dead back, Yoko tells him Simon isn't god, and Simon explaining why it's alright the dead don't come back.
577[[/folder]]
578
579[[folder:Night attacks]]
580
581* It's AllThereInTheManual that Beastmen Ganmen run on solar cells, and are useless at night. Even if the characters didn't know that, they might have guessed from the lack of nighttime attacks. Now obviously Kamina's manly spirit would not allow something so underhanded as a night attack, but it's odd that no one even suggests attacking when the enemy is completely helpless.
582** Attacking ''where''? The Beastmen bases are mobile. The reason Beastmen don't attack at night is because they have to sleep, otherwise they won't survive, not because their robots don't run. There are these things called capacitors and batteries you know.
583** If they were using ''stored'' energy from sunlight, then why did the giant Gunmen in episode 6 need a different power source to be able to attack at night? Anyway, the most likely explanation is that they were simply too well hidden.
584** Who says it ''needed'' a different power source to run? All the Beastmen in that episode claimed were that they were ''nocturnal''. If Ganmen can't run at night, how did they fight in the battle where they claimed the Dai-Gurren, where the sun wasn't out at all?
585** According to Lordgenome, the flaw is in the beastmen. They need to undergo a 'deathlike' sleep to keep their bodies from degenerating. As to why the humans didn't attack them at night, beastmen retreat to base at sunset and Team Gurren didn't know where that base is and were looking for it. Not to mention that Kamina would probably find the sneak attack unmanly.
586
587[[/folder]]
588
589[[folder:Piloting Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]
590
591* How exactly do you pilot Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann? I mean there's a whole bunch of people in TTGL. So, does that mean they have to work in "perfect unison" to even make the thing walk? Or do they somehow let each other take turns piloting it? Or is Simon in control of the whole thing? Also...how can humans even see a galaxy sized enemy when they're not EVEN CLOSE to its size? I can't "see" something as huge as galaxies with my eyes when I look up at the night sky, so how can they? Ah...It's confusing...but so very very awesome.
592** As for how they're piloting it, it's made clear early on that ''all'' Gunmen operate by pilots making vague movements of the simple controls and the machine reads their mind/will/whatever to interpret what actions to take. As for how they can see something the size of a galaxy, the galaxy-sized object happens to be ''many'' light-years away. The light is reaching them that fast for the same reason something as massive as TTGL or Grand Zamboa doesn't collapse into itself like a black hole: [[AWizardDidIt Spiral Power]].
593** That's not really what I meant. That's how to pilot gunmen in general. Their TTGL is kinda special though, because it has more pilots than most gunmen. Well...an odd example would be a car. It would kinda be weird if there was more than one steering wheel, right? Since Team Gurren has different minds/wills, how exactly do they work in unison without "overriding" each other?
594** Since Gunmen are operated/powered by willpower, I think the whole reason TTGL was so powerful was because everyone was able to work in unison, with one person occasionally "taking lead" when they were deciding to talk. In fact, the whole "many working as one" thing is often a major theme in CombiningMecha series.
595** Ah, so they do take "turns". That makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.
596
597[[/folder]]
598
599[[folder:Showing the Spiral Nemesis]]
600
601* Why did the Anti-Spiral [[spoiler:show Lordgenome about the Spiral Nemesis rather than just kill him? Did it just suspect that Lordgenome would oppress humanity when shown this information, while the heroes of the series wouldn't?]]
602** It couldn't kill him and the rest of his fleet without using a ''lot'' of energy. Which is rather opposite to the Anti-Spiral's objectives. Telling him that he's going to blow up the universe is better than fighting him and ''making'' him blow up the universe.
603** It also speaks to the Anti-Spiral's preference for inflicting "ultimate despair" as opposed to simply destroying its foes. Trying to kill or destroy Spirals has the unfortunate tendency of pushing them harder and harder; every time he tried to squash Simon and the gang, they just got more powerful, until they were even breaking through ''inescapable deathtraps'' like the alternate-universe trap and the Death Spiral Machine. The only way to really defeat the Spirals is to completely and utterly eradicate them to the last man, or convince them to give up on their own accord out of despair. It worked just fine on Lordgenome and took humanity out of the equation for centuries; Simon just has enough innate optimism to believe in the chance that the Spirals could avoid Spiral Nemesis of their own accord, and enough of Kamina's LEEROY JENKINS mindset to bet on it.
604
605[[/folder]]
606
607[[folder:Anti-Spirals and Willpower]]
608
609* Okay, so I just finished the series. English dub version. Anyways. Last episode, the Anti-Spiral King is talking about who the Anti-Spirals all. He starts taunting/asking/whatever Simon and the others if they have the willpower to do what the Anti-Spirals did, by locking up their bodies so they couldn't evolve and keep using Spiral Energy. One problem. From what I understand, willpower IS Spiral Energy. So... The Anti-Spirals are using Spiral Energy to stop the Spiral races from using Spiral Energy? What? Could someone please explain?
610** Honestly, that seemed somewhat hypocritical to me too. Maybe it's that they were using their determination ''not'' to move forward.
611** I think it's that, and that they do use some Spiral Energy sometimes (they show a very "end justifies the means" mentality).
612** I assumed that Spiral Power was simply the physical and mental resolve to move forward. Thus, Anti-Spiral Power was resolve to stay right where you are. Funny when you notice that Dai-Gurren Dan are on the attacking side, and Anti Spiral King is just rolling with the punches.
613** Spiral Power is the drill, ever advancing and evolving. It's defiance, essentially. Rossiu displays a lot of willpower when he takes over but no Spiral Power because he's constantly accepting things like "the moon will fall, can't do anything about that so might as well work around it." Simon, who's a fount of Spiral energy, says "blow that, I'm gonna push the moon back into place." The Anti-Spiral philosophy is like Rossiu's acceptance and trying to adapt to what they don't think they can change, the Spiral Nemesis.
614
615[[/folder]]
616
617[[folder:Lordgenome spelling]]
618
619* Not to start any flames over spellings, but this really is just bugging me. All the official stuff I've seen (which is admittedly fairly little) show first-big-bad, Nia's-father, creator-of-Beastmen guy's name as "Lordgenome", one word. However, on this page and on WGM, most people are spelling it "Lord genome", either as a first name-last name or as title-name... Why? If it's officially "Lordgenome" and has a reasoning behind it (from what I understand, so people don't confuse and back-translate it as "Genome-sama"), why spell it as two words? I mean, I can understand people who are new to the fandom (me, first nine eps!) that haven't seen it written out making it two words, but I was quickly corrected and it just seems silly to me... Anyways. Sorry for rambling and the overuse of hyphens here, but could someone please explain? Thanks!
620** It really is one word, and everyone knows it. People just put an erroneous space in there because it looks right, Lord and Genome being genuine words that don't naturally compound.
621** Okay... So if I appeased my inner spelling-obsessive (in this context, it's one word!) and went and fixed all the mentions... Would someone be horribly angry and change them all back?
622** Nope.
623** Alright then! Time to start on a massive fix!
624** WordOfGod says the reason they combined the word was so that the Japanese audience wouldn't think that Lord and Genome were first and last names. Since we're talking about it in English, it really * should* be translated "Lord Genome", because the lord was intended as a title to begin with.
625** Yet I've definitely heard him referred to as Lordgenome-sama... Lord Lordgenome?
626** In my case it boils down to personal preference, at least. Really, "Lord Genome" sounds cool, and "Lordgenome" just sounds wierd, in my opinion.
627
628[[/folder]]
629
630[[folder:Number of Explosions]]
631
632* Why do some pages on this site, like StuffBlowingUp, say that the Anti-Spiral exploded seven times? I only counted five.
633** After the Anti-Spiral's last words, it cuts to a view of the galaxy, and there's a shockwave (with its own explosion sound effect) followed by five bursts. Then it cuts to people watching a giant cross-shaped explosion, which is a different color than the last burst, making it a different explosion even though we don't hear it.
634** Also, [[Tropers/{{thatother1dude}} the same guy (me)]] wrote most (all?) of them and I think I just miscounted (as it says the explosion was [[EditedForSyndication cut for time on the Sci Fi Channel broadcast]], so I haven't seen it since I watched a FanSub like a year ago).
635
636[[/folder]]
637
638[[folder:Kittan and Kamina]]
639
640* Why do people say Kittan is like Kamina? Kittan is a violent dick, and Kamina is an inspiring and fairly kind man who inspires the insecure. They do have physical similarities and do similar stuff but that's it.
641** Kamina can be a dick too, but both are aggressive thrill-seekers, mainly. The main difference is that Kamina is good with words, and Kittan isn't (which is somewhat lampshaded later on).
642** The ressemblance between Kittan and Kamina is alluded in the movies where it is said that, while Kamina was in the front leading everyone, Kittan was in the rear pushing them forward. Also, after [[spoiler:the death of Kamina]], Kittan is chosen as a leader because, well, because he is one like Kamina. As for Kittan being a dick, after watching the series a couple of time, I think that Kittan deserves more credit than he gets. While he acts all tough with guys, that facade melts with girls, like when he intterrogate Nia or when he is with his sister after the timeskip. And he is truly shocked by Lordgenome rejecting Nia, saying : "What kind of man would do such a thing?"
643** Also, he may not actually be as dickish as you make him out to be. While Kamina's good with words and knows what to say to someone, Kittan doesn't have a gift with words and usually tries to hide his emotions and put up a barrier. It seems more like Kittan just acts abrasive and mean, but inside he's soft and mushy. Kamina doesn't seem to hide anything.
644
645[[/folder]]
646
647[[folder:Kamina to Simon]]
648
649* "Don't believe in yourself. Believe in me, who believes in you!" - What does that mean exactly?
650** Kamina knew that Simon had issues with believing in himself back then, but he did believe in Kamina himself, and Kamina meanwhile believed in Simon. He was basically trying to tell Simon that he believed in him, even if Simon didn't believe in himself.
651** So it's like: "We don't believe in ourselves, but we can believe in each other." support each other type thing? Like both of them holding the other one up?
652** Exactly. This is taken to its logical conclusion with [[spoiler:Kamina's dying words]], too. He's telling Simon "Hey, I'm not going to be able to support you anymore. But you can do it all on your own, trust me."
653** Actually, it's a mistranslation. It's supposed to be "Don't believe in yourself. Believe in the Simon [or whoever] that I believe in!"
654** Simon is small and weak and sucks. Kamina is big, tough, is the guy with the plans and never backs down. That's how Simon sees it. Kamina is saying "You can't believe in yourself? That's fine. But you believe in me, so trust me when I tell you you can do it." This isn't the ideal, which is why later Kamina rephrases it to "Don't believe in what I'm telling you, believe in what you can do."
655
656[[/folder]]
657
658[[folder:Kamina's tattoos]]
659
660* Where did Kamina find a tattoo parlor to do that ink all across his body? Doesn't seem like Jeeha's economy is big enough for something like that to exist. Then again, neither should there be a market for sunglasses, so this may be a weak argument.
661** His latent spiral power caused them to manifest due to RuleOfCool.
662** There's probably a LostTechnology tattoo parlor and sunglasses storage unit somewhere in Jeeha village.
663** The tats are actually the dye from the last shirt he wore, which disintegrated in about 2 seconds.
664** They were probably hand-tapped by one of his old Gurren-Dan pals -- no tattoo machine required.
665
666[[/folder]]
667
668[[folder:Stopping Spiral Nemesis]]
669
670* This may be a bad question, but why couldn't Spiral Races, in the event of the Spiral Nemesis, just use more Spiral Energy to counteract it? If we go by the logic that, if triggered, escaping the Spiral Nemesis would be impossible, well... [[FridgeLogic did 'impossible' ever stop anyone before that? Ever?]] I mean, making the impossible possible is the ''whole '''friggin [+point+]''''' of Spiral Energy!
671** Yeeeeeeeeeeeah... a black hole is going to be stopped by adding ''more mass'' to it... '''yeeeeeeeeeah'''.
672** Perhaps by imparting enough angular momentum (spinning the black hole a lot), they could shrink the black hole's event horizon, exposing the singularity. Then they could punch it. A lot. There's actually a bigger problem with the whole 'universe swallowed by black hole' idea: relativistically speaking, it would be very difficult for us to detect whether the entire known universe is ''already'' falling into a ridiculously massive black hole: the big scary part of a black hole is tides, not g-forces, and the tides generated by a black hole decrease with size. As to whether conventional physics has any place in this discussion... Eh.
673** Even if it isn't a supermassive black hole, this doesn't change the fact that untold multitudes hold power beyond comprehension that basically revolves around "Screw you, I'll just get what I want anyway!!" Any small divisions and they'd destroy each other just as well as any black hole could, just like those guys in the opening. Spiral Nemesis wasn't just an astronomical event, but a sociological event as well.
674** Since the Spiral Nemesis would be a black hole created by excess Spiral Energy/Spiral Energy created matter, rather than "normal" matter, the black hole ''itself'' would be HotBlooded - you couldn't solve the problem by punching it because it would just ''punch back''. Or something.
675** I assumed "throw even ''more'' Spiral Energy at it and hope it fixes everything" to be the plan B for dealing with the Spiral Nemesis all along, plan A being "try to avoid it entirely." Perhaps if they willed hard enough it ''might'' fix everything (By creating more space? Additional universes? Something like that), but it's not exactly the first resort.
676** The problem is that Spiral Power generally works by generating mass or energy that wasn't there. Spiral Nemesis is caused by an excess of mass leading to a big crunch. More Spiral Power would just feed that process.
677** Exactly. A universe in TTGL has a center of mass. Spiral Power breaks the law of conservation of energy, creating additional mass or energy from nowhere. It can go back away, as seen when a mid combat temporary repair gets undone. The rate at which Spiral Power bleeds back away from a given region of space is constant, while there is no limit on how much can be introduced. If too much power is used in a given amount of time, it drives the universe to critical mass, and it then collapses into a supermassive black hole. At this point, ANY use of Spiral Energy will make things worse. Trying to destroy with spiral energy only converts the matter to energy, which still has mass, and once the collapse starts, it's too late to shut down all usage, because as the size of the universe decreases, the mass needed to cause the collapse also decreases.
678** Note that some usages are more damaging than others. Perceptual teleportation, for example, merely relocates matter, and thus is reasonably safe to use.
679
680[[/folder]]
681
682[[folder:Spiral Power is not omnipotent]]
683
684* Why do people always mistake Spiral Power for pixie dust? Granted, it's done some incredible feats, but that doesn't mean that everything can be repaired by wishing hard enough. Things like [[spoiler: Nia's, Kamina's, and Kittan's deaths]] might not have been possible to fix just by waving a drill at them. The entire point behind the [[spoiler: Anti-Spiral King's]] rant was that mistaking Spiral Power for omnipotence will lead to disaster for life.
685** Precisely correct. Remember how Simon didn't want to [[spoiler: become the 'new' Spiral King?]]
686** People get really hung up on the "do the impossible" thing and forget that the characters aren't omnipotent gods. They miss the whole point that the Spiral King had that people assuming that Spiral Energy is some magical solution to any desire will only lead to destruction.
687
688[[/folder]]
689
690[[folder:Creating beastmen]]
691
692* I hate to be nit-picky, but ''how'' did Lordgenome create the beastmen? I mean, did he just take some animals, take some people, and use Spiral Power to duct tape them together? And for that matter, how did he make Viral immortal? It seems to me like that might have been put to better use in his generals, as opposed to a less-than-effective rival.
693** He's a scientist. He built them via ''science''. He made Viral immortal the same way he made ''himself'' immortal. It's not complete immortality, just good enough immortality. His generals are likely immortal as well; they just can't survive ''exploding''.
694** Its said they are intentionally flawed parahuman hybrids. So basically, they are mostly human, but with enough animal genetics in their DNA so they cannot use Spiral Energy (well, except for Viral).
695** The way Lordgenome said it, it sounds to me like Viral can still be killed in conventional ways, his body merely got minor regeneration capabilities to help him live longer.
696** There is a species of Jellyfish in existance right now that has biological immortality, where it reverts back to it's "childhood" stage after a while (think it was after giving birth). It will still die if you blow it up. This is probably the way Genome used to make Viral immortal (give or take a few thousand years and a spiral-powered scientific genius will probably explain it).
697
698[[/folder]]
699
700[[folder:Lady Adiane]]
701
702* Lady Adiane full out. Every other beastman and top general looks just like an animal, but then there's Lady Adiane who's practically 100% human except for her scorpion tail, and most of all why does she have those ridiculously huge boobs. The real reason is obvious but still I'd like it explained. Also why exactly are her boobs huge in her dress, but in the beach episode eyecatch her boobs look about the same size as Yoko's?
703** Viral and Cytomander looked pretty dang human, too.
704** Well, the only other female beastmen we see look human at first but can become more beastlike, so perhaps Adiane had a more scorpion-like form but never changed into it due to vanity (plus that'd just be really weird-looking). Alternately, based on Parallel Works 8, where the original beastmen look much more, well, bestial, perhaps Lordgenome just perfected the technology over those 1000 years to make more humanoid soldiers. Cytomander was much younger than Guame, perhaps Adiane was too. Viral was fairly high-ranking under Thymilph, and we don't see anyone else of his rank, so perhaps Lordgenome just began a tradition of making higher-ranked beastmen look more human than others to distinguish them.
705** Thymilph could be considered looking like a really weird human with gorilla DNA too.
706
707[[/folder]]
708
709[[folder:Viral's height]]
710
711* Just a general continuity thing. When we first meet Viral, he and Kamina are close to, if not the exact, same height. When we get past the time-skip, when Viral has become immortal and hasn't aged/grown, he's shown as being noticeably taller than Simon; who later is said to have grown taller than Kamina. How the hell did that work?
712** Well, once Lordgenome modifies Viral, we never see Viral next to anyone until after the timeskip. Perhaps the Spiral King made him taller for whatever reason, and we just didn't notice without anybody to compare him to.
713
714[[/folder]]
715
716[[folder:Theme and Message]]
717
718* Why do people still think that Gurren Lagann's message is to go beyond the impossible to do whatever you want? Shouldn't it be something like going beyond the impossible... [[spoiler:to go towards the future?]]
719** Well, a central theme of the series is that destiny doesn't exist, and you make your own future. Within that context, the future IS whatever you want it to be. The two are interchangeable.
720
721[[/folder]]
722
723[[folder:Language]]
724
725* The story takes place at least 1,000 years after Japan existed. Since it doesn't even take 100 years to drastically change the face of a language, the fact that the language didn't move in the slightest is rather annoying. Added to the fact that absolutely everyone communicates without a problem (despite the fact that they wouldn't have much, if any opportunity to speak to other groups for at the least hundreds of years). And simply losing the terms for 'stars' and so on doesn't count; especially because even those words were retained.
726** TranslationConvention, dude. We see the script their language is in a couple of times, and it isn't Japanese.
727** I wasn't talking about the fact that we were listening to Japanese, but I'll address the point. I'll acknowledge that we're listening to TranslationConvention, but even then the whole setup still doesn't work. After 1,000 of the various groups being separated, there should have been language differences great enough that there wouldn't have to be only a handful of words explained because language is a living, evolving thing. Rossiu's society, for example, was completely barred off from everyone; they should have been unable to communicate because over 1,000 years, not only terms but entire rules of grammar and pronunciation change wildly (if you don't believe me, go listen to someone read in Old English, which is for the most part less than 1,000 years ago. If you think that it sounds like a completely different language, that's because it is). Not only was Rossiu able to communicate, he was able to understand and utilize phrases (IE: slang) without anybody misunderstanding him. That's just one example, but it should be placed upon every individual group. If this falls under any trope, it's EternalEnglish; but just because it can be categorized doesn't make it any less ridiculous.
728** True. You should really just ignore it, and assume they got past the language barrier offscreen. Also, while the villages haven't had any social intercourse ''recently'', there's no reason that inter-village commerce couldn't have been common earlier. Kamina's father had to have gotten to the surface ''somehow'', of course.
729** When I saw it, it was in english, make of that what you will.
730** I'm assuming that's the dub being failures and necessitating that EVERYTHING BE IN ENGLISH OMG.
731** This is just FanWank, but the villages probably ''weren't'' separated for the full thousand years. Remember, Yoko managed to identify Jiha as "the pit next to" Littner. It seems more likely that they started out in contact, but over the years the tunnels collapsed to geological activity, the communications systems broke down and had their parts salvaged to put the comm-screen glass into epic orange shades, and so forth. It may have been only a century, which would produce different dialects but would only result in incomprehensibility if they had some ''really bad'' slang epidemics. Rossiu's village was probably separated for longer, but by that point they had Gurren Lagann, which probably has its own Spiral-fuelled TranslatorMicrobes.
732** It's never stated that Jiha doesn't have contact with other villages. In fact, that's where the inhabitants of Ritona moved after the formation on Team Dai-Gurren.
733
734[[/folder]]
735
736[[folder:Viral teleporting]]
737
738* How is it that, despite Viral apparently sitting in the chest-portion of the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann at the start of episode 27, he's suddenly in Gurren's cockpit at the end?
739** Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren was capable of instantly teleporting the crew around the ship, so logically its Gurren Lagann form would have that capability, and why wouldn't Tengen Toppa itself? He probably just teleported in there when we weren't looking.
740** Acutaly, if you think about it, he was inside Gurren the whole time. Each of the smaller Gurren Lagann's were piloting the bigger ones in turn, so it be safe to assume Viral was in Gurren durring the fight.
741** Except we're clearly shown that Viral is in Tengen Toppa's chest while Simon and Nia are in its head, and those are ''light-years apart''. Although you can't see the handles, the canopy design makes it pretty clear that Viral's in one of the older Laganns like everyone else. I just rewatched the episode, and the only thing that doesn't make sense is that when he throws Lagann, he's still shown in that cockpit, which I guess means that the old Lagann was inside Gurren, or something. That or it's an animation error.
742
743[[/folder]]
744
745[[folder:Ages in epilogue]]
746
747* I know age is all messed up but in the epilogue it's really off putting, I mean simon should be 41 yet he looks much older.
748** Very simple explanation: He's a drifter, living off the land. Neither one is easy on the body, neither one is easy ''period'', and a person ages very quickly; especially if it's not going particularly well. He obviously broke his nose at some point during it, the chances are good he's been dealing with a lot more than we're expressly told.
749** Especially considering the rather stressful situations that led to this.
750
751[[/folder]]
752
753[[folder:Nia's skin tone]]
754
755* Why does Nia have a different skin tone from her sisters? She has normal skin tone and WingdingEyes, but the six other Spiral Princesses have pale-greenish-blue skin and black eyes. Why the discrepancy?
756** Those aren't her sisters. Those are Lordgenome's concubines. It'd be better to call them her aunts.
757** That still doesn't really answer the question. The girls in Beauty Village are not blue-green-skinned, but Lordgenome's concubines are. What happens to them to cause this change?
758** Part of it is probably due to the lighting of the throne room. Alternately, Lordgenome may have pulled some of his freaky genetic-manipulation stuff on them for his own amusement. There's certainly ''something'' wrong with them, they have happy expressions when they get turned into batteries for Lazengann...
759** Or maybe they weren't people turned into batteries, but batteries turned into people.
760
761[[/folder]]
762
763[[folder:Opening of first episode]]
764
765* What exactly was the significance of the opening/prologue in the first episode? The whole 'All the stars are our enemies.' combined with Boota's human form, someone who I'm 90% certain is grown-up adult Simon and new Gurren Lagann that was possibly even bigger than the titular TTGL, made it look like some heavy foreshadowing of an ending sequence in which we'd get to see that GL in action as it fires on the WHOLE FUCKING GALAXY, wiping out the infinite armies of anti-spirals in a true spirit of Beyond The Impossible. Instead, [[spoiler: Nia dies]] and the main character becomes a hobo. Did the story change halfway through to accommodate the GainaxEnding and was the beginning of episode one the only hint to what the original could've been?
766** That's pretty much it.
767** Damn, that fucking sucks. The fact that humanoid Boota appears in episode 25-26 implies that they've literally changed it at the last minute. D:<
768** Wasn't that confirmed to be Spiral Nemesis?
769** I thought it was a literal prologue to the beginning of the series. Just like Lordgenome before them, this was a group of Spiral Warriors that were trying to destroy the Anti-Spiral, but failed. Their similarities were just to drive home the point that Simon's team was the best. Kind of like in the Matrix when we find out there were like six Neo's before Keanu Reaves. Basically it was really heavy foreshadowing to something we find out twenty episodes later.
770** WordOfGod states that's the Spiral Nemesis.
771** That's... when you think about it, slightly brilliant. The "Spiral Nemesis" is Simon himself, gone off the rails and hell-bent on defending his right to use Spiral Power however he wants against the entire galaxy if he has to.
772
773[[/folder]]
774
775[[folder:Lagann meaning]]
776
777* If "Gurren" means red (according to the fansub I found), what does Lagann mean?
778** According to one translation site, the Japanese words for red are "niiro, gosai, ru-, aka, reddo, akai, ni". (I did Japanese in high school, but can't remember most of it, so there may be other words.) Neither "gurren" nor "lagann" mean anything according to said translation site. They just sound cool.
779** Well, according to the kanji that spell out the titles of the films Gurren-hen (???) and Lagann-hen (???):
780** Gurren is derived from 'Guren', which means 'Crimson Lotus'. The kanji '?' can be read as 'gu', which means 'crimson'. The kanji '?' can be read as 'ren', for 'lotus'.
781** Lagann is derived from 'Ragan', which means 'Spiral Stone'. The kanji '?' can be read as 'ra', which means 'spiral', and is the first part of the more full Japanese term for 'spiral', 'rasen'. The kanji '?' can be read as 'gan', and means 'stone'. It makes a bit of sense that Kamina would name it Lagann; Simon dug it up out of the earth with a drill. A drill looks like a spiral from head-on, and Lagann was buried in rocks.
782** [[TitleDrop Heaven-Piercing Crimson Lotus Spiral Stone]]? Is it me or is that the best CallingYourAttacks ever?
783** FridgeBrilliance right there. Does that make the Simon's attack at the end of Lagann-hen a [[spoiler: Heaven-Piercing Crimson Spiral]]?
784** Lagann is actually an English word referring to wreckage found at the bottom of the sea. Replace bottom of the sea with underground and that's pretty much what Lagann is.
785
786[[/folder]]
787
788[[folder:Dividing into energy]]
789
790* Maybe it was a combination of pure badass and Super Spiral space, but if Lordgenome can quantum divide himself into pure energy, then why couldn't they just do that to the Spiral nemesis? i mean that would turn the mass of said black hole into energy which would re-expand the universe. Correct me if i don't understand physics.
791** Physics and Spiral Energy don't mix well, one more or less replacing the other.
792** Alternately, one can point out that energy has mass. You've just converted the Spiral Nemesis from a bog-standard super massive black hole to a super massive kugelblitz. A kugelblitz is a black hole formed from energy; in otherwords, it doesn't help.
793
794[[/folder]]
795
796[[folder:Thymilph's element]]
797
798* The Four Generals. OK, so Guame is earth, Adiane is water, Thymilph is fire, and Cytomander is air, right? Then why does Thymilph claim to be known as the Raging ''Wave'' if he's the General of ''Fire''? Is it a dubbing translation issue?
799** Can't remember precisely, but seeing how his Gunmen is a massive walking battleship with more dakka than you can possibly imagine, perhaps he was just being full of himself. Or seeing how the full output of Dai-Gurren could create a metaphorical 'wall of fire', he could've been referring to that.
800** It's more confusing than that. The General's names are based on the alchemical elemental familiars; Gnome (earth), Undine (water), Sylph (air) and Salamander (fire). By that logic, Cyto''mander'' is actually fire and Tym''ilph'' is air. So, it's probably a problem that stretches into the original names than anything the translation did.
801** Actually, I was under the impression that the Generals were named after the four types of bases found in DNA: Thymine (Thymilph), Adenine (Adiane), Guanine (Guame) and Cytosine (Cytomander) to correspond with the fact that they were created via genetic engineering.
802** It's both. The Japanese are just that badass.
803** I figured the "wave" didn't refer to the kind you find in the ocean, but a "wave of destruction" which kind of fits his character and his personal gunship- and none of the other titles directly refer to an element, as I recall. As for the name derivatives, perhaps they switched the two because putting "cytosine" and "sylph" together makes some very awkward-to-pronounce names.
804
805[[/folder]]
806
807[[folder:Beastmen illiteracy]]
808
809* What's driving me crazy is the statement in the interview that the Beastmen couldn't read. That'd be all well and good for the short term, but this is a technologically-advanced society, spanning across the globe, that has lasted 1,000 years. To sustain their population (which has to be quite a bit larger than we've seen), they needed a system of agriculture, politics, military, medicine, etc.. That, and they're repairing and building gunmen at a rapid rate A society simply can't reach this level of advancement without a written language, nor could it sustain it for that long.
810** You're confusing Beastmen with Spiral Warriors. The only remaining member of said technologically advanced society is Lordgenome, excluding human descendants who are purposely locked underground and left technologically primitive. Beastmen are simply clones created by Lordgenome to keep the human population in check and serve as his servants. Incidentally, all of the built/repaired ganmen are either ancient(thousand-years old) or created through the massive(again ancient) foundry ganmen each of the generals has, like the Dai-Gurren. It'd appear that Lordgenome didn't control the entire planet because that WOULD be a logistical nightmare, but merely kept all the humans in the same area. So yeah, the Beastmen population is roughly what you see in the anime/movies and given the Lordgenome relays all of his orders through the four generals who then pass it on to the mooks, it's not that much of a stretch that the Beastmen would be unable to read. They're considered expendable canon-fodder and given how they can communicate through ganmen comm's I doubt Genome would've found teaching them to read practical.
811
812[[/folder]]
813
814[[folder:Spiral Nemesis danger]]
815* Why do the Anti-Spirals keep saying the universe will be destroyed by Spiral Nemesis? Even if Spiral Energy is Real, Physics already came up with the solution to prevent Spiral Nemesis: it is called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy Dark Energy]]'', and it forces the universe to expand to compensate for the remaining Spiral Energy. If you still don't believe me, in the universe based on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DarkMatterPie.jpg an estimated amount of dark energy in the universe]] anything based on actual proton-based solid matter we are familiar with (stars, people, Spiral Energy) are distributed to just a small amount compared to Dark Energy. That means, even though these people are HotBlooded, the Universe's Dark Energy will just expand further, preventing any possibilities for Spiral Nemesis. Also, Spiral Energy isn't just a weapon of mass destruction capable of Big Crunches, but is in fact a creative force keeping the universe from reaching destruction: If Dark Energy remains as the only force in the universe, the universe will suffer Heat Death (it will run out of hydrogen and freeze over while its constituent particles and atoms decay, becoming eternal darkness), and with Spiral Energy's ability to create matter out of nothing, it can help humans survive The End by serving as a form of fuel production in this Dark Energy, and thus prevent heat death. The analogy is Pandora's Box: if Chaos from the Box is Dark Energy, the Hope inside it is Spiral Energy, and will just cancel the dark energy through a natural balance, keeping the universe from being destroyed. What I mean is, the Anti-Spirals got it wrong, and all Spiral Races (including Humans and Anti-spirals) must help each other to survive in the real End Of The Universe As We Know It: Dark Energy. Oh, I know, either Anti-spirals are Death Cultists who hope for Dark Energy winning in the end and all the atoms would decay into simple information, or simply RuleOfCool, with the notions of advanced cosmology (dark energy, heat death) being too complex and a part of ViewersAreGeniuses territory. What am I thinking anyway, both Spiral and Dark energies are just hypothetical forms of energy!
816** The Anti-Spiral was talking about ''ENORMOUS'' quantities of spiral energy(I believe he said something along the lines of "personal galaxies"), enough to overpower the expansive effect.
817** Team Dai-Gurren, less than fifty people, were collectively able to make a mech the size of galaxies. It's implied that the effects of Spiral Energy become exponentially more powerful as the number of people increase. The things that could happen if all of humanity, let alone the unknown numbers of other sentient species, were to abuse it would lead to destruction on the level of galactic groups, even if the universe itself survives.
818
819[[/folder]]
820
821[[folder:Beastmen with Sapience]]
822
823* How come Beastmen such as Viral have sapience and hotbloodedness when in fact they aren't Spirals?
824** It doesn't take Spiral power to be a thinking being or have emotions and drives. That, or the Beastmen are so intelligent that their humane personalities are a result of instinct alone.
825
826[[/folder]]
827
828[[folder:Unique Gunmen]]
829
830* All of Team Dai-Gurren's Gunmen were stolen from the Beastmen, right? If so, how come we ''never'' see a single enemy Gunmen that looks like one of the Dai-Gurren members'? Or for that matter, how come none of Team Dai-Gurren's Gunmen resemble each other? Did ''every single one of them'' just happen to steal a one-of-a-kind Gunmen or something?
831** They modded them after they got them, like how Gurren now has sunglasses.
832** If I recall correctly, most gunmen are different models and look different due to hundreds of years of excessive modding. The only ones that look alike are the crappy cannon fodder ones that are mass manufactured and thus fairly new. Odds are that even if the team started out in the generic gunmen, they'd eventually come across a far superior heavily customized 'one of a kind' gunmen which are basically not that uncommon by the series' standards and they would end up claiming those. On the other hand, the Cathedral does have super-sized versions of Gunmen that they own. Presumably just like with Gurren's first appearance, the Beastmen higher-ups have better mechs and again the team could've hijacked theirs given the heavily implied rebellion in the background.
833** I vaguely seeing various copies of the team's Gunmen during the crowd shots in the Teppelin battle, though I'd have to check for sure. And weren't the space Gunmen created specifically for them? Leite said Super Galaxy's "production rate was off the charts" or something like that. I assume there are a series of general bases or skeletons that are then built upon and customised as the pilot sees fit.
834
835[[/folder]]
836
837[[folder:Burying Lagann]]
838
839* Why the hell did Lordgenome bury Lagann underground?! With the key? If he knew he was banishing the humans, the only people who could pilot it, underground, why bury your most powerful mech in their reach?!
840** It's implied that this is a Lagann from long ago, which was either never discovered, or lost. Lordgenome KEEPS his Lagann, and destroys all the other ones he knows about.
841** Parallel Works 8 shows that more than one Lagann fell to Earth. The whole planet was bombed at least twice in the series backstory, one could have been missed and pushed underground as a result of all the cataclysm. Plus it took a thousand years and one kid with the most Spiral Power ever produced in the right place at the right time to find it anyway. The real question is, how and why did they all get to Earth?
842** OP posting here. I'm rewatching the series right now, and Lordgenome just said to Rossiu (when Rossiu is interrogating his head), "Though i sealed it underground it was found by humans." while he was talking about Lagann. So he DID seal it underground. He was talking about how he put it there to hide it, but the humans found it... so... what the hell, Lordgenome?
843** Because, it's not "the humans" who found it. It was ''Simon the freaking Digger.'' Giha's chief said Simon had been digging unauthorized tunnels, so presumably Simon's Spiral-induced urge to dig and drill led him to go further than anyone else had or was supposed to (certainly it's the only time he had broken the rules, as timid as he was then), and thus ended up being drawn to the objects that would naturally respond to his power. Basically, Lordgenome never foresaw anyone as badass as him being born.
844
845[[/folder]]
846
847[[folder:Flying Cavalry]]
848
849* As awesome of a scene as it is, when the cavalry shows up to save the day in the battle for Teppelin, how did their gunships all have the capacity to fly? They're pretty clearly based off Dai-Gunzan/Dai-Gurren, but yet it seems they have superior technology. The team only got their flight tech after beating Cytomander, and he only fought them after deducing they were weak against airstrikes. So why could one of the Four Generals' own battleships not fly when a bunch of lesser versions could?
850** Who says Cytomander's is the only squadron or whatever leader with flight tech? Most of the fighting up until the timeskip was done at flatland where walking is just as efficient (if more time-consuming) than flying, but one would think that in mountaneous areas and similar the Ganmen would be flight-capable. What I wanna know is, [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome why did we never see these people capture their Ganmen?]]
851** You're missing my point- why exactly is it implied that Cytomander ''is'' the only one with flight tech? Again, ''the personal gunship of Thymilph, one of the Four Generals, cannot fly nor can any Gunmen under his command,'' but a bunch of mass-produced no-name copies can. Parallel Works 8 shows that all the Dai-Gunzans could fly, but this one's missing it's flight tech for no adequate reason.
852** Those "Dai-Gunzans" have drills, too. It's clearly not the same type of ship. Lordgenome didn't give it a levi-sphere because it was not intended for aerial combat. Giving everything flight capacities is just a waste of resources. In a real army, not everything has to be planes. The "cavalry" just happened to have hijacked the planes rather than the tanks.
853
854[[/folder]]
855
856[[folder:Kiyalunga]]
857
858* Also, where did Kiyalunga come from, and where did it go? It appears out of nowhere one episode without even a remark of stealing or finding it, and then post-time-skip it never appears again. Why was it the only one of the core team's Gunmen that didn't make it through? Would they have felt too obligated to kill Kiyal off if she was in the final battle, or did they not want any female leads other than Yoko and Nia? They could've fixed this in the movie too, hell, they gave Yoko a Gunman in both and Nia got her own Tengen Toppa. But nope, nothing for poor Kiyal...
859
860[[/folder]]
861
862[[folder:Firing Simon]]
863
864* What kind of an OnlySaneMan fires his most competent military leader in the face of an invasion, anyway? Did Rossiu think they'd escape the planet and the Anti-Spirals would say "Oh, never mind then, carry on"?
865** Given what we learn a couple episodes later, Rossiu ''really'' was not in the best mental state at the time.
866** Rossiu seems to have thought it was entirely automated; if he thought about manual intervention at all, he probably assumed that they would've assumed lunar impact would've done it and at least waited long enough before eyeballing Earth that humanity could be ready. So likely he just didn't think it through(or was just hoping against hope).
867** Rossiu was giving in to complete despair at the scale of the problem. In his mind, any fighting was pointless. Worse, it could invite the Anti-Spirals to attack in full. He thought that the only way to survive was to basically surrender and retreat to some far off corner of space to live in a way that suppressed Spiral Energy, i.e. hope. Since that would effectively be returning to the same sort of suppressed life as they had underground, he knew that the others, especially Simon, would never accept that. So he decided to turn Simon into a scapegoat so the public would be more likely to reject resistance to the Anti-Spirals and would more readily accept his plan to simply escape. It's not a rational plan, but Rossiu was letting his fears rule him and regressed back to the mindset he grew up in.
868[[/folder]]
869
870[[folder:Anti-Spiral Races]]
871
872* At the beginning of the second arc, mention's made of "the Anti-Spiral races", yet at the end it's all down to a single species. Was this a DubInducedPlotHole or what?
873** [[FanWank The single species is the one that governs the rest of the Anti-Spiral races?]]
874** Actually, it's likely that there were several Anti-Spiral races that eventually made themselves all look alike and they all went into hibernation on the same planet after nominating one of their number to stay awake to monitor the system (the Anti Spiral King)
875
876[[/folder]]
877
878[[folder:Yoko's clothing and shame]]
879* Okay, here's a peeve of mine. Yoko is known for wearing what amounts to a bathing suit as her all-purpose getup. Why, then, does she suddenly seem mortally scared that anyone take a peek at her nipples? In the 5th episonde, when they pick up Rossiu, she seem genuinely surprised that someone would care how much skin she exposed. As soon as her top flies off, however, it's suddenly run-away-screaming time. Now, I realize every woman has a right to dress as they like without that implying anything else about them, but that's just two very different behaviours that I have trouble connecting to each other.
880** Maybe it's a cultural thing? Maybe it's more culturally accepted in the world of TTGL to show skin, but female nipples are taboo, and Yoko just never really thought about the FridgeLogic inherit in that particular rule. Also, in the fourth Parallel Works, she runs around in the Lagann topless, more peeved at Gimmy for [[spoiler:stealing her Bikini top]] than for having seen her nipples. Also, perhaps she enjoys TheissTitillationTheory and believes that if anyone sees her nipples, her sex appeal will drop?
881** No, she's clearly trying to cover her breasts in embarrassment behind Kamina in Gurren .
882** I'm more inclined towards the first explanation in that case, but I still don't quite buy it. She's a forward, confident woman who's not ashamed of herself, and she stands against certain doom more than once without batting an eyelid. Sh shouldn't have a problem with this! Meh, I guess it's just one of those things...
883** I thought it was a result of Kamina trying to see her naked the whole episode that caused her to react that way. I figured she just didn't want to be sexualized like that. There's a difference between wearing a bikini top for convenience/comfort and somebody seeing what's underneath that for perverted reasons.
884** If it makes you feel better, Yoko just as guilty, staring at Kamina's naked rear in that episode, averting her eyes sheepish when he looked in her direction.
885** She isn't wearing that thing for ''comfort''. Have you noticed how little support its providing? That cannot possibly be comfortable.
886** I have cosplayed Yoko before. And really, it's easy to run around in, etc. But if my top flew off, I'd probably be extremely embarrassed like she was.
887** A girl just wants a little privacy, is it that hard? Seeing just skin is one thing, and seeing nipples, buttcrack, pubic hair ect. is another... I agree that it's a cultural thing though.
888** I thought it was because of Yoko's growing love for Kamina. She's not embarrassed if other people do it (as seen with Gimmy), just him.
889
890[[/folder]]
891
892[[folder:Generations underground]]
893
894* How the hell are they able to live underground for several generations in the first place, if they are closed off and can't receive any more oxygen? also, how the heck are they even able to survive in their gunmen while in space without oxygen?
895** The breathing in space question has been answered further up. The Gunmen were designed for space combat so probably have their own oxygen supply in some spirally way. As for oxygen underground, well, they might have tunnnels or something to the Surface they forgot about over the years, or some kind of oxygen machine Lordgenome provided them with. They may not be as far from the Surface as they seem.
896
897[[/folder]]
898
899[[folder:Genetic Rape]]
900
901* Why the hell did they put in the scene of Nia getting genetically-raped in Lagann-Hen? It wasn't in the series, and it was pure NightmareFuel. Couldn't the scene in the series have sufficed?
902** The series didn't have every member of Team Dai-Gurren getting their own galaxy-sized mecha and combining them all into an even bigger mecha that is made of Spiral Energy and looks like Kamina, either. I'm willing to forgive them for straying from the series to drive things up even further.
903** Oh, I loved seeing Tengen Toppa Ganmen everywhere. The Nia rape was the only problem I had with the movie.
904** It's not literal, anyway. Exactly what parts would the Anti-Spiral use for such an act?
905** He's a shapeshifting eldritch abomination. He could easily create all sorts of phallic appendages and stuff to rape her with...Good Lord. I finally came up with something that broke my own mind.
906
907[[/folder]]
908
909[[folder:Anti-Spiral flanderization]]
910
911* What is the problem with the Anti-Spiral? I mean, they're anti-villains, but why did they want to wipe out life until the "last scrap of '''D''' '''N''' '''A'''" to impede the Spiral Nemesis, basically stripping the universe from life? What's their gain, living in an eternal universe but without life isn't the same thing that having no universe? Or they suffered from a massive process of {{Flanderization}} in the last two episodes (from being {{Knight Templar}}s whose objetive was only to control the amount of spiral life in the universe to ominiciads) or they are the most egoistic race in the universe. Well, it just bugs me.
912** Well, the Anti Spiral were only represented by one person, and that person was probably insane. Besides, they didn't want to wipe out all life. They just wiped out the races that got too powerful. Remember, they could have destroyed the entire universe, twice, at any given time, yet they simply installed watchdogs in the moon to alert them if anybody got too powerful.
913
914[[/folder]]
915
916[[folder:Multidimensional Labyrinth Boota]]
917
918* Concerning the Multidimensional Labyrinth, in Boota's portion, he transforms into a human so he can help Simon better. Then the ASK reveals that by doing so he has meet the criteria to also be trapped in the Multidimensional Labyrinth. While that is going on, everyone is in the exact same state as they were on the actual ship and when Boota turns into a humanoid he enters a similar state. So, did Boota traansforming happen or not? Is everything past that point actually still a part of someone's labyrinth? If it was supposed to be Boota's labyrinth, then wouldn't it have made more sense for either A) everyone not be frozen or B) Boota not passing out like he just got trapped in it? I'm... [[MindScrew really confused about this.]] Especially since the ASK was not only in character but acted as if it actually happened. Seriously, what the hell is going on in that scene? If it is somehow a part of the labyrinth, that means that it is possible for Boota to transform into a humanoid in the actual timeime, right?
919** No, that portion was in real space-time. Everyone's in a trance because their conscious minds were locked in the labyrinth, while their physical bodies remained. When Boota transforms, his consciousness gets transported to the labyrinth. We never actually see what Boota does during his time in the labyrinth. By extension, this does mean that he can transform in normal space-time, but chooses not to for whatever reason. Alternatively, if this explanation is not sufficient, just chalk it down to ol' Gainax screwing with us again.
920** So... Boota's transformation actually happened? I wonder then, if that means that everything we saw afterwards was actually someone's dream in the labyrinth. Boota certainly had no reason to revert back to normal (if he could). That only leaves WHOSE dream it was. Assuming Simon DID get everyone out of the labyrinth than no one would be left (aside from the ASK himself). Maybe Simon DIDN'T get out at all. He THOUGHT he did but didn't. In the show, we see human Boota also do that green light thing. Maybe Simon was aware that Boota had transformed but thought it was a part of the labyrinth so HIS labyrinth had Boota joining him (would also explain why Boota was standing up in that scene). So... the Dai-Gurren Dan never escaped the Multidimensional Labyrinth and thus never defeated the Anti-Spirals. Or maybe.. they did but... gah, [[SkywardScream DAMN IT, GAINAX!!!]]
921** I’m pretty sure Boota’s transformation only happened in the Multidimensional Labyrinth. After Simon breaks free we see all of the others leave their fantasies by seeing Simon escaping as the giant green comet and they all teleport to it. Boota in his human form one the bridge of the Super Galaxy Dai Gurren is also shown teleporting to Simon. Based on that it seems most likely that everything we see with the Anti-Spiral, Lordgenome and Boota in that episode is inside the Labyrinth.
922
923[[/folder]]
924
925[[folder:Kittan's Giga Drill Breaker]]
926
927* Why is Kittan's Giga Drill Breaker so much bigger than Simon's? Does he have more Spiral Energy? And if so, why isn't he the leader?
928** Think about the scenario in which Kittan gets to use the Giga Drill Breaker, as opposed to the scenarios in which Simon uses it. When Kittan uses it, it's a last-ditch effort; if it fails, everyone dies. Yet when Simon uses it, it's generally just a badass finishing move; even without it, Team Dai-Gurren would probably still win. Thus, far greater determination is involved in Kittan's usage, so more Spiral Energy is available, so the move is more awesome.
929** Also, I think that yes, he does have more Spiral Energy than Simon, in that moment. Character with high Spiral Energy usage will have the Spiral eyes, being Lord Genome and Simon (Who only has 1 Spiral eye at the end of the series) so Kittan at that time momentary have the highest level of Spiral of anyone in the series.
930
931[[/folder]]
932
933[[folder:Anti-Spiral Messenger]]
934
935* I was always bothered by the fact that Nia was the Anti-Spiral messenger, as it just seemed like an excuse to have Simon's new RelationshipUpgrade thwarted. The Anti-Spirals, after winning the first war against Lordgenome, planted Anti-Spiral genes in random humans on Earth in order to ensure they'd have one of their agents ready to activate by the population count reaching critical. I think it was Guame who mentioned that the all-women population of Beauty Village, the village where all of Lordgenome's concubines come from, was made up of girls who were specifically found to be most likely to produce offspring with Anti-Spiral genes; Lordgenome kept them all in one place to ensure they wouldn't reproduce on their own and spawn an Anti-Spiral without him knowing about it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if that was the case, why let the women bear his children in the first place? At first, I thought he was being smart by dumping the princesses whenever they achieved self-awareness in order to prevent them from becoming a threat/possibly unlocking their own spiral energy, but if he was going to dump them because of that, he should have just killed them outright to prevent any of them from ever escaping. Nia was lucky enough to be found by Simon, and [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt we all know]] [[ApocalypseMaiden how that turned out.]] Besides, Lordgenome is a scientist. If he was able to create Beastmen, who are unable to reproduce, I think the guy could have easily splurged on birth control. My point being, if he was worried enough about Anti-Spiral's to even make Beauty Village in the first place, it seems ridiculous that he could be so careless with Nia.
936** When, exactly, did Guame say that? We didn't even know the Anti-Spirals even existed at that point in the plot. Also, it's ''random''. Every new child was just as likely to be born with Anti-Spiral coding as much as any other one. Beauty Village (where did you get that name from, anyway?) is just Lordgenome proclaiming himself as the king of all pimps by having his own village filled only with his bitches.
937** Simon finding Nia wasn't as bad as you think. If he never found Nia, they would've never gone to the Anti-Spiral universe to get her back, and wouldn't even been able to get there even if they want to. The only reason they could even get there in the fist place was because of the engagement ring, and that was only there because Nia still loved Simon even while being controlled. Sure, she may have been an ApocalypseMaiden, but if anyone else had been the Anti-Spiral messenger, humanity would've either been locked in an eternal battle with no possibility to win, or just plain dead.
938** This troper's personal theory was the Anti-Spirals put the programming into each of Lordgenome's daughters, to better watch him in case the Spiral Warrior gets uppity. Lordgenome keeps casting away his daughters after a certain age because he fears if they start using Spiral power it could trip their programming accidentally.
939
940[[/folder]]
941
942[[folder:Chouginga Gurren Lagann]]
943
944* I keep seeing references to something called 'Chouginga Gurren Lagann', but there's nothing by that name in the show. Did you guys all watch a different version to me?
945** "Chouginga Gurren Lagann" is the Japanese name for the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann (as "chou" is the Japanese word for "super" as shown by the Chou Tengen Toppa Giga Drill Breaker).
946
947[[/folder]]
948
949[[folder:Sterile Beastmen]]
950
951* If beastmen are supposed to be sterile and incapable of reproduction, then how did Viral have a child? I assume that it was just because it was an alternate universe in the labyrinth, but this still bothers me.
952** Because it was in an alternate universe. In the main one, since Viral gained the ability to produce Spiral Energy he could theoretically have a child if he found a beastwoman that could do the same.
953
954[[/folder]]
955
956[[folder:Surnames]]
957
958* This may be a ''bit'' pedantic, but it seems that the character's surnames correspond to what village they are from - for example, Yoko, Leeron, and Dayakka are all named "Littner", despite not being related. Why, then, does absolutely no one refer to Simon and Kamina as "Simon/Kamina Jihaa"?
959** People say that Yoko's last name is "Littner" because that is what she was called in the parallel world. Really, everything else outside of that is just the fandom being strange. I've never really seen the point in it myself. As for Simon and Kamina, Simon is Simon the Digger and Kamina is too awesome for a last name.
960** Mister Manabe from Gainax was asked on his twitter whether Yoko's last name was spelled Littner or Ritona. His answer was: neither, the title 'Littner' is exclusively used by the bounty hounter Yoko from ep 26. Yoko is just 'Yoko' in every character chart, unlike on all the wiki/fan pages I've seen. Also the concept of a last name isn't neceserly familiar to the Jeeha village, considering that it doesn't even recognize age!
961** WordOfGod, there we go. I still like my theory that Kamina is too awesome for a last name and Simon is still Simon the Digger. I wonder if Nia had lived past the ending if she would have gone from "Nia Tepplin" to "Nia the Gardener" considering her life goal...
962
963[[/folder]]
964
965[[folder:Converting from Anti-Spiral to Spiral]]
966
967* Like a lot of people, the whole thing with Nia's death bothered me, although for a completely different reason. I can fully understand that bringing Nia back would be a betrayal of Simons principals, make it where everyone else would have to be brought back, and [[strike: most likely]] lead to the Spiral Nemisis. What bothers me is the fact that for the week between defeating the Anit-Spiral and the wedding, no one tried anything to attempt to convert Nia back into a Spiral being or find a way to help her live. You can't say that it's because they didn't know as Simon points out that they knew all along that it would happen. I recall reading either on here or the Fridge Brilliance page that it was Nia's choice to die [[note]]similar to the events with Neji's father in Naruto making it the first real choice in her life[[/note]] but I have to say that that would be a bigger piece of crap than the boss from VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay. Why would Nia choose to die? She loved Simon, and wanted to be with him. If her death would have ended up helping people like with Lordgenomes, then it would make sense that she would accept death, but nobody gained anything from it. The fact that she would just come to terms with it and accept it is completely OOC and goes against the shows most basic principal of if you don't like something in life, you have to make an effort to change it. Unlike all the other deaths, hers served absolutely no purpose other than to show us that life sucks and we should just accept it (once again, completely ignoring the shows basic principal.)
968** Why didn't they try to change her back? Well, I would say "It couldn't be done" but "Go beyond the impossible". Then again, Simon isn't {{God}} so maybe it literally couldn't be done. He can't do everything after all. Also, it was only in the movie that everyone knew her fate. In the anime, only Nia and Simon did. Who know? Maybe he did try something but couldn't change it. Surely they did something other than have sex. Also, Nia's death wasn't entirely pointless. If she wasn't the Anti-Spiral Messenger than they wouldn't have been able to find the Anti-Spiral home world. If the Anti-Spiral King died, then so would she. Think of the Anti-Spirals as a computer or car. If you take out the motherboard or battery, then the rest of it won't work. The Anti-Spiral King was the motherboard/battery so with him out of the picture Nia died. I don't think I explained myself very well but I hoped it made sense to you.
969** Maybe if they said that they tried something to fix her, I could understand, but there is no mention of that anywhere. Unlike every other cause of death in the series she didn't: get in the way of, slow down, or stop an enemy. The act of her dying didn't accomplish anything, the cause of the death did but not the death itself. That's why I say that the death is completely pointless, because they didn't do anything to try and prevent it (or if they did, made no mention of it.)
970** Why is it that when the Anit-Spiral is destroyed, Nia dies? Sure, she's connected to them, but that doesn't mean that she would just fade out of existence if someone pulled the plug and even if she would, her dress should have stayed behind.
971** In the dub, it's explained that she's an Anti-Spiral program running on human DNA.
972** I don’t buy that there was no way to prevent her death. Ignoring the fact that we have never seen something Spiral Energy can’t do, the show itself already created a precedent for stopping her death. The battery and motherboard analogies fail because Nia was still able to hold on for a week through sheer force of will. A computer won’t work at all without a motherboard and any thing that needs a battery and does not have another power source will instantly die. Nia survives proving she is capable of being her own power source. Since this done by her force of will she is most likely using Spiral Energy to survive. If we had to go with the analogy this leaves plenty of time for a new battery to replace the old one. I don’t see how Simon with his uber levels of Spiral Power cannot act as a replacement or completely change her DNA to a normal human. I can understand why they ended it how they did and I am not mad about it but people need to stop acting like there is no other possible ending other than resurrection and breaking the show’s messages because that is simply not true.
973** You make a valid point and it's why I hate Simon's character. If he wasn't going to go all the way to save her, then why did he race off the first chance he got to rescue her. It wouldn't have made any difference if he had allowed the Anti-spiral to kill her.
974** I think people severely misinterpret the message of the series. It isn't "you can do anything, so never accept any outcome you dislike" it's "you can do what seems impossible, but don't assume that gives you the right to do everything you want". Saving Nia was, in part, what let them find and destroy the Anti-Spirals. They pulled some absurd things to do it, but it came with a high cost. Nia, unfortunately, was one of those costs. She held on for a time, but she did all she could do and faded with no regrets. If Nia could simply become permanently human, she'd probably have done it. Unfortunely, changes like that don't seem to be possible to make permanent. She'd rather spend what time she had as happily as possible rather than try to force someone to keep her on Spiral life-support forever. It sucked, but it did happen. He'd rather try to move on in life than assume that he could undo every tragedy by raging at it hard enough. At no point was it ever shown that Spiral Energy could fully undo death. Stall it, sure, but never fully undo it. Death is still death. Simon understood that and wasn't about to dishonor her memory by giving in to grief and risk causing disaster by abusing his power and assuming he was all-powerful.
975[[/folder]]
976
977[[folder:Lordgenome's daughters]]
978
979* We know that the series mentions only Lordgenome's daughters, but is there any reason other than LawOfConservationOfDetail and plot-archetypal (the saving the princess issue) to not mention Lordgenome's sons?
980** Nope. Not at all. Maybe Lordgenome was into paedophilia?
981** He is very gifted in genetics, maybe he made it where all of his sperm that were carrying a Y chromosome would be non functioning.
982** While that is more likely explanation, I still prefer mine. You know what? To hell with it. Spiral Power.
983
984[[/folder]]
985
986[[folder:Scrapping Ganmen]]
987
988* Why is Rossiu so eager to scrap other people's Ganmen? It's not as if there's exactly a resource shortage.
989** The gunmen were considered inferior to the Grapearls. To them, it was something along the lines of "I've got this Desert Eagle .50 cal so why should I bother with this flintlock?" Really, they're lucky the mechanic who got that job (can't remember her name) decided to not to that. Otherwise they'd have been screwed. Now that I think about it, maybe Rossiu knew she wouldn't scrap them which is exactly why he gave her that job. Maybe Rossiu is more of a badass, CrazyPrepared {{Chessmaster}} then we think.
990** That would be Leite you're thinking of.
991** Thank you. I remembered the face but only had a vague remembrance of her name.
992** Did he actually scrap the Gurren Lagann in episode 19? If he did, then Leite is one talented mechanic.
993** He's so eager to scrap everything because all the Ganmen, being built for devastating, ''awesome'' all-out attack, represented a bygone age (and the Grapearls were explicitly only for defense). It was a symbolic/political thing more than an economic one. Also, I'm pretty sure this is spelled out at some point.
994
995[[/folder]]
996
997[[folder:Kamina Favoritism]]
998
999* Why is Kamina everyone's favorite character? Was he designed to be the fan favorite or do people cling to the badass? He's my favorite, too. I was just wondering.
1000** Memetic mutation does this sort of thing. Or perhaps his fans are just the most vocal (I actually prefer Simon and Viral over Kamina, who is third in my personal list).
1001** In part due to memes and whatnot, Kamina seems to be overall the most well-known character of this series; this troper, at least, went into the series knowing his name and no one else's. Since 'popular' and 'well-known ' do go hand-in-hand in a good number of cases, there you have it. (For the record, I recall seeing a poll online of the most popular TTGL characters. Kamina was indeed number one, with the top five being rounded out by Simon, Yoko, Viral, and Nia, in that order.)
1002
1003[[/folder]]
1004
1005[[folder:Surviving Gunmen]]
1006
1007* Speaking of scrapping the Gunmen... how come the main team's were the only ones remaining after the time skip? We see dozens joining in during the battle of Teppelin, but only the core team has their bots seven years later. The only explanations I can think of are that they were ''all'' destroyed at Teppelin or that Rossiu managed to scrap all ''but'' the main team's, both of which are just too contrived of coincidences. Plus the battles with the Anti-Spirals would have been a lot easier if they had had more Gunmen instead of just Grapearls which basically exist to be cannon fodder. It's outright stated that Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren has a ridiculously fast production rate, so imagine if they'd gone in with dozens of Space Gunmen instead of, what, six?
1008** All of the ones that came for the Battle of Teppelin ''were'' destroyed. At least all of the ones that were allied with the Dai-Gurren Dan anyway. As for the rest, they were probably recycled into buildings and transportation.
1009** ''All'' the Gunmen except for Gurren Lagann were destroyed, even those from the Dai-Gurren Brigade. They only "survived" in the end because Leite rebuilt them. She claims that she had help from a government official; perhaps Leeron had something to do with it? Save the main team's Gunmen in case of emergency, otherwise rely on the Grapearls, which were thought to be superior to the Gunmen anyway. Also, don't forget that no one had heard from the Anti-Spiral before they invaded. In fact, Rossiu only found out that the Gunmen were specifically designed to battle Anti-Spiral forces when the Arc-Gurren was ambushed in space and the Grapearls were already in the process of getting obliterated. Why they kept using them, even after learning that Gunmen were more effective... I don't know either.
1010** Gimmy and Darry were, in the very least, shown to be able to match the enemy units and rack up a decent number of kills, even when the Anti-Spiral mooks decided to power up. They had plenty of willing, sufficiently able units, even if they weren't explicitly made for the job. Think of them as infantry, where the Gunmen are tanks for them to form up around.
1011
1012[[/folder]]
1013
1014[[folder:Kiss of Death]]
1015
1016* Why do people blame Yoko for Kamina and Kittan's deaths, but not notice that anytime two characters kiss, one of them dies soon afterwards?
1017** Well, she was partially responsible for Kamina's. After all, if she hadn't kissed him then Simon would have been able to focus and Kamina probably wouldn't have died. I haven't heard of anyone blaming her for Kittan's death. They do notice, it's just that it happens with Yoko twice so she gets the FanNickname Doom Bitch. With [[spoiler: Nia Tepplin]], it wasn't an [[DyingMomentOfAwesome awesome death]] and it raised to many people's "BULLSHIT!!!" flags for them to care.
1018
1019[[/folder]]
1020
1021[[folder:King Kittan Deluxe Combination]]
1022
1023* Probably one that no-one else cares about... but what the hell is the deal with the King Kittan Deluxe combination? It's always bugged me that Kiyal's gunmen pretty much gets demoted to.... a shield and lance. What the heck? Am I missing something or is that lame? Yay I get to sit on my thumb and be WIELDED.
1024** There really isn't an explanation for that one. Especially since it doesn't seem to make the mecha more powerful. RuleOfCool maybe?
1025
1026[[/folder]]
1027
1028[[folder:How does Spiral Power work]]
1029
1030* How the hell are people able to conjure up this spiral power to do all the stuff they do in the show? Yes, it's there in their DNA, but I haven't found any explanation on how they can harness and control it. And how can Viral use spiral power when it's made clear that Beastmen can't use it? And unless I just answered my own question, how can the Anti-Spiral match up against Team Gurren in the final fight if it considers spiral power bad and refuses to use it? Saying that "they can just do it" or "hotbloodedness" or "going beyond impossible" or "kick logic and reason to the curb" is not what I call a satisfying answer. So if there is an explanation for this, please tell me.
1031** Asking how they can use Spiral Power is like asking how mages can use magic. They just can. As for the Anti-Spirals, they were {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s. While they didn't what to use Spiral Power, if it was needed to stop the Spirals then they would use it.
1032** So in other words, "It's magic; I don't have to explain it."
1033** I'm sorry but there is simply no other way to explain it. The show describes it has evolutionary power or something. Spiral Power is essentially mana that is called forth and given form by hotblodedness. Neither the show nor the movies offer any explanation other than what I've told you and I don't think it needs one. Also, there are a few works that have mana and magic that are simply there from the beginning and offering no explanation as to where it came from. It's just there.
1034** The person didn't ask where it came from. He/she asked how is it harnessed and controlled. There are few works that explain how someone can harness and control magic, but TTGL doesn't offer such explanation. And because of that, it leads to such questions being asked.
1035** Oh. Well, that's really the only one that can be given in this instance. Well, either that or sheer hotbloodedness, willpower, and the desire to move forward in life.
1036
1037[[/folder]]
1038
1039[[folder:Married surname]]
1040
1041* For the entire 5 seconds that [[spoiler:Simon and Nia were married]], what was Nia's last name? Was it Nia [[spoiler:The Digger]]? Or instead, did Simon become Simon [[spoiler:Tepplin]]? Or neither of these?
1042** We don't know simply because we don't know their culture. Normally, since Nia is royalty and Simon isn't, Simon would take Nia's family name. However, Nia being royalty didn't matter then so it's hard to say.
1043** My money's on just Nia. Since "The Digger" isn't really Simon's last name... Technically, it's Jiha. But he and Kamina seem to have dropped that, so his name is just Simon. Simon and Nia. Or how about Nia [[spoiler:The freaking Queen of Earth?]]
1044** The show's director has stated that the only "Yoko Littner" is the bounty hunter from the multi-dimensional labyrinth. In the show's reality, the name is just Yoko. Simon and Kamina didn't "drop" Jiha as a surname; nobody has an obvious surnames in Gurren Lagann, with the possible exception of the Black Siblings, if that's not just the name of their old beastman resistance group.
1045
1046[[/folder]]
1047
1048[[folder:The Ring]]
1049
1050* This isn't nearly as important or pressing as all the other questions here, and if it's already been brought up, I'm sorry, but after Nia refused Simon's proposal the first time, why was she still wearing the ring anyway when she talked to Kiyoh and Kiyal?
1051** She didn't understand the [[spoiler:human]] customs and misinterpreted what Simon said. She was still wearing the ring because, well, it was a nice looking ring.
1052
1053[[/folder]]
1054
1055[[folder:Having children]]
1056
1057* Alright, so the Spiral King is a WellIntentionedExtremist. And FridgeBrilliance suggests the reason he discards his children is because [[spoiler:they could become the Anti-Spiral's messengers.]] In that case, why bother with the kids? [[HeWhoFightsMonsters Has he become as cold as the Anti-Spirals?]] Does he just need to have sex?
1058** They said he was just bored. So... yeah, I guess he does just need to have sex. Which is further supported in his fight with Simon, because he says [[spoiler:he allowed them to get as far as they did just because he was bored.]]
1059** Guame mentions to Nia that the Spiral King raises children as a sort of hobby. When they get smart enough to acknowledge their own existence (and therefore, capable of finding Spiral Power) he locks them away in boxes.
1060
1061[[/folder]]
1062
1063[[folder:Lordgenome's hair]]
1064
1065* As a child, Genome [[spoiler:looked much like Nia, and would've had hair like her's.]] His hair has now become black. Explain.
1066** Plastic surgery? Or just artistic license? I'm just as clueless as you are.
1067** Spiral hair dye?
1068** Many people's hair darkens as they age.
1069
1070[[/folder]]
1071
1072[[folder:Leaving friends]]
1073
1074* Okay, maybe Simon had the mental capability to not be too fazed by [[spoiler:Nia's death]], but what could he possibly gain by leaving his friends for the next twenty years?
1075** I figured that he didn't want them to grow too dependent on him.
1076** I don't think it had much to do with his friends. Seemed to me like he set off to find a path he was better suited for than politics, which was wandering the lands and giving hope to random people that needed it. And in doing so, he did allow his friends to find paths they wanted to go down as well, instead of binding them all to politics and celebrity status they may not have wanted.
1077** Did he see them that way? They were ''nakama'', for sure, but not ''tomodachi''. He was really only able to fully relate to Nia and Kamina. After the way Team Dai-Gurren treated him post-Kamina's death (especially Yoko. Jesus. She of anyone should have been able to empathize with his pain and yet she discouraged others from offering Simon emotional support), Rossiu (the other person who came closest to friendship with him) basically sacrificing him to appease the public after the TimeSkip, and Nia's death? What on earth did he have left to keep him there?
1078** Simone was miserable as a politician. He just isn't the type for a desk job. The battle is over and all he does by being there is keep the public from moving on into their new future. He outright said that Nia was the only thing keeping him in the city. After she died, he decided to move on himself and leave leading the new era to those like Rossiu who are more suited for it than him.
1079
1080[[/folder]]
1081
1082[[folder:The Ending]]
1083
1084* So, What happened in the ending again? Why did Simon just trust the Anti-Spiral out of the blue about Spiral Nemesis? There's really isn't any conclusive proof that Spiral Nemesis really exists, or if the Anti-Spiral is just insane, We are never told anything. If reviving the dead with Spiral Power is not okay, then why is going out into space with more Ganmen okay? what if they get into another fight and have to use full-strength Spiral Power again?
1085** Simon doesn't just trust the Anti-Spiral. Lordgenome points out that as a Spiral Warrior, Simon understands the Spiral Nemesis intuitively as he learns of it. My best comparison is how the humans in the ''Halo'' franchise, as Reclaimers of the Forerunner Mantle of Responsibility, have an inherent understanding of Forerunner technology and interfaces (and on one occasion, Rubix cubes). Lordgenome's agreement, as the most complete and reliable source of knowledge on Spiral Power that Team Dai-Gurren has access to, is itself highly compelling.
1086** The Spiral Nemesis is bound to happen when you get spiral power usage + time. Simon was setting an example; you bring one person back from the dead, then not bringing others back from the dead is unfair.
1087** Simon has always been humble himself. He doesn't try to use Spiral Energy unless it is needed because he never really saw himself as anything special. Even at his peak, he was just doing what he felt needed to be done. Now that there isn't anything holding humanity back, he decided to remove himself from the picture so that he doesn't become that obstacle himself. He trusts that the others and humanity (and beastmen) can fend for themselves without the need of someone like him. The future they're building towards has [[NoPlaceForMeThere no place for him]] and he's fine with that.
1088[[/folder]]
1089
1090[[folder:Firing at all space and time]]
1091
1092* A question. It's claimed several times on this wiki (for instance on the BeamSpam page) that Attenborough managed to fire beams at every point in all of space-time during the final episodes. Just where is everyone getting this from? It's not in the dub, and it's not in the subs I have - both of those state that he's aiming ''across'' spacetime, firing into the near past and future, true, but he's ''clearly not'' firing at every possible point in space and time. Because, you know, that includes inside the cockpit of Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann, and the firing mechanisms, and his own head... and since the entire universe doesn't explode I think we can assume he was firing at (relatively) specific points.
1093** In every possible direction. And shitload of impossible too. Feeling better?
1094** No, not remotely. 'Firing in every direction' isn't anything like 'firing at literally every place and time that exists', for the reasons I put down. And again, where is everyone getting the notion from in the first place? I don't have a problem with Attenborough not firing everywhere at once, you understand. I just think we shouldn't be saying in examples that he did, because it's clearly false. Although, hey, if someone comes up with literally anything that says that's canonically what's happening, I'll happily accept that the universe doesn't explode because Spiral Power.
1095** It's just a fancy, energetic way of saying what really happened. Their enemies were approaching them by phasing into the near-past and near-future to avoid any incoming counterfire, so Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann targeted and fired on every possible point in the immediate area in the near-past, present, and near-future so that their enemies would have nowhere to escape to.
1096
1097[[/folder]]
1098
1099[[folder:Is Spiral Nemesis bad?]]
1100
1101* Is the occurrence of Spiral Nemesis really such a bad thing? Sure it might cause the entire universe to collapse into itself by overloading it with too much mass but here's something to think about. When a star goes supernova, it initially destroys everything around it, but in the long term it creates far more than it destroys as the energy and matter released from the supernova helps to form new star systems and planets. The cycle of destruction and creation is what powers the universe and just like life forms, the universe ultimately has a finite time of existence. And without the Spiral nemesis to trigger universal destruction and rebirth, the universe might just in time start to cool and ultimately rot away into inert matter. So by not using Spiral Nemesis, Simon and Team Dai-Gurren are actually doing far more damage than if they would.
1102** That being said, if they ever do make a sequel to Gurren Lagann, I'd like to see a villain who not only excessively uses Spiral Power, but actually WANTS to trigger the Spiral Nemesis.
1103** Using spiral power to prevent the heat death of the universe is one thing, but causing the Spiral Nemesis would kill everyone alive at the time. That's a bad thing for those people.
1104** Remember the absurd power being tossed around in the final battle? Things like moon-sized drills, firing at all points in space, throwing galaxies like frisbees? Now imagine insanity a fraction of this scale becomes standard military procedure. That kind of thing and more would happen if militaries of Spiral races fought on a large scale. The universe as whole may or may not be at stake, but it would be more than enough to render it void of life before it got to that point.
1105[[/folder]]
1106
1107[[folder:Spare Universe]]
1108
1109* If the Anti-Spirals can create their own universe then why are they so batshit scared of Spiral Nemesis? Let that universe die from a Big Crunch, they have a dimension created for themselves so that they could survive forever. They even have a freaking MULTIDIMENSIONAL LABYRINTH, which means that the Anti-Spirals' hegemony are beyond the control of just one dimension, but many dimensions. The Anti-Spirals are pretty much omnipotent, and thus don't need to oppress other Spiral Races just to survive. The reason why Simon killed them all off in their own universe was because they spent too much time trying to play with a little Spiral lifeform when they could just isolated themselves. So why keep killing Spiral races when the Anti-Spirals can create their own universe?
1110** There isn't an "Anti-Spiral Universe." They shelter themselves in what the show refers to as "the space between the tenth and eleventh dimension," and they couldn't isolate themselves away from Simon because he managed to claw his way in there. As spacey as that sounds, if it wasn't a part of the universe, then I'm sure they'd just hide there and damn the rest of the Spiral races to their Big Crunch. Keep in mind that the word "universe" describes all existing matter and energy. If the Spiral Nemesis truly threatens all of that (and it likely does, considering the show's scale), then there's not many places to hide.
1111
1112[[/folder]]
1113
1114[[folder:Simon unattractive]]
1115
1116* Why did all the girls in the village find Simon unattractive? You'd think that the best digger in a village that depends on digging for its survival would be a bit more popular.
1117** Teenagers of all genders can be quite shallow. Plus the lack of confidence on Simon's part probably doesn't help much either.
1118** Because he hangs around Kamina, the regularly shirtless pinnacle of masculinity? I mean, seems like anyone's looks dwindle in comparison to his (just ask the fangirls). Or, alternatively, because Simon hangs around Kamina, the wreckless delinquent, and gets pulled into a bunch of his crazy schemes. Doesn't seem like an attractive position for them to be in, if dating or even being attracted to Simon gets them involved in the mess as well. Either way, it's all Kamina's fault.
1119** He was a short, scrawny, shy kid who was always nervous and had little to no social skills. Not to mention he had to be constantly dirty, likely smelled, and hung out with a troublemaker like Kamina. Why would the girls bother with him before the story started?
1120[[/folder]]
1121
1122[[folder:Holy Book]]
1123
1124* What was the "holy book" that Rossiu and his village held so dear? Sure, Rossiu says that its language doesn't match any ever recorded, so it was probably a joke someone made, but I don't buy that. Somehow, I doubt that someone would take the time to write an entire book and leave it in the hands of a village for generations to come as a practical joke. Was it ever elaborated on?
1125** It was just a random book that, since no one could read it, the village elder could say it said whatever he wanted. It likely wasn't left as some intentional prank, but was just some foreign language book that happened to be in the library.
1126** It might be possible that Rossiu was able to read the book, but bluffed the priest, knowing he wouldn't be able to call him on it. It certainly suits the show's message to live your life according to your own needs, expectations and standards, not necessarily the standards and restrictions imposed by scriptures and doctrines. Saying the contents of this book were unreadable could have been Rossiu's saying they didn't matter to him any more.
1127** It could also be a nod to real-world made-up manuscripts, such as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript Voynich Manuscript]].
1128** The Anti-Spiral's suppressed multiple races across the galaxy, and apparently Lordgenome was renowned all across the galaxy too. Remember, aliens exist in this world. Whoever said that book was written in a human language? And since the sign on the cover matches the one gunman they had, odds are it was the maintenance manual.
1129** It really doesn't matter what was in the book. Even if it was an actual religious text, it almost certainly didn't say any of what the elders claimed it did because none of them could ever even read it. It was just a tool to prop up the authority of the elders and keep the villagers from rejecting their edicts on population control. It could have been a phone book or something for all they knew. Rossiu and the elder were having a sort of resigned/relieved laugh that the contents of the book being effectively meaningless was the final nail in the coffin for any chance to validate their religion. Now they could finally move on from it without any lingering doubts to hold them back.
1130[[/folder]]
1131
1132[[folder:Other ways to see fallen loved ones again, without the Spiral Power]]
1133
1134* I'll accept that Simon bringing Nia and the others back would be an abuse of the Spiral Power, and I'll accept that his wandering lifestyle is something that he's comfortable with, but I also been hearing sayings about how "Death is only the beginning of an even greater adventure" or something like that. I believe in a universe where anything can be possible and Kamina could be seen again after being dead for more than seven years, one can't help but wonder if there are other ways Simon could see Nia and the others again besides the Spiral.
1135** Beyond a repeat of the Anti-Spirals' dream manipulations? None that we know of. Simon isn't so desperate as to waste his life searching for a chance to make contact with the dead. More to the point, it would go against his and their entire ethos of moving forward in life instead of dwelling on the past. Hell, if he did, Kamina's ghost would punch him in the mouth for even thinking about such a thing. He'd rather accept the grief and maturely move forward, seeing the world and future that he worked so hard to secure than to let his losses define him.
1136
1137[[/folder]]
1138
1139[[folder:Why does Nia's Ring remain]]
1140
1141* Isn't it odd how's Nia's Ring didn't fade away, while she and what she was wearing did? I highly doubt that it was solely because the stone in the ring was of solidified Spiral Power, cause if she just a virtual human of the Anti-Spiral, why did her clothes fade with her, cause I doubt that they were of Anti-Spiral creation too. Just a theory, but can this be proof that Nia still exist in a way that Simon could find her again?
1142
1143[[/folder]]
1144
1145[[folder:What exactly happened to Lordgenome's daughters in the Teppelin throne room?]]
1146
1147* Any theories about that? It looked like his mecha just...''ate'' them.
1148** They weren't his daughters. They were his concubines. His mech "ate" them so he could use them as, effectively, Spiral Energy batteries.
1149
1150[[/folder]]
1151
1152[[folder:If Beast Men can't reproduce, how can Chitori have a father?]]
1153
1154* Picking PlotHole nits in ''Gurren Lagann'' might be like shooting fish in a barrel, but nonetheless, Episode 5.5, "My Gurren is Sparkling!" introduces a fairly egregious one: if Beast Men can't reproduce, how can Chitori have a father, Jigitalis? (And does this rate mention as a plot hole in the main page? :) )
1155** Maybe they're not related by blood? Not unlike how Simon and Kamina aren't actually related, but they treat each other like relatives anyway; who's to say Beastmen can't do the same?
1156
1157[[/folder]]
1158
1159[[folder:Rigging Gurren Lagann with Explosives]]
1160
1161* If the plan was to create an instant kill scenario for Simon if he did anything Rossiu didn't approve of, why are all of the explosives only in the cockpit of ''Gurren'', and not anywhere else or even apparently in Lagann at all? All Simon would need to do is detach Lagann and leave, and there'd be nothing they could do to him. Sure, Kinon would still be in harms way and Simon would probably never abandon her to die but, would Rossiu really bet on Simon's good will to keep him from running away? He wants ''Simon'' Dead, not not Kinon - why endanger her rather than him?
1162** Simon was the one to suggest putting bombs in the mech. Rossiu knows that this means that Simon isn't concerned enough about his own life for just some bombs to to be an adequate threat. So he has Kinon, someone Simon knows and considers an innocent, ride along as extra insurance. Rossiu is getting paranoid, but he still knows Simon well enough to be sure that he'd never risk Kinon dying with him. Since her life would be in danger until they returned and she voluntarily leaves, Simon would have no choice but to follow through the mission and allow himself to be brought back into custody. It's cold blooded and probably unnecessary since Simon had been nothing but cooperative despite the fake charges and [[KangarooCourt sham "trial"]], but Rossiu isn't willing to take any chances that Simon would pull something crazy if he thought it would save the day. If anything, it was probably Kinon herself that came up with the plan and volunteered to be the ride-along hostage/potential executioner. She had the detonator for the bombs herself and was so fanatically in love with Rosssiu that she'd have seriously pulled the trigger if things came down to it.
1163[[/folder]]
1164
1165[[folder:The Public Blaming Simon for Everything]]
1166
1167* Everyone should know exactly why the moon is going to fall on the earth - it was told directly to them during Nia's broadcast and everyone believes it without question. The human population increase has absolutely nothing to do with Simon, so why does everyone thing it's his fault when it reaches the cutoff and the moon goes haywire? If anything it's all of ''their'' faults for reproducing too much.
1168** All they know that that Simon's fiancée was taking responsibility for an attack that did significant damage to the city and killed an unknown number of people. Simon's first attempt to fight them only lead to more destruction. The public is terrified that the new life they have is at risk and, as far as they know, their leader and hero was closely associated with the one face they have to put to their aggressors. It's irrational fear but it is understandable. Rossiu and Co. could have helped calm it, but he fell to panic himself and decided to exacerbate the public's fury so he could gain support for his plans to escape instead.
1169[[/folder]]
1170
1171[[folder:Is the "Million Humans" Limit Irreversible?]]
1172
1173* If, say, the public were to engage in a violent campaign of self-population control, would that prevent the Anti-Spirals from wiping them out? Or heck, even if not that, the Mugan almost certainly kill plenty of people in their attacks - why not just control the population that way?
1174** The number was less important than just ensuring that Lordgenome was keeping his end of the bargain. As long as the humans were suppressed to below that point, the Anti-Spirals know that Lordgenome was following through. If it ever rose above that number, that means that Lordgenome was either breaking his word and potentially turning on them, was losing his control over the humans, or was removed from power entirely by someone powerful enough to oppose him. In any of those cases, the Anti-Spirals know that their puppet king on Earth isn't doing his job anymore and they're ready to nip this potential problem in the bud before things get out of their control. Since Lordgenome's promise to enforce his control was the only reason that they hadn't destroyed Earth already, they have no reason to ever rescind their kill order when the limit was reached.
1175** Another thing to note is that the limit was for people on the surface. Lordgenome was meant to keep humans underground as much as possible. If a significant number like that was above ground, that means that means that they're either opposing him successfully or he is helping them. We saw that the humans can almost instinctively figure out and replicate Spiral technology in a very short time, which means that they would likely have had more than long enough to build up a force that could grow into a threat. All the more reason to squash them with overwhelming force before they have enough time to develop into something that could stand up to the Anti-Spirals.
1176[[/folder]]
1177
1178[[folder:Only One Million?]]
1179
1180* If we're talking about the scope of entire cities and civilizations, isn't a million people pretty dang small? Especially looking at Kamina City - it's a huge metropolitan area with big skyscrapers and everything. Assuming it's comparable in size to a real metropolis, a million people wouldn't even ''begin'' to fill that much space, and that's not even considering that not even all of the people on earth live there.
1181** Not every major city has that large a population. The city we saw was relatively small as it's still in a wasteland. We can assume it has hundreds of thousands within it, but not at the one million mark.
1182
1183[[/folder]]
1184
1185[[folder:Not Considering the Beastmen a Threat]]
1186
1187* Given that the population count only counts humans, and Lordgenome saw fit to create countless Beastmen to serve him on the surface with little concern, presumably the Anti-Spirals didn't view non-Spiral lifeforms as any potential threat to their plan. But... why? Sure, they can't use Spiral Energy ([[spoiler:unless you count Viral doing it in the movie]]), but who's to say they couldn't just devise ways to combat the Anti-Spirals by other means - they can still ''make'' stuff, can't they? And for that matter, Lordgenome can make them immortal; they'd be ''better'' soldiers than humans at least as far as resilience goes. Just have one single Spiral Energy user like Lordgenome (or even a small team of them) amass a massive army of undetectable, unkillable Beastmen and weapons, and fight the Anti-Spirals without even having to worry about triggering the Spiral Nemesis nearly as much.
1188** The Anti-Spirals aren't worried about conventional armies. They are powerful enough that normal weaponry is practically useless against them. What they're worried about is Spiral Energy use. That could be a threat not just to them, but the universe itself. Lordgenome made the Beastmen as sort of a compromise. Beastmen can't reproduce on their own and aren't supposed to be able to use Spiral Energy at all. If they did, he kill any who did show signs of Spiral Energy and edit the gene of a new batch to avoid that outcome. Viral somehow breaking the rules and producing Spiral Energy of his own in the last battles was something that shouldn't have been possible. If the Anti-Spirals won, they'd destroy probably destroy all life on Earth since they now know that Beastmen are also a potential threat.
1189[[/folder]]
1190

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