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Spiral Energy (or something like it) does have an effect in Real Life: we just call it "chaos theory"

Butterflies in the East. Cause Spiraling Hurricanes in the West.

• Spiral Power is weaker in our universe. While it's capable of doing incredibly awesome things, it's still confined to the basic laws of physics. Perhaps the Anti-Spirals feared us being Dangerously Genre Savvy, and ensured the laws of physics were immutable. There is some resistance, in the form of quantum physics.

The perpetual existence of the Universe that the Anti-Spirals want would be a horror beyond imagining.

The Big Crunch, the Spiral Nemesis; death; is ultimately a necessary function to the evolution of the Universe. Scientists even theorize that when the Big Crunch does happen, the singularity that it created will become a "Big Bounce": it will start another Big Bang, thus giving birth to new varieties of physics or life. Keep in mind, despite all their talk about protecting the universe, the Anti-Spirals have suffered such massive Motive Decay to the point of becoming nihilists who have zero concept of quality of life. As long as something continues to exist; in any form; they see it as their job accomplished. An endless, eternal And I Must Scream.

And that is why the Spirals choose a Dying Moment of Awesome in a Big Crunch rather than accepting the eternal paradise the Anti-Spirals offered.

The entire show is the past of Time Lord society.

Time Lord technology is to the point where it can be easily mistaken for magic. This is because it's powered partially by spiral power. Notice when we get a map of "Earth", it looks barely like Earth (there's a freaking land bridge connecting Asia and Australia and North and South America don't exist). Some even crazier things cause this world to become Gallifrey. The Doctor is, of course, the reincarnation of Kamina. How else could he go Serial Escalation so often, pull off insane outfits and get machines to do things that seem impossible (combining Gurren and Lagann shouldn't have worked, the TARDIS has a control panel made of random stuff)

Viral has had Spiral power ever since the beginning of the series

• Lets see, earliest example was when Viral saved Adine by catching Dai-Gurren's foot and threw it on its ass. He came up underneath it (drills maybe?) and caught a giant foot that probably weighed somewhere over three tons. Then he survived the explosion Adine's sub. In the penultimate episode, Viral gets caught in the dimensional labyrinth with everyone else, because it was a trap that targeted creatures that could produce spiral energy, and later; during the final fight, the show flashes to Viral saying something, and then Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann pulls out two katanas; weapons that Viral has been using throughout the series. Also, in the second movie, he gets a tengen toppa (spiral energy flames and all) with a design that reminds this troper of shiva and uses a sword in each hand.
• This may explain why, despite not being that high up in the chain of command, Viral is almost completely human.

The Spiral King forced everyone underground not because of Anti Spirals and the Spiral Nemisis, but because he wanted a real version of Dwarf Fortress

• The Spiral King forced everyone underground, not because he was afraid of the Spiral Nemesis, but because he got bored of being an extreme badass, and wanted to unwind a little with some DF. Unable to play it on his computer because of the constant concubine swarm surrounding him, Lord Genome instead forced all humans to become his pawns, then made the beastmen to be the replacement for goblins and other monsters. Kamina was the one who colonized hell, and everyone going to Teppelin was a case of the 4th wall being shattered.

The Gunmen were built by none other than Phineas and Ferb

• It makes sense that the gunmen were built by someone that already had a reputation for going Serial Escalation.
  • Logically, this makes Perry their equivalent to Boota.

Rossiu's character shift during the Time Skip was the result of a delayed reaction to Nia's cooking.

• Everybody else on team Dai-Gurren agreed that the food tasted awful, but Rossiu reacted especially badly. Obviously a person's reaction to Nia's cooking is different based on the amount of Spiral Power they can manifest at the time. Therefore, Simon, having already managed to manifest crazy amounts of Spiral Power, enjoys her cooking immensely, while the rest of Team Dai-Gurren, who have manifested only enough to pilot Gunmen, merely think it tastes terrible. Rossiu, on the other hand, having grown up in the dreary Adai Village, cannot even get into the proper mindset to manifest Spiral Power, and reacts violently to Nia's cooking. Over time the effects grew more pronounced as Rossiu continued refusing to manifest Spiral Energy to counter the effect, eventually corrupting his personality and leading to the post-timeskip Rossiu. Fortunately, the effects began to reverse themselves once Simon purged Rossiu's body of the infection via a Spiral-infused punch to the face.
  • Best WMG ever.
  • Except the reason Rossiu got as sick as he did is because he forced himself to sample every dish where as the rest of the Dai-Gurrn Dan (sans Simon and Boota) only ate a bite or two.
  • Clearly what Rossiu ate is Anti-Spiral cuisine.

Garlock is the Anti-Spiral.

• The Anti-Spiral has said that his race was once a race of Spirals who sealed themselves into another part of the universe and stopped their evolution, which is how Garlock could be GAR and the Anti-Spiral - they were still Sprial at the time. At the end of the series, a galaxy-worth of Spiral races contact Earth (or whatever it's called), meaning that the Anti-Spiral had to defeat all of them, so all of the lights in the sky would have been their enemies.

Gurren Lagann and Megas XLR take place in the same universe...or rather Multiverse.

There are two possible version:

• The world seen in Parallel Work 8 is future earth after the Glorft have been driven off by Coop who traveled in time. Megas XLR is only a Stable Time Loop up to the point where Megas is sent back in time (hence, closing the time loop).

• Or, earth seen in Parallel Work 8 is the Mirror Universe from the finale of Megas XLR, who has been rebuilt after Evil Coop gets stuck in another dimension. Oh, and the Lagann Lordgenome find? A prototype Evil Coop was working on. Search your feeling, you know its awesome!

Nia's death was her own fault.

Think about it. The theme of the show is to go Beyond the Impossible. To keep on fighting even if the odds are 0%. Nia's chance of living out the remainder of her natural life was at 0% but that hasn't stopped the Dai-Gurren Dan before. If she had simply refused to give up and kept on fighting for the right to live her life with Simon then she would have. Since she decided to ignore the Dai-Gurren Dan's motto, the main theme of the show, she got struck full force by the Diabolus Ex Machina and faded away.

TL;DR: Nia's a bigger idiot then we are led to believe.

• She wanted to die because she didn't want to cheat by abusing Simon's Spiral Energy to stay alive. They both agreed on that, because Simon promised the Anti-Spiral that he'll prevent Spiral Nemesis from happening, and excessive use of Spiral Energy was "banned".

The first 30 seconds of Episode one is when Simon finds the GGG

...Fighting the Spiral-Nemesis. With Optimus Prime and Coop helping Gai out.

You CAN'T bring back the dead with Spiral Power.

Lord Genome was never really came back to life, even as a bio-computer/head in a jar. It was more a clone with his memory than the actual Lord Genome. That's why Simon can't bring back Nia.

• This troper thought the same thing after seeing the ending - A possible reason they could bring back Lordgenome is because he was Only Mostly Dead, and Rossiu took his head and put it in a jar shortly after his defeat without anyone noticing. Surviving a huge drill hole for a few minutes/hours isn't that absurd, especially considering that Lordgenome was the second strongest Spiral warrior after Simon and he was already able to make himself immortal. Not being able to bring back the dead makes a lot of sense, since Spiral power originates from life forms, life in TTGL is clearly much more than a bunch of matter arranged into a body.
  • It's not that Simon can't bring Nia back, they decided he shouldn't, probably because Nia didn't want to make him abuse Spiral Power. Please refrain from using "can't" and "Spiral Power" in one sentence, ruining the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

• Agreed. You could bring back a dead body with Spiral Power, but without Spiral Power of its own it's not truly alive, just a biological puppet or zombie. This is why Lordgenome had to insert some kind of hibernation-jazz into the Beastmen: to keep them alive without Spiral Power. Nia actually needed incredible badassery and willpower to generate her own Spiral Power when the Anti-Spiral's death left her without any Ontological Inertia. This would make sense, as Spiral Power seems to be some sort of materialized Ontological Inertia generated by the Rule of Cool.
  • He could have kept them all alive with his own Spiral Power, and probably fuel all of their Gunmen to Gurren Lagann levels of power just by sitting there on his throne. However, the Anti-Spiral brainwashed him into suppressing Spiral Power, that's why he went for hibernation and solar power.

• Makes sense. Spiral Power is connected to evolution, which is all about going ahead and adapting. Bringing someone back to life would be completely antithetical to that process.

Simon had one final adventure between his wedding and the epilogue.

As other tropers have noticed, Simon takes Nia's death a little too well. My theory for this goes as such: After the final battle with the Anti-Spiral, as they are all sitting in their Laganns, Nia discovers an internal message encoded inside her. It turns out that all of Lordgenome's daughters were potential messengers, and when a messenger dies, she is transported to an alternate universe as part of Anti-Spiral experiments. Before their wedding, Simon and Nia find out how to track her to whatever universe she will go to, and after the wedding, Simon does just that. He has a final adventure, where he rescues Nia, helps her get a human body, and returns home. They live in secret to avoid, as another troper has noted, people who might still want to kill her. Following the epilogue, Simon goes to his simple home, where an older Nia and their children can be seen.

Also, I have always thought of the alternative universe he travels to being one of many Neon Genesis Evangelion Universes, which he proceeds to fix as he searches for Nia. However, your mileage may vary with that idea.

• Considering that your idea helps to keep this troper from bawling on subsequent viewings of the series, I wholeheartedly support the theory. On another note, looking at things from that point of view also makes Simon's last line, where he stops himself just short of his traditional catch phrase, seem more...er...less(?) heartrending. He is deliberately staying out of the limelight for Nia's sake.

• Must... not... write... fanfic... Hold... together...

• Here's the thing: how did they find her before, when she was being analyzed by the Anti-Spirals? Perceptual dimensional teleportation using the wedding ring as the target. The one thing Nia leaves Simon before fading away is the wedding ring. It's almost as though she's flat-out telling him that they can find each other, wherever they are, no matter what happens. Depending on the way you look at the wedding, this can either make for a happy ending for the couple where he can find her wherever she is (or, dare I say, vice-versa), or it can give more impact to when Simon gave up his core drill (and therefore his handy/only access to perceptual teleportation via Lagann—cementing his "The dead would just get in our way," claim). Is his one spiral eye in the distant ending a delayed manifestation of his massive overdose on Spiral Energy in the final battle? Is it just a sign that he's embraced the use of spiral power in moderation, perhaps to visit his beloved? Does it mean he's rejected immortality? Or that he's shared half of his immortal life with Nia? Or is it because he no longer needs a focusing tool (the core drill) to tap into the more advanced uses of Spiral Energy i.e. dimensional teleportation/time travel/the impossible? Listen up, tropers. You be the judge, and don't let the claims of others get you down! In the end, yours is the only interpretation that matters. Believe in the ending that you believe in!

• The alternate reality Simon went to? It was the world of Parallel Works 01. The Simon and Nia depicted in the video are, in fact the Simon and Nia of the primary continuity. The versions of Yoko and Kamina seen are alternate versions native to that universe. Finaly, the monster that Simon faces at the end is a physical manifestation of the remnants of the anti spirals consciousness, holding Nia captive for revenge.

The TTGL Universe is designed so that Main Characters can't have love interests

They kill off both of Yoko's love interests, and Simon's, and the Universe itself prevents Viral from ever having a relationship.

• • Viral could have a relationship, he just can't reproduce.
  • So, does this mean the TTGL universe is related to the Gundam universe?
    • By extension, Yoko's Kiss of Death is not only real but an actual precautionary measure designed by the Anti-Spirals. Spiral power is said to increase based on the person's potential for evolution, ergo, heroes with love interests generate much more Spiral Energy than they would normally. Not only is this power boost in and of itself dangerous, but if spiral power is actually hereditary then Yoko + Kittan or Yoko + Kamina = epic baby. The Anti-Spirals can actually manipulate probability, so they built a machine which ensures that as a hero's odds of reproduction near 100%, their odds of survival approach 0%. This is why Viral is completely unaffected by the machine no matter how strong he gets. Simon escaped its influence either because Nia was going to die anyway OR too far Anti-Spiral'd to even be compatible with a Spiral Race OR because the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan is a walking Screw Destiny in mecha form.

After Kamina dies, he becomes the god of evolution (Spiral energy)

Think about this. When Dai-Gurren is trapped in alternate universes, it is heavily insinuated that the spiral power of Simon still existed. Since it is Kamina who greets him, this means that a) the rebel Simon is the epitomy of all possible Simons, and thus is the one most liked by evolution, and b) that Kamina has become the embodiment of evolution itself, telling Simon and the rest that they should live up to their spiral potential. Another word for the embodiment of such a force is a god of it. Thus, Kamina is the god of evolution. It even makes sense, when you factor in that his reckless, destroy-anything-necessary and win-or-die-trying attitude suits the wild and powerful nature of spiral energy to a tee, along with him being the first to recognize what runs the ganmen, meaning he was probably very familiar with it to begin with.

• • When this troper saw Kamina had come back, he had two thoughts. The first was, of course, "a REAL MAN never dies, even when he's killed!", and the second was, "Holy shit, they're saved by Spiral Jesus!".

Kamina is God

The Judeo-Christian one, to be precise. Consider:

• • He refers to himself as Kamina-sama, just one syllable away from Kami-sama.
  • He's the driving force behind the Gurren-dan, before his Heroic Sacrifice forced them to become better by themselves.
  • His first disciple is named Simon (The first apostle Peter is also known as Simon-Peter)
  • When needed, he manifests as a towering humanoid figure made of fire (Appeared as a column of fire at night to guide Moses and pals out of Egypt)
  • Rule of Cool: You know you want this to be true.
  • Who is it you say I am?
  • Not to mention he dies chaste.
  • There's no indication of a mother. For all we know, his father ended up having him out of sheer will.
• Let me just cite here: "Kamina isn't Jesus, he's John the Baptist, the crazy motherfucker who did what he damn well pleased and who taught the young savior everything he needed to know."
• Kamina as Jesus? Please, that's obvious...
• One problem with this: Kamina is Chaotic Good, YHWH is (probably) Lawful Good. Then again, Jesus isn't one to obey the rules...

Spiral Races are attempting to contact us, possibly setting the events of TTGL in motion.

All the proof I need.

• This troper here agrees to that. From what is in this article, A giant light-blue spiral light appeared in the sky and GREEN-BLUE SPIRALING LIGHT Shot out from it! Now let's see what is the power of Spiral Energy and what color is Chou Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the movie...

The Ganmen were built by Tony Stark

Because only one man could be Badass enough to do so.

• Did he do it in a cave? With a box of scraps?
• Also, does this mean that his arc reactor uses Spiral Power?
• Tony... Stark... Arc reactor powered by Spiral Po- MY GODS! QUICKLY, TO THE FANFICTION PLACES!
• NO! TONY STARK IS LORD GENOME!(HE WAS EVIL IN SOME MARVEL COMICS)

The town of Kurôzu-cho is an example of what happens when a Spiral Nemesis Rises to power

In the manga Uzumaki, the entire town is...infected is a good word, by spirals. Particularly, all the spirals run inward, perverting the people and inflicting Nightmare Fuel that few of the townspeople are able to escape from.

The Opening Sequence of Episode 1 is the Bad Ending for the series.

The introductory sequence of episode 1 prior to the title card, featuring Captain Garlock about to take on all the heavenly lights in the sky, is the bad ending for the series, wherein Simon, instead of listening to the pleas of the Anti-Spiral, goes on to continue his space travels and becomes the Spiral Nemesis. The last shot of the scene before the series title and episode title is the last moments in the universe before Simon destroys everywhere and everywhen in Space-time with Chouginga Gurren Lagann and its Maelstrom Cannon.

• This interview says that the opening was originally supposed to foreshadow the ending. Along the way, it was Retcon'd into an Alternate Universe where Simon does become the Spiral Nemesis.
• The obvious trigger of his action is Nia's death. How can he give up his power and authority now—now that only he can set things right! Even if it means amassing enough mass and energy to risk the gravitational collapse of the universe. Even if it means leading the Dai-Gurren-Dan into war with every living being. NOTHING is impossible to the truly audacious!

The Prologue to Episode 1 takes place between the end of Episode 27 and the Distant Finale epilogue.

After the final battle with the Anti-Spiral, Earth makes contact with the other Spiral races who had been kept oppressed until Simon's victory. Of course, as Simon learns after the Time Skip, that doesn't mean that they all are grateful. Since Viral is taking the Cho-Ginga Dai-Gurren to a peace conference in the epilogue, 20 years after the previous scene, there's plenty of time for the other Spirals to unite against the Earthlings and plenty of time for the old hero, Simon, to fight once again for his friends and world to live in peace. The parallel between Humanoid!Boota's line "all the lights in the heavens are our enemies" in the prologue and Simon saying "all the lights in the heavens are our friends" might also support this theory.

• Maybe it's not all the spiral races uniting against humanity, but a single, evil spiral race that nevertheless gained the power to manufacture vast forces through the use of Spiral Energy. If the entire universe of spiral races unites against humanity, then humanity must be evil, and that takes us down the Bad Ending route.
  • Then again, Humans Are Bastards...

The Prologue to Episode 1 is part of Boota's fantasy realm in Episode 26.

Boota's heart's desire is To Become Human and fight alongside Simon. This is part of the Anti-Spiral's fantasy-vision (TM), which explains some inconsistencies, such as Boota's voice, Simon/Captain Garlock's attitude, and its apparently never happening in the "real" parts of the series. Also note that the prologue doesn't concern itself with who the Dai-Gurren Dan is fighting, only that they are fighting. Dream logic, and it also meshes with the Anti-Spiral's impression of the humans.

The Prologue to Episode 1 takes place eons before the series starts.

Sure, it looks like Simon and Human!Boota, but it's really a group of Spiral Knights fighting against the Anti-Spirals eons before the series began. The Anti-Spirals confirm that Spirals have been fighting and losing against them; there's even a graveyard of nigh-identical Gurren-Laganns to prove it. When Spirals get awesome enough to travel the Anti-Spiral universe, they tend to evolve to a similar form to the most awesome things ever: The main cast.

• • More specifically, the leader of the Spiral Knights shown is Lord Genome right before the defeat that would force him to become a Knight Templar. The Cathedral Terra was his ship, after all.
    • No, that's no good as a theory. If you listen to the prologue, you can clearly hear Lord Genome's voice from offscreen. He's not Captain Garlock.
      • That was just the narrator. He just happens to have the same voice actor as Lord Genome.
  • This theory is supported by Parallel Works 8, which shows a young Lord Genome (who looks very similar to adult Simon) standing in the exact same place on the exact same ship, even using the exact same pan out from its top along its body to show it off. Of course, this wouldn't explain the flags in the prolog with Kamina's glasses, so it's more likely they just liked the imagery and reused it, but...

The Prologue to Episode 1 is Kamina's father's war against the Anti-Spirals.

In Kamina's flashback, we briefly glimpse Kamina's father. If you look carefully, you'll see that he has blue hair, like the captain in the prologue. Also, Kamina's cloak (and by extension, his logo, which comes from the back of the cloak) once belonged to his father; he finds it on the skeleton of his father. Kamina's father led a similar rebellion against Lord Genome (and left Kamina in Jeeha Village); instead of killing Lord Genome, Lord Genome survived and warned him about the Anti-Spirals and possibly allied with him. Kamina's father then led an immediate attack on the Anti-Spirals, lost, and fled back to Earth, where he died, possibly because he was betrayed by Lord Genome and his Beastmen.

The Prologue to Episode 1 is the Awesome Ending.

While still one of the many possible realities, the one in the prologue was not the Bad Ending, but the most epic of them all. TTGL simply began on a path in which this ending was possible; due to constant branching of the timeline, we followed the path to the Bittersweet Ending. We have yet to see the true Bad Ending, or the true Good Ending for that matter.

• Particularly since we hear both Viral and Leeron's voices speaking, then see a more adult human!Boota, and then see what appears to be Simon.

The guy from the Prologue, Kamina's father, and Simon...all ALL THE SAME GUY!

We know that Spiral Energy can affect both space and 'time'. Now take a look at Future Simon...'LOOK' at him! Does he even look different than Kamina's father? There are only minor differences in their clothing: in terms of build and general appearance, they're all but identical. Indeed, one could say that Kamina's dad is simply a slightly older-looking version of Future Simon. Now, let's posit an Ontological Paradox here: Simon gets his hands on this Spiral Energy stuff; after that distant finale nonsense, he regains his awesome and goes on to fight "all the stars in the heavens". He is defeated and knocked back in time, along with the Gunmen in the Gurren Brigade, and eventually ends up being the very thing that triggers the Anti-Spiral attack on Earth. He later fathers Kamina before returning to the surface to die, possibly by suicide. This creates an interesting situation because the Gunmen, and Lagann itself, now have no actual origin...hence an ontological paradox, a time loop wherein the origin of the loop is either inobvious or impossible to determine. This, if you think about it, goes well with the infinite spiral theme of the show.

• This makes a frightening amount of sense. After all, they guy from the prologue does say that the attack he's about to use will twist the fabric of spacetime. It explains why Lagann is under Jeeha village as well. The timing might not be right for him to be the reason the Anti-Spiral attacked Earth, but otherwise it works awfully well.
  • It helps that Parallel Works 8 shows that Lord Genome found his Lagann-equivalent, as well, instead of just building it from scratch. Presumably, Simon brought back the dozens of other Lagann units as well.
  • In the manga adaptation, we get a better view of Kamina's father. He does look like old Simon.
• Then would it also make sense to say that Rossiu is Father Magi if he was there as well? They have similar voices in the dub epilouge and he even looks like Father Magi, too. It would also give a logical explanation as to why he stays in his village. It would be to stall Rossiu from commiting suicide until Simon and Kinone arived. Because if Rossiu commited suicide, that would create another paradox. He could also have created their holy book himself to use as a tool to help stall Rossiu. This, however, would create another paradox because Rossiu should be dead.

The guy in the prologue is Kamina in an AU where he didn't die.

Kamina would have defeated Lord Genome and continued his reach for the heavens and acted on what he told Simon in episode 6. To reach the moon. Where he would find the Terra Cathedral and transformed it, inevitably leading to him riding in his battleship across the universe battling everyone he could find and exploring; until the rest of the Spiral races believed that he would destroy them. Of course Kamina would be crazy(and hotblooded enough) enough to declare war on everyone and everything, thus leading to " All the lights in the heavens are our enemy..."

The guy in the prologue is future Ryoma from Getter Robo.

Think about it. When we see him in Shin Getter Robo he's piloting an ENORMOUS ship with a face on the front (that can also transform into a giant robot), causes lots and lots of explosions and is literally the enemy of everything in the universe. In Āḥ, it's revealed that he's gone a bit crazy with the Getter Rays and is now on a crusade to evolve the shit out of the universe. Not to mention the prologue guy's line "we'll smash them along with space-time itself" sounds a lot like his own line: "leave it to me. I'll crush them, along with the moon!"

The guy in the prologue is Lordgenome, right after he first turns evil.

Any similarities to the main cast is a result of identical descendants.

• Actually no, we see Lordgenome taking the same stance and ordering similar commands in Parallel works 8. He looked entirely different then, no features between Lordgenome and GA Rlock look similar in any way.

The guy in the prologue is Simon, in an AU where Kamina died in the first episode.

The prologue was a result of Simon not knowing how to activate Lagann, resulting in most of Giha Village getting trashed and the majority of the population killed, Kamina included, before Yoko can take it down with her rifle. Simon is grief-stricken, to an even greater extent than when Kamina died in canon. When he figures out how to activate Lagann, he vows revenge on the Gunmen, embarking on a crusade to destroy them all. Among the way he gathers followers, half terrified of him, half in awe of his inhuman determination. However, he never meets Nia, and never snaps out of his misery. Eventually, he becomes so hardened he pretty much lives for battle. He goes on to challenge Teppelin. Many more people die, most prominently because of Nia's absence, but Simon still manages to struggle to Lordgenome. They face off; however, this time, Simon goes absolutely batshit insane on Lordgenome, tearing him to itty bits. After the battle is done, Simon goes around visiting the villages, bringing them to Teppelin, not bothering to change its name. Once he's got everyone there, he wanders off, not coming back for seven years. Viral never shows up; Simon killed him in their first meeting. Later, after the timeskip, he's back in town just as the population cap is reached. He's overjoyed to transfer his battle-lust to the Anti-Spirals. The Arc-Gurren is found, just as in canon, however without the presence of Lordgenome's head they never find out about the Moon really being the Cathedral Terra until after it's crashed into the Earth's surface. Simon takes control of it, then goes on a bloodthirsty rampage against the Anti-Spirals. Things unfold much as they do in canon, except that the remainder of the human race is onboard the Cathedral Terra. Just as normal, Simon faces off against the Anti-Spiral, this time alone. After ridding the universe of the Anti-Spiral, the Super-Galaxy Dai Gurren (not actually called this, since Kamina never named Gurren) travels the universe, looking for a place to re-settle. They come across another Spiral world; Simon offloads them there, while taking on several new crew members. One of them is Boota, in his spiral form. They sail around for several years, visiting Spiral homeworlds, and generally looking for the next fight, becoming increasingly violent as time passes. Eventually, though, the other Spiral races become wary of Simon's power. They amass a great army to defeat him. This leads to the prologue scene, where Simon says that "All the stars in the sky are my enemies" referring both to the massive fleet come against him and the fact that he was now an enemy of all the Spiral races on all the worlds. So, he activates the Spiral Nemesis, tearing the fabric of reality a new one. The entire timestream gets tossed back to before anything happened, with one exception: Boota. Boota gets thrown back with Simon, only with all his memories intact. So when Simon goes to try and use Lagann, Boota is able to get him to use his Core Drill in the slot. Thus, Kamina doesn't die (initially), leading to the canon events.

• Holy shit. You, sir, are a badass.
  • Original poster: I liked it so much I fanfic'd it. Read here.

The prologue is an alternate universe where Simon never found Nia

Simon eventually got out of his depression itself, and managed to beat Lordgenome and the human extermination system, which is why he has the Super-Galaxy Dai-Gurren. However, without Nia's calming influence, he became a very dark antihero after Kamina's death and without Nia and her ring, they can not go to the Anti-Spiral's home world so they are fighting massive battles in normal space and maybe it's me, but Simon seems to be exploding with sexual frustration.

• You need to read Sound of Pulling Heaven Down if you haven't already. Really, a few changes here and there and you have the backstory of said fanfiction.

Lorgenome is Gene Starwind

Think about it. It makes PERFECT SENSE. And it explains everything.

Lagann was made by the Anti-Spirals

And it was a trap too. Think about it. There is a swarm of Lagann's in the condensed Space-Time Ocean. That means that nearly every race that attacked the Anti-Spiral's somehow gained access to identical machinery. The Anti-Spirals made Lagann, sending them out to every Spiral Race as part of their trap. Any Spiral with enough Spiral Power to operate a Lagann would be considered a threat. At this point, Lagann would subconsciously manipulate them into seeking out the Anti-Spiral's, where they could be destroyed. When Kamina died, Lagann stopped working because Simon was in a state of absolute despair, and assumed it's purpose was fulfilled. Once Simon manifested Spiral Power again, it chased him down to complete it's mission.

• This is supported by Parallel Works 8, where we see where they come from explicitly—they're dropped from the sky during an Anti-Spiral attack, allowing Lord Genome to find one.

Getter Rays are a form of Spiral Energy, but intelligent.

Corollary: Getter Emperor is the very definition of the Spiral Nemesis. It's described as having the physical diameter of the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Given the malleable size of TTGL, Getter Emperor might be bigger.

• In some Getter Robo shows/manga, the Getter Rays are sentient and are working to influence humanity towards some unknown goal. This usually involves making bigger and bigger robots. Sound familiar?
  • The Getter Rays are the embodiment of evolution and survival, like humans themselves they'll continue to grow and advance regardless of the consequences. The Getter Emperor starts off the size of Mars after Shin Getter Robo combines with it and continued to grow as the story progressed until the author sadly passed away.
• In the New Getter Robo series, the ultimate villains are basically Anti-Spiral monkey gods except they only go after the energy itself, not the species that uses it.
  • As are the enemies in the manga, though they do try to suppress the race using it. Funnily enough, the AFC's first action when humanity's Getter Rays use got out of hand was to try and Colony Drop the Earth with their space ship...
    • I think we can agree that all of this is probably because Imaishi is a massive Getter fan, and lifted a huge number of its concepts.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the Anti-Evangelion

Evangelion was such a successful Deconstruction that it became the new standard, bringing despair as the root feeling for many mecha series. TTGL is Gainax's attempt to restore hope.

• Theming: NGE is a deconstruction, TTGL parodies and thrives on cliches as homages.
  • a.k.a Reconstruction. With NGE they tore it down and with TTGL they rebuilt it.
• Characters:
  • Shinji and Simon both pilot powerful emotion-bound mecha. The main mecha of each series, though several in both have the potential to have that emphasis.
  • Blue haired mentor: Misato and Kamina, who both act as surrogate family figures. Both had a glimpse at the another world ahead of many others and were abandoned by their fathers at this glimpse - Misato in Antarctica, and Kamina on the surface. Both pick up a trinket from their fathers - Misato the necklace, Kamina the cape.
  • Red haired hyper girl and rival/love interest: Asuka and Yoko, mostly earlier on. Yoko wanted to take Simon's spot in Lagann. Each was the most experienced fighter of the three children of each show in the beginning.
  • Creepy artificial daughter of the plotter: Rei/Nia. Lord Genome is a Gendo figure, but the plotter continues on after he is redeemed when it is revealed that Nia is also the creation of the Anti-Spirals. And guess what both of them try to do.
    • Nia is easily the most obvious of the Expies this WMG is about. They even look alike, especially after Yoko cuts Nia's hair.
      • Three Words: Giant Naked Rei Nia
  • Zen Survivor dark figure/father of a protagonist: Gendo and Lord Genome, both of whose goals are tied to their "hell": Gendo to continue abusing the power to revive the dead, Lord Genome to keep others from following his path.
• Similar plot points: The creation of the prototype (Gurren Lagann), and the copies being inferior. Heroic BSOD of the main character after the death/near death of a close friend. Splitting into alternate universes and coming back. The only difference is that Shinji ends up numb, broken and on the verge of suicide, while Simon snaps out of it, Takes A Level In Badass, and becomes even more awesome than Kamina.
  • Does the Instrumentality sequence at the end of End of Evangelion happen in reverse in episode 26 in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where the spirit of Kamina rescues the characters bodily from the Anti-Spiral's illusory world?
  • The Anti-Spirals already created giant robots of their own to fight against... something (not sure what). They slowly realized that the more they fought, the faster they doomed themselves. They gave in to dispair and Instrumentalized themselves, becoming an all-powerful being that could bend the very fabric of reality.
    • They may be the very individuals who remained Instrumentalized as LCL.
• * Half the friggin' North American dub cast.
  • This can be explained as ADV having a sense of humor about this sort of deal; also, Gainax were not innocent of this crime ether. Nia's Japanese VA was the voice of Nono in Diebuster.
  • Alas, ADV Films' financial troubles and Bandai's opportunism have eliminated this point. Doesn't change who ADV was going to cast.
• In Kamina's "Don't believe..." speeches to Simon, the verb translated as "believe," which occurs three or four times in each, is shinjiru. If you weren't thinking of Shinji already, they don't want you to miss the parallel. (What? It's the WMG page.)
• All the parallel universes at the end allows for such possibly canon spin-offs as... everyone going to a high school together.
  • This one isn't a guess.
• Don't forget that they both have movies that retell the end of the series, and in doing so play up the associated trope (Mind Screw in The End of Evangelion and Crazy Awesome in Lagann-hen.)
• short version: YES!
• Does this mean the Lighter and Softer parallel universe is the past of the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann universe?

Adding on to this, the series and Neon Genesis Evangelion take place in the same multiverse.

Or, to be more precise, the Lighter and Softer Alternate Universe seen in Episode 26. The over-all more normal and happier universe, combined with the existence of the Angels, could very well bring forth the likes of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The first Anti-Spiral war could've been set sometime between the 21st and 31st century. The Anti-Spirals may have had something similar to the Instrumentality happen to them, or even harness the Angels in order to gain a Hive Mind.

Gainax intentionally applied their head-trippiness to the beginning of the series instead of the end.

Wanting to expand on their reputation for confusion, instead of a Gainax Ending, the studio made Gurren-Lagann with a Gainax Opening which is completely inexplicable in the context of the series. See the first three five seven entries on this page, all of which are about 30 seconds of animation.

• Besides, don't you find it curious that Studio Gainax, a studio that insists on doing confusing, cryptic, downer endings, did a simple, straightforward, and fairly happy ending?
  • No. The entire show was born out of them being exhausted with constant depression. The entire show is supposed to be different from their standard stuff.

The laws of physics in TTGL consist solely of the Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny.

To quote (with some changes) its entry into Calling Your Attacks: Pre-Time Skip, the only time that an attack's full name isn't shouted (Certain Kill Giga Drill Breaker) and accompanied with a In the Name of the Moon-esque motivational speech, it fails epically. Compare the first time, the Heroic BSOD reboot, and the phail.

• Whilst it may seem attractive to think that the Rule of Cool is the only mechanism operating in TTGL, it's clear that the Rule of Funny exerts a significant force as well.
  • And, of course, Everything's Better with Spinning.
• Your citations of Calling Your Attacks fail to take into account that despite Lagann Impact being the full name of the other big attack used in that battle, it too failed. Depressing though it may be that the Rule of Cool failed in that aspect, it also worked out - Lord Genome blocked it by grabbing it and subsequently detonating the Rasengan's arm. Hmmm …
  • That was Lord Genome, Dangerously Genre Savvy character that he is, using his own Badass Rule of Cool-ery.
• Or, more simply, there is only one Law of Physics: If it looks cool, Sure Why Not.

Simon is The Pope.

While more than a few people out there have put out the comparison between Kamina and Jesus (there's a "Kamina Died for your Sins" motivator. Plus, Kamina's side was pierced by the Lance of Thymilph), the superficial similarities between Simon and St. Peter are far more striking. Consider:

• They both have the same [first] name (St. Peter is frequently referred to as Simon Peter)
• They are both connected to earth (Simon calls himself "The Digger" while Peter literally means "rock")
• They are recognized as the spiritual successor to their respective "churches"
• In the Gospels and Catholic tradition, St. Peter was entrusted the keys to Heaven, and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against him. Our Simon possesses the key (the Core Drill) to perhaps the most powerful weapon in the universe and uses it to overcome powerful enemies.
  • The passage in which Jesus tells Simon Peter this (Matthew 16:18-19) immediately follows Jesus asking "Who do you say that I am?"
    • Which led to this

Alternatively, Simon is God.

Kamina preached that Simon kept him strong, and keeps saying how badass and dependable Simon is, and without him he would've died.

• This requires an Arian christology (Kaminology?)

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann is an Alternate Universe of Martian Successor Nadesico

Consider:

• Kamina is no one more than Gai Daigouji with the fortune of being born in a Super Robot universe, so he gets a properly heroic life and death.
• Simon is a shy young man in a demeaned but necessary and skill-intensive job who lost both his parents at a young age, and who can teleport. The only difference between him and Akito is age, number of love interests, and when they met their respective mentor figures. Also, Simon's teleporting doesn't require the squeeing voices of millions of shippers as a power source.
• Yoko is Ryoko with a rifle instead of an Aestivalis. Just ask Tiffany Grant.
• Stick a mustache and some glasses on Leeron and tell me he isn't Mr. Prospector.
• Dari and Ruri, Gimmy and Haley , Rossiu and Akatsuki (with very different upbringings, admittedly)...
• Nia and Yurika are a bit of a stretch, but they are both utter space cadets who nonetheless show remarkable courage and pluck on the battlefield; both are ditzy to varying degrees, and they both get kidnapped and co-opted by teleporting Men Behind The Men.
• The list goes on, with many of these being supported by the translators' love of Actor Allusion (even more so than in the Evangelion connections, mentioned above).
• As stated above, curse you and your legal team, ADV Films.
  • Alternatively, all these connections are friendly Shout Outs from Gainax back to Studio Xebec, in return for the friendly Evangelion homages in Nadesico.
• As an added bonus, if you take the Grand Unifying Guesses theory that TTGL is a sequel to Neon Genesis Evangelion, this makes Martian Successor Nadesico the sequel to an Evangelion Elseworld...my money's on Angelic Days.

The Anti-Spiral's base of operations is, in fact, the Galaxy Cauldron.

This means Gurren Lagann takes place well after the end of Sailor Moon. This also explains why Kamina and the recently fallen members of the Gurren Dan were able to snap Simon out of the anti-spiral's dream world. This also would mean that, in all probability, the Anti-spiral's world is the world the human representation of chaos, Sailor Chaos, would be born on.

The Anti-spiral's realization of the dangers of Spiral power came from Sailor Chaos' reign of terror, which was stopped by Sailor Cosmos, who became inspired by Sailor Moon's willingness to fight during the Stars arc of Sailor Moon (the manga) to fight instead of run away. The Anti-spirals, now afraid of such power, become the Anti-spirals of GL, use their avatar to promptly kill Sailor Cosmos, and attack Earth, wiping out a good deal of what's left and leaving the one remaining knight, Lord Genome, in charge.

• • This also meens that Teppilin/Kamina City was Crystal Tokyo at some point.
  • And that Nia is the reincarnation of the dreaded Sailor Chaos. Makes sense, except... Well, we'll leave the rest to the Sailor Moon page.

The events of Gurren Lagann are a chronicle of the distant past of the Pokémon universe.

Consider: Boota evolved (even if only in his mind) from his mole-pig form into a Cute Shotaro Boy in Cool Sunglasses. Since none of the alternate universes The Will uses against the Dai-Gurren-dan appear actively impossible with the series' physics, this implies that Boota could do this, or at least something similar, in the real world. (Presumably, if push comes to shove, he could do so again with Simon's help.) In any case, the chain of events is as follows: After Simon's (long-delayed) death, the pretty-much-immortal mole-pig goes on to sire a numberless legion of Spiral-powered hybrid creatures. The galaxy unites briefly, but separates once more when they recognize that their expansion is leading towards the Spiral Nemesis. A trackless time passes. Boota's hyper-powered descendants, born with the capacity to retain enormous amounts of Spiral power, evolve at warp speed, speciating into countless different varieties of creature, many of them near-sentient. Humanity eventually abandons the form of Ganmen and much of their dependence on Spiral power. Meanwhile, the Beastmen, unable to regenerate any longer, go extinct. Millenia pass, and the world- already very different from present-day Earth- regrows and reshapes itself further. Even the Great Gurren-dan is relegated to little more than legend, and eventually forgotten altogether.

Pokemon evolve the way they do because of their inherent Spiral energy - without invoking its nature as a super-powerful form of Applied Phlebotinum. Simply put, Pokemon store Spiral power as they fight and evolve- generally beyond their control- when they've accrued enough. A strong-willed human can help them suppress this drive, either through intense focus or Everstones- which are bits of The Will's unit, Grand Zamboa, still rich with Spiral-suppressing energy. Debris from both units rained down on Earth after the battle in Super Spiral Space; consequently the Element Stones can be assumed to come from TTGL- or Chouginga, in the case of Moon Stones. Rare Candy is crystallized Boota poo- and it's not REALLY candy. As soon as it's given to a Pokemon, it disintegrates to release a small amount of Spiral energy.

Ash's Pikachu, incidentally, is a direct male-line descendant of Boota himself (how else does a Shock Rat get THAT level of Magical Bullshit Power?). Mole-pigs in general become such varied creatures as Swinub, Piloswine, Diglett, Dugtrio and Sandshrew. James and Brock are descendants of Leeron, who, rather than forgo his status as Eternal Queer, had a test-tube baby to give him a family line. Brock inherited the lovable pervert tendencies; James received most of Leeron's Camp Gay-ness. There is simply no other way James could be THAT fabulous.
Ash's Squirtle is the reincarnation of no less than Kamina himself.

Ironically, the greatest concentration of Spiral power is in the fast-evolving bugs, with Beedrill the very height. Beedrill even has DRILLS FOR HANDS.

• Extrapolating from the above, the Anti-Spirals captured Arceus, Dialga and Palkia (three of the few Pokemon that weren't Boota's descendents), using them to create their universe and manipulate everything within to their will. Boota, still immortal, eventually became Mew, the predecessor of all Pokemon. Its clone Mewtwo not only inhereted Boota's incredible Spiral Power but is also able to harness it better because of his more humanoid form. Horn Drill is a one-hit-KO attack because it's a drill (duh); a similar move, Horn Attack, involves no drilling and is thus relatively worthless.
  • Similarly, Drill Peck is over twice as powerful as the standard Peck.
    • Also extrapolating (this time also from Fanon) from the above, Spinda is immortal.
    • I fully support this addendum.
• Let's develop this further. If element stones are fragments of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and therefore are all solid bits of Spiral Energy, why do they not work on all Pokemon - and a particular type of stone may work on one, but not another? Also, why would Butterfree have just as highly concentrated Spiral Power as Beedrill? Well, at later levels, it has to exercise kill-before-killed tactics and rely on its powerful Psychic skills . . . which are basically weaponized willpower.
  • Evolution Stones don't work on everyone because, well- evolution's funny like that. That's even true in the real world (especially as it pertains to selective pressure), nevermind Pokemon.
• There's no telling how deep this rabbit hole goes: Lord Genome had a Pikachu.
  • There's also Nidorino/Nidorina, Mew, and possibly Pidgey in that photo.
• If Pikachu is a direct-line male heir to Boota, and Squirtle is Kamina, what does that say about Ash?! Kid Hero, Idiot Hero, able to tell the rules of reality to fuck off whenever he and Pikachu want to do something, he must be Simon reincarnated. Squirtle/Kamina came to Ash at the beginning of his adventure, when he needed help, and left (this time without the Heroic Sacrifice) when Ash no longer needed him around. The glasses worn by the other Squirtles around him must have been references to Simon's goggles, in an attempt to get closer to their Crazy Awesome leader.
• I'd say that Spoink is probably the closest strain to Boota - not only are they pigs, but they're attached to a spiral!
  • With Black/White having just hit, we have further links. Boota's lineage still includes Piloswine and etc- but Drillbur and Excadrill are his most direct descendants (well, aside from Pikachu somehow). They even get GIGA DRILL BREAKER, for Arceus' sake. Also, Skyla is Yoko's direct descendant. This isn't even a question. Seriously. Golett and Golurk are powered by Spiral Energy directly and may even be related to Ganmen; perhaps they're tsukumogami of the forgotten mecha? Also, there's the bit where the oldest ruin in Unova is the Dragon*Spiral* tower. This may be less relevant, of course, but it's at least worth noting.
  • Holy crap, I just noticed the spirals on Golett and Golurk, you might be on to something here. Nevermind the fact that Golett evolves from a robot with stumpy limbs, like Gurren after Kamina managed to break both legs and arms immediately after stealing it, to a robot with more human limb proportions, like Gurren Lagann.
    • And they have spirals on them.
• Expanding on this general theory, Spiritomb may be fragments of the Anti-Spiral Hive Mind. They are 108 spirits sealed away in Odd Keystones (which may be fragments of the Anti-Spiral homeworld), and have a backwards spiral in their left eye. They were said to have been sealed away for a bunch of misdeeds long ago; what if said misdeeds were their various campaigns against the Spiral races? Also, they are less intelligent since they are only made of 108 spirits, rather than billions; after all, being torn apart like that mind raped them into an extremely destructive animal-like state.
  • Cyrus may be an attempt to restore the Anti-Spiral race. Cyrus is The Stoic, and wants to remake the universe to be without emotion. This would stunt Spiral Power permanetly. If he isn't the reincarnation of the Anti-Spirals, he's a secret project.
• Certain characters of both anime are related:
  • Ash Ketchum is the descendant of Simon. That's why Ash is the chosen one and beloved by legendaries. Simon probably had a kid with Yoko or something(they are close, and Nia died.)
  • Viral is none other than Tobias. Why does Tobias have legendaries? Because Viral has had eons to harness his badassery, and was there when Pokemon first appeared.
  • Yoko is the ancestor of May, since how else could she be that stacked at age 10?
  • Through sperm donation, James and Harley are descended from Leeron. How else could they be that fabulous?
  • Brock is descended either from Kamina's father, or Kamina himself caused an immaculate conception(for he is Jesus). Why else is Brock a Lovable Sex Maniac and Handsome Lech?
• The Aura Guardians were a sect of Spiral users created by Simon in his later life. Aura is a special kind of Spiral Power that cannot create too much matter (therefore preventing the Spiral Nemesis from occurring), so it looks blue instead of green. In addition to guarding over the world, the Guardians also focused on sealing away the Spiritomb race (see above).
• At some point, the Moon was lost, and they had to replace it with the Cathedral Terra. It became the new Moon, and was abandoned. Eventually, any remaning life mutated/evolved into Clefairy.
• Mewtwo is more powerful than Mew. Clearly this is due to being better at harnessing Spiral Power, being more humanoid and all.

Gurren Lagann takes place in the same universe as Dragon Ball

The Anti-Spirals tried a different approach on Dragonball's earth and managed to seal away most of humanity's Spiral Power. Saiyans also possessed limited Spiral potential, but they were still a primitive race when the war with the Anti-Spirals took place and managed to escape their notice.The reason saiyan/human hybrids like Gohan possess so much "hidden power" is that the addition of saiyan DNA allows them to partially bypass the Anti-Spirals' restrictions, giving them access to Spiral energy.

Dragonball's moon possessed a Human Elimination System as well, set to a higher population limit because of the planet's lower potential; but the moon was destroyed by Master Roshi, and the Anti-Spirals did not realise this. Blutz/Bruits waves are a form of Spiral power. This also explains why Broli, the Legendary Super Saiyan, has green attacks. Saiyans are empowered by the moon because of the radiant Spiral energy from the HES.

• Also, name three other series that have such a stupidly ridiculous love of powering up.

Gurren Lagann takes place in the same universe as Heroes

On a planet with Spiral potential even more limited than Dragonball, restrictors built into the moon have begun to fail. Around a rare celestial alignment involving the moon eclipsing the sun, it temporarily loses all power, allowing certain humans to awaken Spiral energy. Naturally, one of the most powerful Spiral users is a guy from Japan who wears goggles glasses.

TTGL takes place in the same multiverse as His Dark Materials

After being defeated by Simon, the Anti-Spiral leader somehow manages to survive, fleeing to another universe. He creates a race of "angels" and begins taking over worlds systematically. He has been weakened dramatically, though. Dust is Spiral power, and the Subtle Knife is the knife that will PIERCE THE HEAVENS!!! It was reforged into a vaugely drill-like form, but the text didn't specify that.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a prequel to the F-Zero anime

After relations are opened with the Spirals on other planets, the F-Zero races are created and draw contestants from all over the universe. Simon, lacking a purpose in life, decides to join under the false identity of Captain Falcon, trading his goggles/sunglasses for a visor. Watch this clip and say it isn't true. Not only is a lot of spinning involved, but who else could pull off that punch? Also, Epilogue!Simon and Captain Falcon have the same face and voice.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is compatible with any universe/multiverse.

Yes, even Real Life(just see the Mind Screw that is quantum physics.)

Lagann was originally a mining tool

...turned into a weapon. concider this: it makes drills which have no other purpose (appearantly) than digging through things, it was found underground (got stuck, too hard to excavate?) it is powered by another digging tool as shown when Simon was captured by Guame, and the shutters could be installed to protect the user against falling rocks.

• All true, except for the "Stuck" part. Lagann would never get stuck.

Viral was always immortal; if Lord Genome did anything, it was to give him a faint connection to Spiral energy.

Consider how many catastrophes Viral survives repeatedly- the most extreme being during the battle ending in Adiane's death. He manages to survive the almost complete destruction of his submarine Ganmen while deep underwater, but the porpoise-beastmen were presumably killed. Clearly, Viral is a tough customer, but that borders on the miraculous, especially given that this anime is usually pretty good about avoiding Disney Death. Viral may have well been immortal from birth; he himself bragged about his unusual skills and just never noticed. After all, it probably isn't as if he lost very often before meeting Kamina.
If Lord Genome did anything to Viral, it wasn't making him immortal, although he may have claimed it was.

Viral also shows some unusual traits for Beastmen. If his experiences in the Lotus Eater Machine section of the next-to-last episode are any indication, he may long for a family and children. His first joint attack with Simon also causes a massive explosion far greater than Simon's prior attempts. Perhaps Viral, while probably not capable of directly drawing upon Spiral energy and probably still sterile, has more resonance than normal for a Beastman and acts as a natural amplifier for others's Spiral power?

• Viral couldn't have always been immortal, at least not in the way he was displayed to be after the time skip. When we get to the prison scene, we see Viral heal just shy of instantly. While we only see him injured for a short while in the beginning (you could just take that back to Cowboy Bebop level healing speed), he's obviously covered in the scars of his pre-altered life span. If he'd always been what he became, his skin would be perfectly smooth. He has high survival skills; but that could also be a lot of things. An efficient protection system in Enki, ability to breath under water (he is mostly shark, after all, it's not out of the realm of possibility) which allowed him despite injury to make it to the shore, and just the dumb luck that is characteristic through the series. More than anything, though, it probably just has to do with plot device (it's really hard to have a consistent villain, especially one who's supposed to do a Heel Face Turn, if they die immediately). I'm not saying his survival ability isn't odd, just that there's enough for him not to be that way. I think the last paragraph is intriguing, though, and it's possible.

Lordgenome's, Guame's, and most importantly Viral's immortality was due to Spiral Energy

By the time Simon had been piloting Gurren Lagann by himself, it had been running entirely on Spiral Energy (as it no longer needed an electrical charge like the Beastmen's Ganmen). Viral had the ability to pilot Gurren because he had been given the ability to use Spiral Energy by Lordgenome. This unlocked in him the need to have a family ("Love changes the universe!"). However, he still couldn't control his Spiral Energy nor did he know he had it, so he was unable to help Simon initially when transforming Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann. Fortunately, Kamina appeared in Viral's fantasy, and when Viral snapped out of it, he gained a Core Drill, signifying his unlocking of Spiral Energy.

Guame and Lordgenome's immortality being based on Spiral Energy is more obvious, though. Guame had originally been an Armadillo, therefore he must've been a spiral being in the first place. Lordgenome just amplified his and Guame's Spiral Power to keep them alive.

Viral is the last surviving Jagermonster.

He resembles a Jagermonster, he's incredibly tough, and he wants his helmet back because of his genetic propensity for Nice Hats.

• Following on from this clanks were distant precursors to ganmen.
  • Naturally this means that Kamina is what you get when a spark gets no technical training, the raw badassery of a spark so powerful is sufficient that things just work as he expects them to, even when, as in the case of jamming one robot into another's head it has no good reason to.

Enki's helmet is an Amulet of Concentrated Awesome made by Lordgenome for Viral.

The helmet was designed to increase the Spiral Power of anyone who piloted the Gunman who wore it, as well as granting Spiral Power to those without it. Unfortunately, Viral grew to depend on it too much, so when Kamina took it and had it assimilated into Lagann, he began his infamous Badass Decay. Since Viral had the helmet for a long time, he retained some of its influence, and could hold his own against Gurren Lagann without it. This influence completely faded by the time Viral faced Simon in the Enkidudu, so he got curbstomped HARD.

After being assimilated into Lagann, the helmet augmented Lagann's Spiral Power, which, in turn, augmented the helmet's power. This infinite loop of power explains why Simon's Spiral Power reaches such great levels, culminating in the Final Battle. He permanently absorbs the power, however, as a side effect of being a member of a Spiral race. It's also why he surrendered the Gurren Lagann in the end - he would gain too much Spiral Power and become a living Spiral Nemesis.

When Viral was recruited by Simon as Gurren's pilot, the helmet recognized Viral as its original owner, and gave him the lion's share of its power, undoing his Badass Decay - and then some.

So why was Lordgenome able to defeat the Gurren Lagann with his Lazengann, despite Simon having the helmet? Lordgenome had a more powerful helmet made for the Lazengann to replace the one from his Spiral Knight days, just in case Enki's helmet was stolen or Viral rebelled against him.

The Anti-Spirals are the Instrumentalized humans from NGE.

They used to be genetic creatures, but they gave up their individuality in order to survive as a collective. Their giant mecha technology is about what the technology from Evangelion would become after a million years of progression, and their constant emphasis on Absolute Despair is borne out of everyone's constant angst.

• This may explain why there aren't any animals we know of(grape hippos, anyone?) All other organisms were Instrumentalised, so the surviving humans had to create new species.
• The Anti-Spiral King is Shinji Ikari himself. Not only is he insanely depressed, what happened to Nia must be an extension of what Shinji did. "I'm so fucked up", indeed.

Bioboosted Armour Guyver is set in the same universe as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

In Guyver, humans were genetically engineered as the perfect base soldier unit in a war fought between ancient aliens for their amusement. Individual humans would be genetically engineered into monstrous "Zoanoids" - a process which Lord Genome rediscovered.

One day, the Ancients decided to equip a non-Zoanoid human with their basic symbiotic power suit. Unexpectedly, the human's strength with the suit went far beyond that of the Ancients themselves. Worse, the human was now somehow immune to the Ancients' Mind Control, and "it" attacked them. They named it Guyver, meaning "out of control" or "beyond the norm".

A secret organisation called Cronos, lead by a surviving Zoalord, create new Zoanoids in secret; but if a so-called "Lost Number" cannot reproduce, it is regarded as useless. This resembles how beings incapable of reproduction in TTGL cannot possess Spiral Power.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was created to be easy for its fans think up crossovers

Take this page as evidence.

• Well what do you expect from such a Cliché Storm?
• Considering that the first thing that popped into my head when I heard about giant robots powered by self-confidence and heaping dozes of Large Ham was "what if Zim got his hands on one of those?" you may be on to something.

Gurren Lagann is the son of Gunbuster and GaoGaiGar.

And Kamina is the son of Guy Shishioh and Noriko Takaya.

Guame isn't a beastman.

One of the recurring aspects of this show is the emphasis on humanity. The more human a Beastman is, the more powerful; their mooks are barely recognizable as human, the Big Four are human with animal aspects, and Viral (the most important) is almost totally human, except for his arms. The exception is Guame, one of the Big Four, the most powerful our of them (he survived a giga drill breaker!) despite looking like a great big armadillo thing. What's more, he acts as an equal to Lord Genome; at least, he treats him like a soldier would treat his Sergeant, not giving the terrified groveling done by the others of the Big Four.

Guame is a member of a different spiral race who fought alongside Lord Genome when he was fighting the AntiSpirals, probably serving the same function as Kittan in the Gurren Brigade. After they were defeated and forced to retreat, Guame elected to stay with Lord Genome and aid him in his efforts to protect humanity. Boota sets a precedent for not all spiral races being humanoid. It also explains how Guame is able to create an energy shield around Tepperin - he's using his own spiral energy to do so.

• This is supported (at least the part about fighting against the Anti-Spirals) by a line in episode 11 where Guame tells Cytomandler that he and the Spiral King "have been friends for a long time".
• He can't be of a Spiral Race, however. The Anti-Spirals basically confirmed that the point of evolution is to reach a human-like shape, as it channels Spiral Energy most efficiently. Therefore, a true Spiral looks human-like (Although I'm not ruling out things like different colors or whatnot). But the rest of the theory works.
  • If a race can channel Spiral energy at all it's a Spiral race, the fact that they aren't as efficient as humanoid races is irrelevent.
  • Wasn't Boota able to harness a bunch of Spiral Energy? It may be that there are alternative forms on the same level as humanoids, but they're very few/the Anti-Spirals aren't aware of it.

Guame is the Spiral King's Boota

We see a cute armidillo-like creature at Genome's side when he is a kid in the opening of the Gurren-Hen Movie and again slightly later on when he becomes the Spiral King. Presumably, soon after that he finds a way to turn him into a beastmen in the same way he made the other beastmen and turned him into his most trusted General.

• CONFIRMED by the DVD version of Lord Genome's flashback: Guame is sitting on his shoulder, acting as his "Boota."
• Also confirmed by the 8th Parallel Works video, which shows they were together even when Genome was a kid. Some of the other generals may have been some of those animals.
• Perhaps Guame is one of the earliest (if not the original) Beastmen? After all, he does note that Cytomander, one of the other generals, is only a couple centuries old. Since Guame was modified from an actual animal, and not just made from bits of DNA and grown in a pod like the others, that might explain his Spiral-like capabilities. Natural Beastmen like Guame (though he's probably the only one) would have Spiral power since they would have it in their original form, but artificially-created ones wouldn't have that capacity due to the whole cloning thing.
• Or Guame as the little armidillo was, like Boota, a source of spiral energy and evolved himself into a humanoid in the same way that Boota did.

The events of the prologue are part of the God-Emperor of Mankind's ridiculously long-term plan - and hence part of Warhammer 40,000.

Alt!Boota's "All the lights in the heavens are our enemies", with a bit of GRIMDARKNESS re-phrasing, sounds awfully like the standard Imperium of Man xenophobic creed. The raising of Captain Garlock was carried out by Custodes under the orders of the God-Emperor far from Imperium-controlled space. The Gunmen are a type of Titan designed by the God-Emperor separate from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Someday in the future, Captain Garlock and the Dai-Gurren Brigade will return to use the TTGL to put the smackdown on the Chaos Gods and the C'tan and then revive the God-Emperor.

• Or Simon is the God Emperor of Mankind. He's about to kick off the first great crusade that will render Man lord of the galaxy and trample thousands of 'lesser' spiral races. Little does he know that this will realise the Antispirals' greatest fear: the vast upheavals of Spiral Energy during the crusade will drive the gods of 'super-spiral space' to never before seen levels of power, empowering them to corrupt several of his Dai-Gurren-Dan against him. The rest is (future) history.
  • Which of the Chaos gods is the Spiral Nemesis?
    • Nurgle, perhaps. He represents the emotion of despair, and his daemons are all about size.
    • The Spiral Nemesis is a process, not a person. Specifically, it's the process by which gods are born. The Eldar suffered a small Spiral Nemesis of their own: we know it as the Eye of Terror. A universe-threatening Spiral Nemesis would be of truly apocalyptic proportions.
• No, Simon is a Tzeentchian Chaos Lord (Kamina is a Daemon Prince) representing the ideals of hope and change, and Team Dai-Gurren is a Chaos Cult with access to Ork Technology (the whole Clap Your Hands If You Believe concept) who can tap into the WAAAGH!!!.
• No, Spiral Nemesis IS the eye of terror, size of the entire galaxy

The Gurren-Lagann universe is the far, far future of the Aim For The Top! universe.

Diebuster's ending, to be perfectly frank, makes no sense even within the context of its own universe. "Hard Work And Guts!" was always a watchword of the series, but until the very last episode, "Hard Work And Guts!" never broke the series' own laws of physics. But in the very last episode, Nono and Lark are able to defeat a single enemy, with one degeneracy reactor and Nono's hax energy-absorber between them, that a planet-scale Buster Machine with billions of degeneracy reactors couldn't. This makes absolutely no sense... unless it's the awakening of Spiral Power in humanity.

Think about it! By this time, much of humanity has emigrated beyond the solar system, and so the "spiral races" are spread out pretty far. And when Nono and Lark perform their double Inazuma Kick, what do they do? They spiral together into a drill-like energy projectile that smashes right through the Space Monster. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from this: Nono and Lark are humanity's very first Spiral Knights, and Gunbuster-verse is the stage being set for the Spiral/Antispiral war.

• The power of the Topless is what powers the Buster Machines, and it also allows for things that bend reality. Topless Power could easily be a precursor to full-fledged use of Spiral Power.
• The machines that attacked Kamina city were remains of Nono's Buster Legion. In the second to last image in Diebuster's ending, Nono is shown on a surface of some planet, staring at a far away galaxy. This might mean that she survived the final battle in Diebuster, but warped so far away that she returned to Earth thousands of years later, when Lord Genome found his Lagann. She helped him with his first battles and, like Kamina helped Simon, she helped him to become as awesome as he was. When he betrayed the Spirals, he got rid of her, probably by teleporting her as far away as he could, and reprogrammed her army. This also might explain why Nia looked so much like Nono. He either couldn't forgive himself for betraying her and created his daughters as a way to comfort himself, or he made and then threw them out, because he hoped that one of them will help to create a new Spiral King.

The Anti-Spiral homeworld seen on the Grand Zamboa wasn't the real thing

Rather, it was a protective capsule to protect the real thing, or possibly a symbol. Two reasons:

1. It makes no sense to put your home planet in the line of fire; but it's too cool an idea not to do, so a model it is.
2. It not being the real thing means that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was larger than galaxies, which is much too awesome not to be true. Remember, main/RuleOfCool is the only genuine law of physics here.

• The Anti-Spiral we see is a cross between a Hive Mind and some kind of Astral Projection for the entire Anti-Spiral race. Thus, its source of power is the Anti-Spiral homeworld. Creating something as large as the Grand Zamboa out of nowhere takes an awful lot of power. Thus, sticking the homeworld in the head of the Grand Zamboa makes sense. Of course, the scale of the thing was pretty screwy at the time, so it's feasible that the homeworld could be the head jewel AND the Grand Zamboa is large enough to use galaxies as shurikens. Of course, given the nature of Super Spiral Space, it could just be that the Grand Zamboa started shrinking as it started losing power (and the fight).
• Or their homeworld is that large. It used to be the size of a planet, but they made it larger to serve as a computer.
• This does make sense. The Tengen Toppa Enkidu's sword gets lodged in the planet, yet it doesn't affect the Anti-Spirals.

The Anti-Spirals are Tragic Heroes against the Expansionist and Racist Species Humanity

Post-timeskip, we see that humanity keeps expanding without limit, much like a virus; the persecution of the beastmen that follows shows their intolerance. That may have been the tip of the iceberg as far as humanity's conquests went, and they possibly left hundreds or thousands of worlds barren or burning and their inhabitants dead or enslaved simply because they believed they could go anywhere and do anything - much like the Imperium of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The Anti-Spirals may be Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that have watched humans from the beginning of their prehistory and hoped they would learn tolerance, self-control, and moderation; when they could no longer bear to see world after world be conquered, they decided to intervene. The downside was that confinement and despair only made humans more aggressive, and now they may spread farther and more ruthlessly simply to avoid being confined again.

• Except we see that there's quite a few beastmen living with all the humans with no problem. There's no evidence that beastmen are somehow persecuted othe that the prison apparently being full of them; we can always rationalise that many of them are violently anti-human, refusing to give up the war they just lost) and are kept separate for the human criminals' safety. That Simon was put there is either a sign that they felt he could take care of himself or a sign that his jailers were angry at him.
• This may be the backstory behind Parallel Works #4.

The events of Gurren Lagann happen after a Super Robot War in which humanity loses big time

Parrel Works #8 shows the making of Lord Genome and the events of the first war against the Anti-Spirals. Those who are paying attention will notice a lot of simmilar faces, like Gundam RX-78, Mazinger, Jeeg, and two of the Eva units, as well as verious flagships, including the USS Enterprise.
It stands to reason that Gurren Lagann is an offshoot of Super Robot Wars that follows a story in which the world's Heroes are wiped out in the ensuing war; the only mech left to fight the power at the start is, as it were, Lagann.

• Note that the gem Simon finds during the princess burrial in episode 11 looks like a G-stone, no?
  • This means that Lord Genome is a Banpresto Original gone horribly wrong.
• Just try telling this troper that Gaiking isn't a Ganmen.

Viral is Link.

Both have the same voice, both are good with a sword, and both are (well, sometimes) blonde. Since Viral has an immortal body, that explains why Link is able to appear in so many games and timelines.

The ending skips a crucial part of the story.

Judging by the general tone and theme of the series, there must be a missing scene in which Kamina comes back from the dead (after the most epic game of chess EVER), punches Simon, and tells him to go Beyond the Impossible and save Nia, leading to an epic quest for several mystical MacGuffins for reasons of that's just what needs to be done. Presumably, this would end in an epic battle involving mechas the size of universes. What we see post- Time Skip occurs after all of this; Simon is clearly just a Retired Badass and not a hobo.

• It happens in the SRW adaptation. There's a return of heroes after the Gunbuster does the Jupiter nonsense (slightly less time passes than seveal hundred years).

Gurren Lagann is a Giant Robot anime interpretation of The Bible, specifically the New Testament

It works, if you go interpret the characters like so:

• Kamina is an analogue of Jesus, as his philosophy and teachings directly inspires and drives Team Dai-Gurren.
  • It have to be mentioned that he also was pierced with spear!
• Spiral Energy represents The Holy Spirit of God, which imbues mankind with hope and strength to face creation and overcome life's challenges. True, some parts are more loosely inspired than others (like Kamina remaining dead, unlike Jesus in the New Testament, or how Spiral energy represents Darwinian evolution instead of Adam-And-Eve creationism), but otherwise, the series works as an excellent analogue for the Christian Bible's New Testament.
  • But Kamina came back to tell some wise words to Simon, like Jesus did to St. Peter and granded him 'his legacy'
• Simon is an analogue of Simon Peter, both of them having gone on to becoming the principal leaders of their groups after the original leaders (Kamina and Jesus, respectively) left their world.
• Rossiu is an analogue of Judas Iscariot, albeit one who betrayed the second leader rather then the first.
  • And much like Judas has become sympathetic over time, Rossiu is understandable.
• Viral is an analogue of the Apostle Paul, first hunting down Team Dai-Gurren before joining them, similar to how Paul first hunted down Christians before becoming one.
• The Beastmen army, The Beastmen Generals, and Spiral King Lordgenome represent the combined forces of the Jewish Sanhedrin (who murdered Jesus) and the Roman Empire (who eventually took on the extermination fight against Christians for themselves).
  • And just like the Romans eventually converted to Christianity, Lord Genome joins the hero's side.
• Team Dai-Gurren represents the original Christians, with the world seven years later representing the peace and security Christendom eventually found.
• The Anti-Spiral race and Anti-Spiral himself represent the actual forces that Christendom is (or, depending on your viewpoint, should) be fighting: The Unclean Spirits/Fallen Angels and Satan, who desire to crush all living things by destroying their resolve.
  • Or they represent the God Is Evil interpretation, considering its currently the bigger threat to Christendom. Not to mention they're already on that level.
  • Or the Anti-Spirals, with them having appeared during the age of modernization, represent the crisis of faith and spirituality in the modern world. Spirals represent faith and Antispirals represent cold hard science. Spiral nemesis is an analogue for how everyone complains that religion encourages "go forth and multiply" and "convert others" leading to overpopulation, and the Anti-Spirals do see the Spirals as "ignorant" and spreading their destructive ignorance, like how the more fanatical atheists see Christendom as a whole. He Who Fights Monsters ensue and the rationalists end up putting the world in further despair instead. Now, the spirals do accept those criticisms, but instead of further denial they evolve with these criticisms, abandoning its previous collectivist ignorance and embracing existentialist individualism, thus a Reconstruction.
    • The Anti-Spiral is Richard Dawkins?

Lordgenome is the Biblical Nimrod, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is set in an alternate universe where the Tower of Babel was fully constructed, humanity waged a war against the hosts of Heaven (the Anti-Spiral), and lost.

First off, just take a look at the buildings humanity constructs in Parallel Works Video 8. There are Kabbalistic ideas that the Tower of Babel was meant to be some sort of spacecraft, constructed by Nimrod, who was already noted in The Bible to be pretty Badass, and I'm almost positive that some commentary stated that Nimrod had a throne shaped like a spiral. Furthermore, some current historians identify Nimrod as being the same person as Gilgamesh, who was friends with Enkidu, a wild beast-man. And if that's not enough, even the Biblical verse concerning the destruction of the Tower has God speaking in a first-person plural! This would also nicely explain why there is no language barrier in Gurren Lagann...

• • While the fact that Enkidu was a beastman does give credit to this, don't forget the name of Viral's second Gunman...the Enkidu.

FLCL is an alternate universe of TTGL, or, possibly, in the same universe

They're both by Studio Gainax, and they're both pretty much the anti-Evangelion, so why not? They even have a lot of parallels, particularly since Naota and Simon are both less-scrappy expies of Shinji. FLCL could be what TTGL would've been had Gunmen never been invented; instead, the anti-Spirals come in the form of Medical Mechanical, and it's up to Haruko and her concentrated Spiral Energy to free Atomsk, who is pretty much pure Spiral Energy. Or, alternatively, FLCL takes place sometime in the future after the Anti-Spirals are defeated; they try again, only this time in a different manner to get past the radar. No Beastmen are to be found because they either all died out (save for Viral, who's off in space anyway) or simply don't get any screen time.

• It's the other way around. FLCL is the prequel to Gurren Lagann. Medical Mechanica was built by the anti-spirals in an early, but subtle attempt to take control of Earth's spiral beings and thus flatten out the universe so Spiral Nemesis doesn't spiral out of control. N-O Portals use Spiral Energy, Atomsk is a powerful Spiral Being, while Haruku is trying to achieve the power of Spiral Nemesis. The MM robots are the prototypes for the spiral control system, and Humans base their Gunmen off them. Using this logical basis, Canti is the original Lagann type Gunmen, and Simon is a decendent of Naota (both deconstructions of Shinji Ikari, both with high N-O/Spiral potential).
  • This Troper had the exact same epiphany! Canti being the prototype Lagann is made more obvious by the spiral, galaxy, and drill motifs displayed whenever Naota enters him. However, the original Lagann prototype had its drills work in reverse; Naota was the one have a drill inserted in him, not Canti!

Nia is a Buster Machine

Just compare Nono and Nia's eyes! And the last title card at the end credits of Diebuster has four-petaled flower motifs floating around Nono, flowers that look just like Nia's eyes! You can't honestly look at that and tell me that Nia isn't a Buster Machine, can you?!

• Same Japanese voice actor was failed to mention here. Plus, both Nono and Nia have adorable, trademark hair accessories.

Related to the two above, TTGL is a direct sequel to the Gunbuster series.

(Warning, this entry is a spoiler for Gunbuster!) Consider: in the context of the TTGL universe, the entire "Spiral Nemesis" thing kind of comes out of nowhere. So spiral life forms will eventually cause the kind-of-nebulous destruction of the universe by sucking everything together? It seems a bit random and weak for villain motivation if it exists in a vaccuum. However, when you consider the events of Gunbuster and you begin to think of the Anti-Spiral argument as something of a metaphor for wanting to impede the progress of human civilization toward being destructive (which the show itself hints toward), then all of a sudden the entire Spiral/Anti-Spiral conflict begins to look a lot like the kind of debate civilization would have following the creation of the Black Hole Bomb and the realization that humanity possesses the capacity for destroying galaxies, and is indeed even voiced by the characters in the final episode of Gunbuster! This would therefore make the original Lagann that Simon finds nothing less than Buster Machine 100, the final Buster Machine; drawing inspiration from the Diebuster, the Lagann can merge with any kind of technology to continuously improve itself. The Anti-Spirals would therefore be the faction of humanity that wanted to prevent progressive human society from destroying the rest of the universe just by existing.

The entire first half of the series is a massive and highly-risky yet ultimately wildly successful Xanatos Roulette by Lord Genome to forge a new hero who would be able to pick up where he left off and defeat the Anti-Spirals once and for all

If you think about it, this pretty much happens anyway, either this way or by accident. And why else would Lord Genome bury a Lagann-type mecha so close to an underground human colony, with a spiral core nearby? He sent all of humanity underground knowing that, eventually, a hero will arise to drill straight through to the heavens! He needed to create a Beastman Army to test the hero; after all, if such a hero couldn't defeat them, there'd be no hope for him against the Anti-Spirals. And the Arc-Gurren and Cathedral Terra were cleverly yet conveniently hidden for the sake of such a future hero.

• This makes a lot of sense. Lord Genome would understand the evolutionary nature of Spiral Power better than anyone. He knew humanity couldn't survive without hiding from the Anti-Spirals; but when he drove the human race underground, he had to know that not everyone would be content with such a fate forever. He created an environment that would produce new spiral warriors. Eventually, someone would rise to challenge him. Simon may not even have been the first - only the first to succeed. A champion that could defeat the greatest spiral warrior of old might just have a chance against the Anti-Spirals.
• The fact that the Core Drill was buried so close to Lagann also supports the notion that someone was meant to start it up. Not to mention the fact that the Gunmen look like headless people, encouraging someone to make a full humanoid robot (to better channel the Spiral Power) by putting Lagann on top of it.
• Additionally, he seems to have left behind an immortal warrior with more Spiral Energy than he had - that is, the ideal support for Gurren Lagann. Watch the English dub, at least, and listen to how he reacts when he says "I didn't make you immortal to defeat the HUMANS." (not exact quote).
  • The emphasis was more on the word DEFEAT in the subtitled version. Still, that has its own double meaning. Viral could have been intended to tell the story of Lord Genome's victory, as he claimed, while at the same time being ready as a backup plan in the event that Simon managed to win.

Viral's wife is more than just a figment of an Anti-Spiral's illusion

Viral's wife exists in the proper TTGL universe beyond  a figment of a wishful dream and in the Parallel Works:  she's seen onboard the Cathedral Terra/Chouginga Gurren Lagann with her husband as the ship sets off for its diplomatic mission. See and decide for yourself.

• Note that while he did say Beastmen were infertile, so there's no way he had the kids, there's nothing keeping him from knowing or finding a woman that looks like the one from the dream.
  • This particular guess is completely, completely just plain wrong. While it is entirely possible that He could find a woman who looks like her, a higher-quality image shows that not only are those horns and not ears, but appears to be male and has a beard. ^{[dead link]}
• Now that is a very interesting use of spoiler tags. Don't you agree?

The three kids piloting the Ganmen that make up Gurren Lagann in Parallel Works 6 are

• Gimmy and Darry's son in Lagann, Rossiu and Kinon's daughter in Gurren, and Yoko and Kittan's daughter in the flying Ganmen.
• Alternatively, Yoko and Kamina's son in Lagann, and Viral's daughter in the flying Ganmen.
• Or, if you like the idea that these kids should exist in the TTGL universe, and so half their parents are not dead before conception, Gimmy and Darry's son in Lagann and Viral's daughter in the flying Ganmen. (Beastmen reproducing is impossible? Spiral power!) All of these theories are courtesy MyAnimeList.net's Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann discussion board, where it's a universal agreement that Gurren is being piloted by Rossiu and Kinon's daughter, and that Simon and Nia's kid is just standing around.
  • Reproducing by using pure energy would put Viral in the same league as God.
  • Considering the peace the universe seems to have been left with during the Distant Finale and the fact that there don't seem to be many (if any) Beastmen around anymore, it doesn't make sense that the potential children of the characters are fighting the Beastmen again. This troper thinks it would make more sense that Paralell Works 6 would be part of the past, possibly when the humans were first being forced underground.
    • To be fair, we saw a very limited take on the distant future. It stuck very close to the surviving characters, and didn't expand to show us much else. There are at the very least Beastmen among Viral's crew, and we can deduce from what we'd seen of the Brigade earlier that they in particular didn't put themselves in such company very much. The population could be quite strong and we just weren't shown it. Besides, if the Generals were anything to go by (with Cytomander being referred to as a child, possibly meaning he's the youngest of the four, when he's 200), the life expectancies could be substantial enough that only 20 additional years didn't put much of a difference in those who'd been around before.
  • Alternate Universe Shinji, Asuka and Rei, everyone?
• Many of the Parallel Works show the characters in entirely separate - but similar - worlds. Parallel Works 6 does this not for the characters but for the mecha. That's why there are no obvious character equivalents, whereas the mecha are pretty much the same.
• The setting is set during the present day, or shortly before Lord Genome's time. Check the backgroud: it doesn't look all that advanced.

The Spiral Nemesis that the Anti-Spirals feared was the inevitable result of all the Epileptic Trees being planted from the show Lost achieving critical mass and causing the collapse of the universe

Says so on the Poison Oak Epileptic Trees page!

The Spiral Nemesis is a Lensman Arms Race taken to an extreme

Since Spiral Beings have a drive to expand, unless they are held back, they will ultimately come into conflict with each other. Since Spiral Energy has no real limit and seems to increase the more a Spiral Being is put under stress, a war between two Spiral Races would escalate to potentially infinite levels. Remember, although the Anti-Spiral increased its energy to match Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's size and power, it never expanded enough to surpass it (The Anti-Spirals suck at confronting Spiral races head-on, instead they mostly rely on psychological warfare, hence their Despair speeches and Lotus Eater Machine). Now imagine if two Giga Drill Breakers produced by two Super Tengen Toppa mechs collided and each one continued to expand in an effort to overwhelm the other... this would explain why the discussion of peace at the end of the series was so important - even a minor war between Spiral Energy users would ultimately result in Mutually Assured Destruction. Thus, the use of Spiral Energy is kept in check by old-fashioned Cold War politics.

• That said, Spiral Energy is a metaphor for nuclear weapons.

The Anti-Spiral allowed himself to be defeated

The Anti-Spiral clearly was capable of mustering up Spiral Energy, and was probably capable of increasing it more-or-less indefinitely (note that when Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was formed, Grand Zamboa expanded to match its larger opponent with no visible effort). However, in order to overcome Dai-Gurren for good, the energy required would most likely destroy the universe in the process. Since the Anti-Spiral realized the danger and understood that Simon would sooner cause the Spiral Nemesis rather than back down, he decided to be the bigger man (so to speak) and allow himself to be overcome rather than destroy the universe by continuing to fight.

• It is also possible that he backed out early once he realized that this would be the result, in order to avoid further collateral damage to nearby galaxies.
• another possibility why he could not beat them is that he could not beat them because spiral power runs on your self determination, and the anti-spiral lost heart when he saw just how powerfull the gurren brigade got. notice how every line he says after Lordgenomes CMOA sounds a little more scared and panicked?

Orks know how to harness Spiral Energy

They can make things work that shouldn't work through sheer willpower, can make things faster through sheer willpower, etc. In short, they can make the impossible possible.

• This Troper now knows what he has to do: He must make a Gurren Lagann-themed Ork army, complete with a Boss wearing Kamina's sunglasses, cape, and blue wig.
  • This troper would like to see pics when you're done.
• Gorkken-Morkann! Pierce 'de 'evvens with 'yer WAAAAAAGH!
  • 'OOH DA 'ELL DO YAH THINK WE IZ????
• Orks reproduce asexually, hence why they are all males. Spiral Energy is specifically described as the power of evolution, and by that, it means procreation through man and woman.
  • Maybe orks reproduce like Real Life slime molds, two spores from different orks merge into one matrix where new orks are born.

The entirity of the series is being told by Simon years after it happened.

The narrator has the same voice actor in both Japanese and English. He's either just reminescing or telling it to someone. This leads to a series of subtheories:

1. He is an Unreliable Narrator a la 300, meaning this is all greatly exaggerated.
2. The series is a reenactment. Agains, it's quite possibly dramatized/exaggerated. For additional evidence, we see a clip of Simon and Kamina recycled from the first episode being played in-series in episode 17 even though humanity didn't have video cameras then, and they couldn't have filmed from that angle (right in front of a charging molepig) if they had.
3. It's completely made up: the narrator is telling a story that is fictional in-universe, either something a senile old man tells people or basically the same idea as in our world.

Kinon got pregnant

That whole dialogue between her and Rissou about her being "heavy" at the end of episode 24 sure was a lot of odd innuendo, wasn't it? Also, this.

Badgers will become the spiral nemesis.

Since hotbloodedness and determination are associated with spiral power, it is clear that badgers have more spiral power than any other species - so much that the pussiest of badgers puts Boota and Simon to shame. Badgers, being stupid, don't realize this yet; but eventually, as they evolve, they will become smarter and more humanoid. (Humanoid forms better channel spiral energy, making them evolutionarily advantageous.) This causes their massive quantities of spiral power to run wild, destroying the universe.

• The Badger Mushroom Snake animation is a direct allegory of this threat.

The "uncut" version of Episode 6 is not the original, but a Hotter and Sexier revamp.

Take a look at Yoko's outfit throughout both versions.

Viral is the love child of Vash the Stampede and Haruhara Haruko

Seriously, just look at him. It would explain why he's so human-looking for a beastman and yet, according to spiral energy readings, clearly is not human.

Tony the Tiger is a reincarnation of Kamina.

See this picture for details.

Leeron is a Magypsy

He doesn't seem to age much, if at all. His needle is, of course, drill shaped.

• • And it needs a manly twist to pull out.
  • It was stated in several places that the reason Leeron looks the same as he always does in the Epoligue is because of plastic surgery. Gotta keep up that faaaaaaaaabulous look!

Human usage of Spiral Power is a function of the mitochondria.

Channeling it through machines such as guns and Ganmen is the proper way to control spiral energy. Using it as raw biological power counts as Explosive Biological Overclocking like we saw back in the Christmas of '97, leading to Heroic RROD. On that note, the Ultimate Being was a baby Spiral Nemesis.

There is a Good Reason Simon and Nia didn't get married and have a kid.

If you remember, the Anti-Spiral was part of her DNA. There was a high chance that their kids, if they had had any, would also be part anti-spiral, and would dissolve with Nia at the end of the battle. This way, the writers were able to keep down the Angst when the end of the series came along.

• Perhaps Nia was early in pregnancy, as well. Heck, it might be pretty much canon, as far as we know... It's a Gainax work, after all.
  • This Troper cannot recall the source of it, but a member of GAINAX was asked what Nia and Simon did between getting home and the wedding. To which he replied "Well, they weren't doing nothing." With heavy innuendo implied.
    • Prior to that, GAINAX stated that Simon and Nia weren't virgins after the Timeskip. Draw your own conclusions here, folks.
      • If that were true, one should wonder why Nia would still be confused about the "two people becoming one" concept when Simon proposed. If she didn't understand it before that, maybe I don't want to start drawing my own conclusions here.
        • Nia can handle sex. Just don't ask the poor girl to deal with a metaphor.

Kamina is the grown up version of Laharl.

Apart from the blue hair, and surely blue hairdye isn't unheard of. He has practically the same mode of dress, he carries around a sword bigger than himself, he uses the same style of speech (for the most part), and at times he uses "demon" as a term to describe himself. Long after the events of the Disgaea games, he settled down in some backwater world instead of staying a king. It would explain a lot of Kamina's feats if he was an Overlord.

• His dying was a Thanatos Gambit to get sent to the local Celestia (heroic sacrifice means automatic passage, no prinny time), from which he would be able to indirectly aid the Dai-Gurren dan with heavenly intervention behind the scenes. There was an invisible angel on Simon's shoulder telling him what awesome things to say, and its name is Kamina Laharl.
  • No it doesn't. Kurtis did one, and he sure the hell spends time as a prinny.
• Laharl has said "Who the hell do you think I am?!" a couple of times.

Similarly, Yoko is Etna

Elaborating on the above theory, the TTGL universe takes place after the Disgaea bad ending where Laharl leaves the throne to Etna to Walk the Earth. Complications lead her and some survivors to flee to earth—which she covers up with the whole "weapons cache" story to avoid admitting to Kamina/Laharl that she totally screwed the pooch on running the Netherworld in his place. As for why she and Kami/Harl didn't recognize each other upon meeting again, either she didn't immediately recognize him due to age (can you imagine Laharl at a height above five feet? Neither could she), or she did and just kept it to herself for some reason.// How did she overcome her...er, upper-body deficiencies? Implants.

• That, or maybe succubi take awhile to develop- about fifteen hundred years, give or take a decade. Yoko's given age of 16 is how long she's been in the human world- she's actually 1489 and finally hitting demon puberty.
• Supported by the fact that they're voiced by the same person, at least in the English translation of both.

Kamina is Laharl's long-lost-son.

Parental Abandonment among demons is nothing new in the Disgaea series. It's possible that Demons were one of the "Spiral Races" that Lord Genome fought with. Somewhere along the way, Laharl trusted someone (Etna? Flonne? Mid-Boss? Who knows?) with Kamina, his only son, right before making a heroic sacrifice to try and stall the Anti-Spirals (which happened during the enigmatic first scene).
Anyway, though a series of contrived coincidences, that someone ended up underground in the village and raised him as her own. The fact that Demons don't age nearly as fast as humans can be hand-waved by Brainwashing on the part of his appointed guardian. Then again, it's demonstrated by Rozalin and Adell that demon aging is all over the place. And if you want to take this theory further, you could say that he reincarnated into Nia, who was sent back in time as part of Lord Genome's Xanatos Roulette. But that's a theory for another time.

• Alternatively, Nia is a reincarnation of Flonne, presumably dying alongside Laharl in the above-mentioned scenario or during one of the "bad" endings of Disgaea.
• Laharl probably trusted Midboss with Kamina, seeing that Kamina has fond memories of his so-called "Father". Kamina's father died unspectacularly a while ago, and Midboss is... well... Midboss.
  • Or Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth!, who saw it as his duty to tutor Kamina in the Ways of Ham.

Kamina killed Kittan from beyond the grave.

Makes sense. How would you feel if you saw some guy suddenly start making out and copping a feel with your girlfriend? He purposely made his missiles fail just for revenge, but kind of underestimated that he would make up for the badassness 10X afterwards. Also notice how the TV turns off right before Kittan and Yoko kiss during the alternate universe segment, and they're both transported to the area where Kamina and Yoko had their kiss. Obviously he was trying to say something.

• Actually, the one who turned off the TV was Yoko herself.
  • Which this troper took as an indication that she was still in love with Kamina.

Spiral Power is related to the spirals in Junji Ito's Uzumaki.

• Maybe the Anti-Spirals are right, and those drills will kill everyone eventually? Uh oh.
• This Troper was also instantly reminded of TTGL when he heard about Uzumaki. If the Spiral Nemesis is really Uzumaki except the whole universe... Oh Crap...
• I had a similar theory, but with a different Uzumaki altogether.
• Alternatively, Uzumaki is a cautionary tale for anti-spirals.

The entire universe of TTGL is a giant mech.

Its power is to create an area of effect inside itself that allows the laws of physics to be broken, and it grows when spiral energy is used in this area.

• Spiral Nemesis is what happens when too much energy is expended too quickly-the mech collapses on itself.

The multiverse of TTGL is a giant mech.

To be precise, it's essentially like the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, but on a multi-dimensional level. Each version of TTGL is also a giant mech, absorbing the Spiral Energy around it. Of course, this means that the entire TTGL multiverse could suffer a version of Spiral Nemesis. The Multi-Dimensional Labyrinth is tuned in to the inner network of this mech. So basically, you have a man-sized mech combined with a Humongus Mecha that's in the head of a skyscraper sized mecha inside a moon sized mecha inside a galaxy sized mecha inside a billion-light year tall firey Kamina inside a universe mecha inside a nigh-infinite multiverse mecha.

Despite all of the exponential technological growth in the Gurren Lagann-verse, the wheel was never invented.

• Notice how all of the cars and extraneous land based vehicles have legs.
  • But without wheels, how do you get drills?
    • The third troper is right. Without wheels, you can't construct basic things; and they are the basis for parts which make machines run (such as cogs). What's a more likely possibility is that the wheel was used before the first war, but the technology was down-graded and forgotten as a use of transport in the 1,000 years where humans were trapped underground (not really needing to use transportation in such a small area) and the Beastmen relied upon their Ganmen for probably everything involving travel and carting. It's not too far of a stretch to believe that they would translate keeping the wheel for things like constructing other parts and Ganmen technology for transport; as that's what everything had come to be after so many generations.
    • Or they had the wheel, but didn't know how to use it properly. This troper read somewhere about an Indian tribe that knew of the wheel, but only used it on toys, never for, say, agricultural purposes. So maybe in this universe, they knew of the wheel enough to make drills and machine parts, but it never occured to them to use them for transportation.

The Anti-Spirals were responsible for the failure of the Dreamcast.

• Not my own theory, but I saw it on Deviant ART (in the comments, a little way down) and couldn't resist.

The Anti-Spirals are running a large part of the video game industry

• Continuing from the above, the Anti-Spirals were responsible for the death of the Dreamcast. But during Sega's decline in the mid-to-late 1990s, and especially after they were out of the market, gaming took on a decidedly Darker and Edgier slant. First with Grand Theft Auto-style sandbox games set in crime-ridden cities, then with realistic First Person Shooters where the player is not an individual hero but a single soldier who may or may not have any real effect on the outcome of the war, games are going down to the cynical end of the scale, very much fitting with the Anti-Spiral motive of creating cynicism and despair. Nintendo and Sega, makers of decidedly more idealistic games that gave gaming actual "faces" like Mario and Sonic (remember the faceless Anti-Spiral robots? And the "faceless" corporations they're using to take over gaming?), pissed off the Anti-Spirals to no end, so they directed their hate at those companies. Sega went down with their Dreamcast, leaving the console market. Their niche was filled by Microsoft, a company even further divorced from "idealism" than Sony. It seemed like Nintendo, too would fall: the Gamecube was the bottom of its generation, and Anti-Spiral puppet corporation Sony was poised to enter the handheld market. It would supposedly destroy Nintendo there. All seemed dark, like the Spirals would fade from gaming altogether, until... ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH! You want even more proof? Go ahead, Ctrl+ F and search "Spiral". Nintendo's "User Satisfaction as King" business strategy is called a Spiral! The "hardcore" FPS gamers, who by now are de facto Anti-Spirals, are pissed at Nintendo's strategy of expanding the market to all for fear that it will cause the gaming Spiral Nemesis, destroying video gaming's special niche in the culture. Oh, and Shigeru Miyamoto is Simon.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto is Simon? BADASS!!! I subscribe to this theory!
  • Before taking over gaming, the Anti-Spirals took over the American comic book industry. The result was much the same: see Dark Age.

Gurren Lagann's universe is the Slayers' several millenia after the spell-bound magic was completely lost

To think about that, think at light and darkness. Light-based magic, in that past, would be driven by Spiral Power, while Dark-based one is based in Anti-Spiral Power; also, Mazoku fed on Anti-Spiral power, since they were driven by negative emotions, like despair, sadness, and such, while positive emotions made everything go right for Lina, although she could be the Messenger from that time. Then, when Lina discovered her mission, she almost destroyed Earth, all spellbound magic disappeared, magic cratures were annihilated, blah blah blah. Giant robots (at the time they didn't call Gunmen, probably Tinheads or something) moved by such magic helped the survivors to or construch subterranean villages, or, like the beastmen, take over the scavenging rest of the surface. Millenia after that, a boy and his soul brother with desires to go to the surface (both that look suspiciously like genderbent versions of Amelia and Naga) are doing that plan, boy discovers giant robot, etc. You know the history, and know there's one helluva possibility for this to be possible.

Gurren Lagann's core story arc is based on a 1979 Gundam Novel

In 1979 Yoshiyuki Tomino published a trilogy of novels based adapting the Mobile Suit Gundam series. Written before the franchise achieved its meteoric success, the novels were highly divergent from either the broadcast or theatrical version, and feature a unique "closed ending" in that the main character is accidentally killed partway into the 3rd novel—dropping his unfinished mission squarely in the laps of his friends and enemies.

The Mecha genre has been conspicuously without a fresh angle for some time. To find a new, unexplored angle, Gainax literally went back to the source, taking the most notable aspect (hero buys it too soon) of the still well-regarded novel trilogy and spinning a series around that premise-- "What if the hero starts the revolution, but his friends have to finish it?" by pushing the death even earlier.

This is why the series is always about Kamina (even after he's dead, he's the elephant in the room for every major character) because Simon isn't the main character, Kamina is. When the guy who starts the revolution falls on the battlefield, someone else has to pick up the banner. And Gundam did it first, they just never animated it. (Assuming the writers are mecha fans themselves, their chance of not having read the Tomino trilogy are so low they can only be measured in Klevins.)

The Spiral Nemesis is gathering energy and materials for the Spiral Warriors a few galaxies over.

Seriously, even if they transmuted any available matter in a universe the size of our own into steel, or even fibreglass, it would only be a fraction of the necessary iron and carbon needed for the final Lagann. The original Spiral Warriors found their powers and had no idea that Spiral Energy was reaping the resources of the next universe over, so that universe's Spiral Warriors had to fight it by summoning a giant-er mecha, which used up even more energy and matter... I think you get the picture.

The Parallel Works 6 screaming team will activate Spiral Nemesis.

The overuse of their power destroys everything in sight. Is this not the essence of Spiral Nemesis?

The Gurren-Lagann universe is the future of the Digimon Savers universe.

Captain Satsuma has the same glasses as Kamina. This means that clearly a few years after the epilogue of Savers, a great disaster happened forcing all humans to evacuate to the digital world, explaining why there are talking armadillos, boota etc. Following from this, the Ganmen are powered/controlled by 'digisoul' and the anti-spirals are rogue programs like the D-reaper from tamers, and Satsuma handed down his glasses from father to son, until Kamina inherited them.

The Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a resurrected Kamina.

If Episode 26 is any indication of this, it's that Kamina rescues the key pilots of the galaxy-sized mech. While it doesn't show him explicitly freeing anyone other than Simon and Yoko, one could guess that he had a hand in getting the other people. That said, the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is only formed when Gurren Lagann merges with the Spiral Power of each of the individual pilots, who wouldn't have broken out had it not been for the spirit of Kamina. The members of the remaining Team Gurren say that they're fighting for a higher cause, and Yoko herself states that 'There was once a man who was ten times greater than us. For his sake alone, we'll keep fighting.'

Kamina's spirit was the catalyst for releasing everyone from the multi-dimensional labyrinth, his memories are carried on within the members of Team Gurren, and the Super Spiral space is a special dimension 'where thought is given form.' If Kamina's lingering spirit had any sentience left (hinted that it does in 26) then he would probably want to fight alongside his comrades for the final battle. Since he has nothing to manifest a body with (Lordgenome was still a head, so he could pull this off) he decided to convert his mass into pure Spiral energy in the form of the Tengen Toppa. That, and it's only suiting that such a Large Ham would require an equally large mech.

• Also, Mecha-Kamina-Jesus would be the epitome of Awesome. Including bolded text, capital letter, and everything.
• And the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the finale of the second movie bears a noticeable resemblance to Kamina, which fits very nicely indeed with this theory.
• And don't forget that Kamina didn't just free everyone from the Lotus Eater Machine - he was pretty much the catalyst for everything that happened in the entire series. It only makes sense that he would want to finish what he started...
• another possibility: it is stated that in the super spiral universe "thought is given form. and Kamina is still on (or in, if that is really his spirit and not a strong memory) their minds. so when they combine, and must make the greatest weapon ever, what are they tinking of? exactly.
• And Simon stated that Kamina lives on in his back and heart.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is the future of Exalted

It is centuries after the Age of Sorrows, and the Exalted problem is fixed. Everyone can be Solar Exalted, if they do/think/are AWESOME enough. The beastmen are the last remains of the Lunar Exalted, the Anti-Spiral is the last Primordial, and the gunmen are derived from warstrider technology.

• Expanding on this theory, Kamina is a Zenith Caste Solar. After Simon has his epic He's Back moment, he himself Exalts and inherits Kamina's Exaltation spark. Leeron becomes a Twilight Caste Solar, if he wasn't one already. Also, the beastmen aren't the remnants of the Lunars, they're, well, Beastmen. Viral didn't become immortal, he became a Lunar Exalt, as did Boota later. Perhaps Lordgenome was a Terrestrial or Abyssal, and Rossiu was starting on the path to becoming a Sidereal. Or at least a particularly jackass-y Eclipse.

TTGL is a part of the Disgaea Multi-verse.

Both run on Rule of Cool, Serial Escalation, and in general, almost every trope that one has can be seen in the other in some form in the other. In both, humans with the right stuff can become powerful enough to threaten the gods, both include uber-awesome vehicles that can be piloted and are boosted by the pilots own stats and vice versa. Both have Order Versus Chaos as a key theme.

• Kamina is grown-up Laharl.

At the center of every black hole is a Death Spiral Machine.

Hell, I don't know. The thought just popped into my head. Maybe someone else will make sense of it.

• Which is the eventual plan used by the universe to reduce the amount of spiral energy in the universe thus allowing spiral beings to live their lives without ending the universe!

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann is Gainax's response to Epicureanism.

Now, everything in the series makes sense. Spiral Power in special.

The entire series of Gurren-Lagann is one long love letter to the giant robot concept in general.

This one should, really, be obvious... but I figure it has to be written down.
The first fourth of the series (episodes 1-8) is almost literally a direct Expy of the 1960s super robot shows. Things like Mazinger Z and Getter Robo were incredibly formulaic and often disreguarded what few rules they invented if the show needed it. We can see this leaking through into the show via lovely examples like Kamina trying to combine their mecha in episode 3 (it works because... it just does), other mecha combinations not working in episode 4 (because... they just don't) and having many nonsensical plots in general (hello episode 6!). As if this wasn't enough, characterization tended to run rampant (Kamina's Flanderization into a Jerkass throughout episodes 4-6) and many episodes would run completely off-model (the QUALITY of episode 4, easily). As this story arc reached the end, we finally saw our '1960s-era main' of Kamina being phased out of the spotlight as Simon finally took the controls in episode 7 for the first time - and this arc ended with the death of Kamina in episode 8... the proverbial loss of innocence of the time.

The second fourth of the series (episodes 8-15) doesn't change much from the previous arc, but very much is more in line with the 1970s of giant robots. Plots are less episodic and feel more 'tied together' with a vague story arc, much like the later shows of the 1970s like Voltes, Combattler and Daimos. We also begin to get the hints of technobabble as things like 'Spiral Power' are mentioned in a hand-wave to how the mecha are powered - and our villains even begin to develop as characters. The latter is something that was almost completely ignored until shows like Voltes and Gundam premiered in the last three years of the 1970s. The ending of this story arc, of course, ends with the final battle with our villain... who, as it turns out, isn't completely evil either. The fact that Lord Genome comes off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist in his final fight is just proof that the show itself has evolved toward the deeper 1970s shows from the shallower 1960s anime.

Our third segment of the series (episodes 17-23ish) shows vast changes, however, as we hit the 1980s. As Gundam vastly changed the concept of giant robots with having armies of not-so-special robots, we see the Graparal show up for duty - an MP version of the Gurren-Lagann in general. And rather than having over-the-top weaponry, these MP units simply have pistols and guns that are simple to replicate and re-arm. Also tying in with the simple fact that mecha shows slowly moved to develop the characters more in the 1980s (thanks to the premier of the OVAs, allowing for shows to focus less on being Merchandise-Driven), the entire cast begin to grow as characters... getting actual development sometimes for the first time in the series. Compared to the first half of the series, this section of the show is almost a drastic shock - which is what the 1980s themselves were to the robot anime genre in general.

The final segment of the series (22ish through the end) is, of course, a love letter through to the modern day of giant robots. Things begin to get psychotic in scale and action (GaoGaiGar), a psychological slant slips into the series (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and the so-called horrible villains become simply a mass species of well intentioned extremists who took their deeds too far. The metaphor breaks down a little at this point - but only because the show itself has finally caught up to the era it's being made in.
Of course, that's just my personal theory on the show and themes within...

(Alternative, based on a theory seen elsewhere: the first fourth is Getter Robo/Mazinger etc. (i.e. the 1960s-70s) with the single combining Super Robot, the second is Gundam-esque/1980s with the mecha team/army on a Cool Ship, the third is Evangelion-esque/1990s with everything getting dark and angsty and things like civilian casualties/hatred of the heroes being prominent, and the finale is a distillation of all the best bits of 30+ years of mecha anime into one giant Crowning Moment of Awesome.)

• I agree Gurren Lagann is a love letter to the genre, but actually, you get the evolution of the genre quite wrong, since all elements you think were added in the eighties or nineties were present at the beginning. Mazinger Z and Getter Robo were pretty dark back then, they did not disregard their own rules, and technobabble were already present (Photon Eenrgy and Getter rays). People DIED -often in horrible ways-, cities were destroyed -and they were not magically reconstructed in the next episode-, the heroes often were target of civilian hatred in many episodes, and the villains were of the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (Dr. Hell) or Well-Intentioned Extremist (King Gol) kind. And Getter Robo is, actually, a Cosmic Horror Story, with heroes are Axe Crazy or Blood Knight. And then you have Anime/Zambot3 high quote of mindscrewness... Super Robot Genre has always been pretty more complex than it is credited for.
• Huh... But wasn't it sorta declared canon by Gainax themselves?
  • I think it was.
  • It was a 2ch fan rumour, and probably a false one given how strongly Getter Robo influenced the last arc is. In fact, TTGL's four arcs could just as easily match up with Getter Robo's four arcs than any supposed "mecha trends."
• It fits perfctly with a litte detail we can find in episode 17 - a song from Show Within a Show based on Simon's and Kamina's adventures. It sound suspiciusly familiar to Mazinger Z -style opening.

Simon is a Green Lantern recruit, TTGL is his Will World.

It's been shown in comic continuity that when new Green Lanterns are recruited, they're actually placed into their Ring with no memories of what they are. They either are lost to the world created by their will, or they become better for it. Simon left not to travel the universe, but because he realized what he was and that he had passed his final exam. This explains how easy it is to manipulate... well everything in the TTGL universe.

• There is one comic where Green Lantern summons what appears to be Gurren's torso...
• If we're goin' with Simon is a Green Lantern and the entire series is in his ring, then that means that Kamina was the former bearer of said ring, but failed the test? Is that where this is goin'?
  • Or he died just before handing the ring off to Simon and left a small piece of himself behind to guide the new kid.
• Alternatively, Gunmen are another means of harnessing willpower. After all, Spiral Energy is green, empowered by will and basically create stuff out of nowhere.

Lordgenome knew Nia was an Anti-spiral

She is apparently the "first princess". This means that she is the first daughter he had. He adopted her and conditioned her to be a nice person. When she asked where she came from, he panicked and locked her away. This is why afterward he tried to have her killed, he was trying to make sure she was either linked to the humans or dead. It was the fact that she was Simon's fiance that kept her connected to the spirals. This was all too perfect to be true. Since spiral energy affects probability (to put it lightly), he was using his spiral power to turn her benevolent. He was finally proud of her at the end; he was proud that she chose humanity.

• I don't buy it. If that's true, then everything that Guame had said is a lie. Lordgenome has children because he knows about the Anti-Spiral's plans to encode a messenger in Spiral DNA. He then kills them before they grow old enough to actually be a powerful enemy to him. That's why there are so many coffins in the valley where Simon found Nia.
  • Furthermore, if Nia had been the first daughter he ever had, and he'd been ruling for 1,000 years, she'd be incredibly old (probably at least 900). That wouldn't make sense with her aging along with Simon.
• Better theory: He planted Nia on purpose to give the metaporical finger to Simon.

This series and S-Cry-ed are alternate continuities

First off: Spiral power and Alter power are incredibly similar. One manifests in spirals and the other in rainbow colors. They create stuff out of nothing, which has No Ontological Inertia. The power increases with sheer force of will. Kazuma the Shell Bullet and Simon the Digger are very similar. Neither have last names or parents and the community hates them. Both learn determination due to their brother and mentor. Both are so crazy and determined that the most powerful force ever is no problem. At the middle they are largely emotionally damaged, but at the end they face everything smiling, even departure from their loved one. Both use the color red as their armor. Kamina and Straight Cougar are analogous as well. Both have the obvious pink sunglasses that they wear, but also appear on their powers. They are big brother figures to Kazuma and Simon and teach them how to survive. Both are very heroic and fast talking. Then there is Kanami to Nia. Both are kidnapped by the enemy and then used as a mouthpiece to the heroes, and the death of one of the two would not seem to actually get in the way of their relationship. The last parallel this troper can recall is The Darth Army to the Anti-Spiral army. Both are mass-produced and soulless. Much of it consists of hands and feet, and they are supposed to be powerful, yet are often dispatched by the heroes.

This series is the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's A Time Odyssey trilogy

First off, the Firstborn were actually the Anti-Spirals. They have the exact same motive and policies. The downside is that mankind doesn't have mecha yet. Humans manage to survive the events in Sunstorm, but due to the mass extinction, the new life-forms from Gurren Lagann emerge via evolution.
In Firstborn, mankind ducks the Anti-Spiral Q-Bomb by tricking it into hitting Mars instead. It hits Mars so hard that the planet is blasted into a pocket universe, followed by the universe in question suffering a Big Rip. The same physics that allow this exist in TTGL.

The last words in Firstborn are "We are the Lastborn. We are at war. We are losing.". Around this time, Parallel Works 8 is occurring. The Lastborn consist of every race that isn't the Firstborn. They are losing because at this moment, Lord Genome performed his Face Heel Turn.
This also makes sense if you combine it with the opening. Simon has clearly returned upon learning that life will accelerate the heat death of the universe. Now, we all know that he can stop beings from killing themselves by hitting them really hard. He's going to do the same to the universe. It was not shown because it was too awesome.

Spiral Power is a manifestation of The Force, or vice-versa.

Think about it. There are perhaps only a handful of people relative to the general population who are "adepts" at either. They are both seen to enable these adepts to do things which would make physics kill itself. Force sensitives, such as Jedi and Sith are just on the threshold of the immense Spiral Power Simon posesses. Therefore, Simon will go on to found the Jedi Order.

• Which explains why Simon turns into a nomadic hobo at the epilogue, ala Obi-Wan Kenobi in the old Star Wars trilogy.
• And why Spiral Energy only works on humans, since humans do contain midichlorians.
• Well, Spiral Power runs on hotbloodedness and gives the user Charles Atlas Superpowers, while The Force runs on meditation and gives the user psionic talents instead. Isn't that a contrast?
  • The people of TTGL might have utilized the Force in a way different from the Jedi. The Force could be the same thing, it's the usage of the Force that makes it different. Take the Sith (who uses the Force for personal gain and absolute despair, yet they still use the Force, and by the Force that one that is very indifferent from the Jedi) for example. Or Spiral Energy could be the side of the force between the dark and light sides, since spiral energy is activated through passion and emotion, like the Sith, but is used for good intentions, like the Jedi.
    • It seems to be more dependent on passion and emotion than the intentions it is used for - sure, in this show the enemies are aiming for stagnation so drive is a good thing, but Spiral Energy could be a potentially devastating force if it was used irresponsibly (picture two spiral races at war with each other - no wonder the Anti-Spirals were so afraid!). Really, Spiral Energy seems a lot more like the Dark Side of the Force than the Light Side, at least as far as the Jedi and Sith see it.
    • The Star Wars Expanded Universe makes it clear that there are really many ways of looking at The Force, not just the Light Side and the Dark Side. Spiral Energy could very well be an entirely different side.

The Earth of TTGL is the Earth of Avatar: The Last Airbender in a really distant future.

Well, after the Aang died (as all living creatures do someday), the balance had to be restored in a way that still wasn't in Earth. The descendants of the Metalbending apprentices (or even Toph's) made the ancient Gunmen and the subterranean villages, in case a cataclysm would happen. Waterbenders and firebenders that didn't comply with such didn't have much to do, and the ones that didn't die became Spiralbenders (of sorts). After science took over magic (i.e. the benders of the other elements disappeared, and they tried to explain even Spiral Power through science), new Ganmen were created, and a clone of the past Avatar (the one after Aang), Lordgenome, was created, because they thought he'd be a good leader. Some two or three thousand years after, when the man almost extinguished the humans that weren't in the subterraneous villages, a kid manifested Avatar-like powers. His name was Simon. And if this still doesn't convince you, the Mix-and-Match Critters might help.

• Make it past, and it'd be really funny. Simon, the first Avatar!

Spiral Nemesis is caused by using Spiral Energy to revive the dead.

Let's say Simon actually does revive Nia. Then, of course, he's obviously going to revive Kamina. And Kittan. And everyone else from Dai-Gurren Dan who died. And then Rossiu asks him to revive everybody who died in the Mugann attacks... Kamina and Kittan at the very least, and probably most of the Dai-Gurren Dan and who knows how many others, have the potential to reach Simon's level, so pretty soon you have tons of people all over the world reviving everyone who dies. And there isn't enough food to go around, so they start reviving the animals and plants killed for food as well. But all these people are breeding as well, so the population shoots up exponentially. Pretty soon the Earth isn't big enough to hold all this, so they start teleporting huge chunks of the population to other planets. But the other Spiral Races get in on the action, and before long the entire universe is full, and the Spiral Knights of the future have to constantly create entire new planets, stars, even whole galaxies to hold them all. All of this new matter they create just builds up and up, and eventually there's so much matter the universe collapses into a black hole.

TL;DR: It's going to be one big cosmic cancer.

So if you want an answer to why they didn't revive Nia or Kamina, Simon already gave it in the last episode: because the human race isn't that stupid.

• Yep, that's pretty much how it would go down. Or at the very least, this description makes the most sense given what we know about the Spiral Nemesis.

TTGL is the future of Neon Genesis Evangelion

Here we go: the Evas and Angels both run on Spiral power. The S2 engine? Super-Spiral engine. Also explains Shinji's wildly fluctuating sync ratio, he's in the depths of despair the entire series. The Evas themselves are prototype ganmen. Humanity learned of Spiral power after Second Impact, and built the Evas to utilize it. Unfortunately the Eva universe is plagued with a lack of incredible badasses, and as such there was no one capable enough to pilot the Evas. So, they ran them off electrical power like the Ganmen do while beastmen pilot them.

The Angels are perhaps Anti-Spiral creations, with Adam being some kind of Anti-Spiral construct, possibly a messenger (maybe that's more suited to Kaworu though). AT-Fields are just concentrated Spiral power. Lord Genome later perfects the Eva technology, removing the squishy bits in favor of mechanical components.

• It's part of mine and my friends' personal canon that the Anti-Spirals were, in reality, Evangelion's Earth after Instrumentality, due to the hivemind and mindscrewery that both populaces had.
• It is better to say Spiral Energy is a form of AT-Field, the Lilin AT Field to be exact, since how can Anti-Spirals warp reality without the use of Spiral Power? Answer: AT Fields.

Everything in the Gurren Lagann universe only works because the characters are too stupid to realize that it shouldn't work.

When Kamina, Simon, Yoko, Nia, and Kittan try things with a ridiculously high chance of failure, it always works, because they refuse to aknowledge that it might not work ("If it's more than 0%, it might as well be 100%!"). However, when Rossiu, who does realize how risky a plan is, tries to pull off something, he walks right into into a trap laid by the Anti-Spirals. Either the Idiot Ball has reality-warping capabilities, or Gainax wanted to be Anvilicious about the power of optimism.

• Its basic mechanics of spiral energy. If you think its impossible, your negativism will prevent you from generating sufficient spiral energy to force reality to bend to your will. Believe you can hard enough, and you'll generate the spiral power to do it. If its an aesop, its a Fantastic Aesop, as Spiral Energy isn't real.
  • That's not exactly true. It's more that you know how impossible it is, but you power through anyway. Anybody in the series who just attacks with utmost confident without understanding their enemies get crushed. It's the reason Simon is a better Spiral Warrior than Kamina, and why Lord Genome is a Genius Bruiser; they both keep a cool head, but knows when to be Hot-Blooded where it counts.
  • As far as we know.
  • So basically, does that mean Spiral Power is actually the "Law of attraction" in disguise?
    • The Law of Attraction is restricted by physics. Spiral energy takes the laws of physics, ties them up, whips them, and makes call it "daddy".
    • Also, Spiral Energy tends to manifest as ginormous Humongous Mecha, flames, drills, and awesomely Cool Shades, none of which have yet to be seen on Oprah's person.
      • Yet.

The prologue to episode 1 is a bad ending where Team Dai-Gurren decides to join the Anti-Spirals.

Everyone is noticeably disturbed when the Anti-Spiral is explaining the fate of Spiral Power and what the Spiral Nemesis means, and it seems to be implied that the Anti-Spiral thinks Simon will be the catalyst for the Spiral Nemesis. So, the prologue is a bad ending where either the Anti-Spirals brainwash Team Dai-Gurren, or they decide of their own free will that halting evolution is the best way to ensure that the universe doesn't end. The Anti-Spiral then instructs them to attack the Spiral home worlds with Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann, because the Spiral races probably would not be expecting an attack from another Spiral race. It's not a very pleasant idea, but at the very least, it makes the "So it seems all the lights in the heavens are our enemies" line make sense.

• Also, the "Energy readings are off the charts" line, too- it's not opposing energy levels off the charts, it's their own. The Anti-Spiral king let Team Dai-Gurren tap into massive reserves of Spiral Power so they'd have enough to wipe out all spiral life forms in one shot. Also explains why Boota is in human form.

Kamina's sword is a Zanpaku-to

• Interesting, but probably not. It's more likely the colossal blade of Zanger Zonvolt's DyGenGar.
• It'd be funnier if Viral's cleaver was one, though.
  • Viral already has one. It's called "Hozukimaru".

Simon isn't exactly a hobo post-series

His name and face are in the history books, after all. Every human on the planet knows about him and what he looks like. No matter how far he wanders, he no doubt received a hero's welcome; it is likely that he wandered regularly more to prevent access to him from becoming easy and to avoid receiving too much from any one town's gratitude than out of neccesity. Note that the only person he interacts with that we see is not only too young to remember him, but too young to have taken the relevant history classes at school, and too hungry to look up at his face anyway. Chances are, if the kid looked up (or been old enough to have gone to enough school to recognize the Legendary Hero more easily) he'd have acted roughly like the average American would upon meeting George Washington (reaction multiplied by a factor of ten or so).

• It's implied that he chose to stroll around the world instead of staying in only one place. Remember he's not the planet's hero, but the Universe's. If he continued in Kamina City, people from other planets would have visited their Earth earlier, and would have overcrowded the place. Not counting the amount of marriage proposals he'd have to turn down because his heart was Nia's, even after her death.
  • My point is, it doesn't matter where on Earth he wanders, he's too well known not to be recognized.
  • Plus he has a friggin' drill on the end of his walking staff. In between that, Boota, and the spiral-pattern eye, that kinda shouts "SIMON THE DIGGER!" at whoever sees him.

Nia isn't really dead.

Her death was staged in front of a large group so that certain people who may or may not still consider her a traitor and try to kill her would think she was dead. Hence why Simon was so damned happy in the end after his wife just ceased to exist at the alter.

• Alternatively, she really did dissapear due to the ASK being killed, but Simon was lying about not resurrecting her. After he left the wedding he did it in secret. This was to avoid the public outcry and having to bring back everyone who died, which would cause the Spiral Nemesis.

Watching Gurren Lagann back-to-back with End of Evangelion is one of the funniest things ever.

If it wasn't already self-evident, This Troper has confirmed it.

The Spiral Nemesis is the creation of a new Eye of Terror

Of course! It's so obvious! Love, hope, will, fighting spirit, all of the things that make humanity powerful and important are all fundamentally linked to the Ruinous Powers! The Anti-spirals are Eldar; using space-distortion, mind trickery, and techno-sorcery in an attempt to oppress intelligent life to prevent their mistakes! How Did We Miss This One?? Oh, and spiral power is warpcraft.

• I imagined a crossover like that once, and it was awesome. And would explain Ork's belief powers... Except that, unlike Spiral beings, they don't reproduce sexually, as they don't have genders.
  • Orks = Beastmen?
  • "Love, hope, will, fighting spirit" almost directly lines up with Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle, Khorne. Well, Nurgle is a bit of a stretch, but nurglites are usually tough, and force of will lets you survive almost anything in TTGL. Also, notice how the Tyranids who are in charge stand on two feet, have their upper arms fused together sometimes and adapt quickly? They're taking humanoid form to channel more spiral power to inspire their troops.

Rossiu has superdense hair that he ties together with steel cables.

Just look at that swarm of hair flying around when he gets punched, no other explanation is possible.

Kamina wasn't really a Badass. He just had a severe superiority complex.

Think about it. In the second episode, after Kamina finds out that his father died, he cries and grieves... and then within hours is back to joking and laughing. Yoko notices and Simon just says that he's always like that.
Wait- He's always getting back up quickly? Sounds fishy to me.

Then, in episode 10, Simon tells the story of when Kamina rallied the people of the village when they were in the collapsed tunnel and that that's how they all survived. However, in episode 11, Yoko says that Kamina was just panicking and pretending to be confident, and it was Simon's determination that saved them all.
Hold on a second- Just pretending to be confident? You mean, he does that when he's scared? Hm. I wonder, might he have done that every time he was scared? As in, every time he faced a Ganman, every time things went sour...

Aha!
Basically, Kamina tries to hide his feelings of inferiority with fake confidence and badass. His speeches are long, winding, and fairly cheesy- that's because he doesn't even believe in what he's saying. All of the spiral energy when they're in the Gurren Lagann together is coming from Simon and Boota.
Kamina feels weak, compared to Simon, and wishes he could have accompanied his father on the surface so that he'd be tougher today... One of his most quoted sayings, "Don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you."... that's not for Simon's sake that he's saying that. Kamina needs someone to believe in him, and who better than the person he admires most?

What Kamina didn't realize is that he had stinted Simon's confidence, at least not until it was almost too late. That's why Kamina uttered the words, "Don't believe in me, who believes in you, believe in you who believes in yourself." What he's really saying: "I screwed up."
And that's why Kamina had to die. To make way for the real Badass, the man who's back would never break.
Simon. "You have grown to be a taller man than I." indeed.

• It's not like Kamina is never afraid or sad, he has these emotions just like any other person. However, after the tunnel collapse incident he decided he shouldn't back down in the face of fear or despair and keep on going towards a new future.
  • I never said that he isn't, I was just saying that he hides it, hence the pothole to Stepford Smiler. And I realize that that's likely the case, but hey, this is Wild Mass Guessing. And I do believe that he doesn't actually say that. Or if he does, he could be lying...
    • He hides his fear, he conquers it, is there any real difference? Whatever the case is, he doesn't let that part of him that fears death have any say in his actions. And that's what counts.
• Word of God has actually confirmed this, more or less - of all the main characters, Kamina a.k.a. what we consider to be "the most badass badass ever" is said to have the least ability to use Spiral Energy. He probably knows it, though - he realizes that his job is to make other people confident. In a sense, Kamina takes the brunt of the hopelessness and despair in order to protect his teammates from it.
  • And by "word of god" you must be reffering to the secretive book that the author of the "Satire" claims to own, am I right? If he's the only person who has ever seen it, and he refuses to show it to 'anybody' then ther's 'no' reason to believe it. The reasons he gives for getting that book are equally as ridiculous. Self proclaimed third party speaker right there. Yes, I am calling him out on his bullshit.

Gurren Lagann takes place inside a computer.

Spiral beings are viruses, destroying whatever might be a threat to them, and Lagann is a rootkit, hijacking other files. Lordgenome and the Gunmen are freeware antiviruses, which are constantly running and able to quarantine the spirals/viruses, but not get rid of them completely. Beastmen are the core files that allow the Gunman programs to run. Grappals are programs created by the spirals/viruses to resemble the Gunmen/antiviruses. The anti-spirals are all files for a single commercial antivirus, which is inactive until it detects a certain number of spirals/viruses. However, the user set this number too high, and so the program doesn't act until it's too late and the spirals/viruses are capable of completely overwhelming it. Eventually, when the spiral beings/viruses run free for long enough, the computer's user will have no choice but to reformat, bringing an end to the universe within the computer and creating it anew.

The Anti-Spirals are the Spiral Nemesis!

Due to the fear of the overuse of Spiral Energy, certain peoples became one collective consciousness. Their lack of evolution, the destruction of their individuality... if they were to win, the world would just become one stagnant blah of consciousness, and nothing would ever happen. And That's Terrible!

• I had a theory where they were the Spiral Nemesis just because they were slowly extinguishing life in the Universe, and it was, somehow or another, a way to destroy everything. Not to count when they threw galaxies at TTGL, without an ounce of consideration.
  • Not to mention that the Anti-Spiral himself is very... Void-like, in appearance, perhaps he's the black hole in the vision, he doesn't seem to get it.

Spiral Power has its limits.

While Spiral Power can allow someone to leave Physics weeping in a corner, it isn't omnipotent. Whenever Gurren Lagann split apart, all damage received in battle suddenly re-appears. This means that it already has one huge limitation: it's matter only exists for as long as it's generator continues to focus on it. This automatically means that one of the biggest complaints about this series holds no water: Nia couldn't have been restored by it. She could only exist for as long as she herself focused intently on doing so. She faded after marriage because one week of constant focus was all she could manage.
The Anti-Spirals knew of Spiral Power's limits alongside it's immense power. That leads us to our next bullet....

Spiral Nemesis wasn't about a Big Crunch directly.

People have proven to be very bad when it comes to managing anything powerful. If humanity learned how to fully harness Spiral Energy without any immediate goal, they'd very soon become corrupted by it. Considering how an aggressive, defiant attitude is the best mood for channeling spiral power alongside natural wariness about alien life after ASK, war would almost inevitably break out once humanity took to the stars.

To stand up to human aggression, other spiral races would start abusing spiral power to the same level, leading to a very dangerous arms race constantly churning out spiral power and trillions of tons of matter. None of the sides would bother checking themselves, thinking that Spiral Power would allow them to fix any damage. This mindless warfare, would lead directly to the races destroying each other, but eventually, the universe itself. This is the scenario shown in the opening.

The Spiral Nemesis will be triggered when someone does something too awesome for the universe to handle.

While Spiral Energy can create matter, it mostly allows for the Rule of Cool to override physics. And we saw through out the series just how much people will try to top each other. If left unchecked with spiral energy people will continually trumping each other until they do something so amazing or so against the rules the universe that it'll just break.

• Jossed by the eponymous mecha and its super variant from the movies. If anything besides the stated "people explode into galaxies" was going to break reality, either by sheer coolness or sheer mass, it was the 130+ million light-year high mecha.
  • Maybe there's something even more awesome than that.
    • What the shit is more awesome that using galaxies as throwing stars??!
      • Cutting off the mecha's arm and using a multiverse as a chainsaw, Evil Dead style, while using the other multiverses as swords.
      • Do you seriously think one would actually put whatever it is here on WMG and destroy the universe in the process? Okay, so the world doesn't work on Spiral Energy, but you catch my drift. Also, what if such an event is beyond human understanding?
  • You know, I'm pretty sure the "makes galaxies look like moths" mecha was awesome enough to end the universe. In the movie, it and the Grand Zamboza were triggering the collapse of the Anti-Spiral universe.
• Does letting Mr.T and Chuck Norris fight each other in Gurren Lagann-like Mecha count?
  • Or does letting the 300 Spartans fight in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann -like Mecha and having them proceed to kill an army of Eldritch Abominations in bullet time while accompanied by every Memetic Badass count?
    • How about the TTGL turn into a pocket universe shaped like a merger of Kamina and the goddamn Batman, with the voice of Mr T, holding a big f***ing sword composed of a thousand burning quasars, and whose skin cells are supernova continously going off. All while shouting "THIS!IS!SPIRAL NEMESIS!"
    • Nah, I'm thinking something else. I'm afraid it'll cause Spiral Nemesis just by describing it, but here goes. What about a massive flaming hole being torn through the universe straight through to the afterlife, through which Kamina, wearing a flaming crown and a flaming version of his cape and shades, sprouting Go Nagai Sideburns, and Dual-Wielding Flaming Chainswords, rides out on top of the head of his own Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, piloted by Kittan, Lord Genome, his generals, and everyone else on the non-Anti-Spiral side, which proceeds to gattai with the one used by Simon and the rest of the team, which is joined by Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Axe Cop, Dr. McNinja, Batman, Colonel Quaritch, Leondias and the Spartans, Kratos, Bruce Ironstaunch, reallyjoel's Dad, Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Domon, Master Asia, his horse, Brian Blessed, Theodore Roosevelt, River Tam, Problem Sleuth, Bro, Equius, Mr. Egbert, Grandpa Harley, Goku, Saxton Hale, Morul, Captain Ironblood, Kouji, Charles Barkley, Hass the Rock, Captain Falcon, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Guy, Segata Sanshiro, Tommy Oliver, John Matrix, everyone else listed on the Memetic Badass page, and anyone not already listed who has appeared in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things to form a new mecha, which is the size of the entire universe, made of Spiral Energy, is shaped like Kamina in his aforementioned equipment, plus Lord Genome's beard and Simon's visor, both made of fire, with a Powerthirst-spewing fountain in its chest, flaming wings made out of lightsabers, and is riding an appropriately scaled-up Wexter in his rocket-winged dragon form while wielding Fuckslayer and a flaming groinsaw, then proceeding to perform a Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill Breaker with each limb, plus the head, and t
      • Throw Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill somewhere in there.
        • Describing it in the actual universe will destroy it. Preforming it will trigger a Class Z, probably even beyond. Perhaps that's the reason the TARDIS exploded-this event occured, and space-time commited suicide because it could not handle the awesomeness. If creation has a God, He commited suicide as well. The Season 5 finale of Doctor Who is an attempt to prevent this suicide. Whoever's truly behind it wants all existence to have a Dying Moment of Awesome.

Gurren Lagann takes place in the far-off future of Warhammer40000.

And the Anti-Spirals are actually the C'Tan known as the Void Dragon and his necron servants. Spiral energy is actually chaos energy. We know that the C'Tan normally operate on massive scales normally, and that the Void Dragon is most likely currently residing on Mars. In Paralel Works 8, we see that Lord Genome was born on a highly advanced world, which also somewhat resembles a hive world by what we see. That might be Terra. In a desperate attempt to strike back at the threat, humanity tries to incorporate alien technologies in their weapons, including ork technology. This made for extremely powerful weapons against the Void Dragon, but in the end, it all proved inefficient and eventually led to Genome's betrayal as he realized he had to compromise to keep humanity alive. With the imperium being all the more crippled and plummeting to ruin, he settled on a backwater planet, and engineered the beastmen from genetic data from various creatures including, but not limited to, orks (how else would the beastmen drive their ganmen?). It makes sense from a perspective. Spiral energy is chaos energy because both are feared to be destructive by the enemy, and the C'Tan and Anti-Spirals share similarities in that they both are beings not at all empowered by or connected to such energies. Not the most developed thory, I admit, but you have to agree that it is a plausible theory, at least.

The Anti-Spiral King is Shinji Ikari and the other Anti-Spirals are the instrumentalized humans.

A few possibilities. Maybe while Shinji was getting mind raped by instrumentality in a metaphysical sense, he was acting out the role of the Anti-Spiral King in a real, physical sense and his defeat at the hands of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is what really snapped him out of his wangst and led to him washing up on that beach. Alternatively, Shinji did choose instrumentality and Eo E is non canon. From here you can see the progression of events that lead to him becoming an Anti-Spiral. It's also possible that Gurren Lagann is one of the universes he created during his tenure as God. No matter which of these explanations is correct (if any) it does seem like an interestingly symbolic battle. A race of humans from a Humongous Mecha reconstruction against the very people who deconstructed it in the first place.

• This would give the analysing of Nia a very disturbing meaning.

TTGL is the far future of the DC Universe -- specifically, Green Lantern.

A device capable of creating and maintaining physical constructs using nothing but pure willpower? Hmm. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And take into account that when "pure" spiral energy is shown, it's often green. Presumably, the Spiral warriors of Lord Genome's day were the descendants of the Green Lantern Corps, and the Ganmen (or more likely the Spiral reactors powering them) are upgraded GL rings.
Alternatively, instead of being simply willpower-based, spiral energy is UNIFIED emotional energy, since the series demonstrates that it can be generated by (at least) rage, hope, and love as well.

• Or it's not just using willpower, but also White Lantern Energy. Spiral Power needs evolution, too.

To go with the above, the Spiral Nemesis is actually the Blackest Night.

The Anti-Spirals described the Spiral Nemesis as a big crunch style event that would end the universe. However the word Nemesis implies that it is not just an event, but a tangible enemy that would rise up to destroy the universe. Spiral Energy can be considered analogous to the power of the emotional spectrum, which fueled the Lantern corps of the ancient past. Perhaps the Anti-Spirals learned about the Blackest Night through a similar prophecy as the one logged in the old Book of Oa, or through some other means, and feared that their over use of Spiral Energy would rouse Nekron and his Black Lanterns. To that end they purged themselves of all emotions, suppressed any technology based on the emotional spectrum, and any sentient species with ability to use it.

So why did the Anti-Spirals deliberately lie about the nature of the Spiral Nemesis? Having observed Simon and the other Spiral Warriors the Anti-Spirals probably determined that if they described the Spiral Nemesis as some primal God of Darkness and Death then Simon and the others would only see him as another enemy to drive their drills through and thus making it more likely that the Spiral Nemesis / Blackest Night will come to pass.

In the end it was probably a good thing that Simon didn't try to resurrect Nia with spiral power, because I doubt even he would be prepared for the unmitigated horror (and undeniable awesomeness) of Black Lantern Kamina!

• Alternatively,the Anti-Spirals are Black Lanterns. Both they and the Black Lanterns believe life is a threat to the universe, however the Anti-Spirals are an alternate version of them-one that is more well-intentioned and is able to retain some emotion in unlife. Or the Black Lanterns are an experiment by the Anti-Spirals Gone Horribly Right.

Alternatively, TTGL occurs in the VERY distant past of the DC universe and is the source of the Green Lanterns

After millennia of ever-expanding awesomeness, the universe finally experiences the Spiral Nemesis. This isn't a bad thing. The Spiral nemesis is just one of the several interpretations of the spiral symbology: a force that touches all points and brings them together at a single endpoint. It's why combining mecha work so well in TTGL. Essentially, the entire TTGL universe COMBINES WITH ITSELF, and the Spiral Energy of all things unites in a single source. This becomes a powerful Spiral Engine that creates an entirely new universe for it to take place in. The Spiral Engine decides that, with its newfound power over destiny and GAR, it will draw together an army of new Spiral Knights to wield its power. As a holdover from the memories of its greatest hero, the TTGL universe creates as its outlet for its power a ring similar to Nia's. Obviously, this means that technically the Anti-Spirals were the first Black Lanterns.

The Spiral Nemesis is actually Doomsday, 2012.

Just think about it.

• What?

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann takes place in the same universe as Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars

In the backstory of the book humans were defeated by Anti-Spirals, and during the billion years of stagnation that followed the memory of that gradually faded into a vague myth. The humans have records of once having blown up the moon when the enemy tried to make it collide with the Earth and that the vast underground train network was implemented in order to not to draw the enemy's ire by air travel, but such a long time has passed that people are not even sure if the enemy was real, let alone knowing what the Anti-Spirals are.

In the present of the book most of the underground cities have died out during the millennia for one reason or another. The surviving city of Diaspar has been well designed to keep humanity alive and in utopia-style comfort while avoiding provoking the Anti-Spirals:

• Diaspar is technically completely underground beneath its transparent dome.
• The living population of Diaspar is set to exactly one million.
• The people of Diaspar have been genetically engineered to be sterile and nearly immortal. The computer running the city reincarnates new citizens from the pool of the dead as necessary to keep the numbers stable.
• The people of Diaspar have been genetically engineered to be agoraphobic so that they don't want to go outside where their numbers would count against the Anti-Spirals' population limit.
• The computer running the city (in reality the preserved head of founder?) uses Spiral energy to keep the machinery running through the ages and can use illusions like the Anti-Spirals. It also might be able to create matter from nothing. The technology of The City and the Stars universe has similarities to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in that complex machinery can be buried in the ground for arbitrarily long periods of time and be just like new when dug out. Also, the depiction of the galaxy is consistent with the presence of the Anti-Spirals. Even the home planet of the Anti-Spirals themselves might have appeared in the book even if the characters didn't know what they saw.

Both Kamina and Simon are decended from one person: Kaien Shiba

• Cause they kind of look alike... and the idea of Bleach and TTGL taking place in the same universe is too awesome NOT to be true.

Kamina is Jesus. Literally

• So, God does not only send his son into our universe, but in any universe possible. He appears without clear parentage (Okay, there is some guy he calls father but that might or might not be true), he starts the whole movement against the existing society, and he is the one encouraging Simon to fight constantly. HE DIES FOR OUR SINS. (Or to help humanity step forward and then give Simon the chance to save the world with his own strength.)
  And in the end when it seems like everything is lost he materializes in yet another dimension to get them out of it and back into the fight so all can have a happy ending.

Shinji is Lord Genome.

He was a loner living on a future Earth after a large enough population came back from the LCL ocean. They discovered Spiral power, and begin the age of the Spiral warriors.....well, you know the rest. This idea also means that Lord Genome's badass heroric sacrifice, as Shinji's badass heroric sacrifice, means that in th end, Shinji finally did snap out of his moodyness after all!

• This also means he becomes so terrible father as his own.
  • No, it means that he's better.
• Don't forget that the Lazengann looks suspiciously like the EVA-01...
• That explains the orange hues at the beginning of Parallel Works 8 - it was the LCL ocean. After the bombing run, the ocean got vaporized.

There's no Spiral Nemesis

Either Anti Spirals got it wrong or they were fooled by some being from other universe afraid, that one day Spirals will cross barrier between realities and knock at their doors.

• The show seems to tell the viewer as clearly as possible that this isn't the case - when the Anti-Spiral is giving his Hannibal Lecture to Simon, Viral tells Simon not to fall for it. Then Lordgenome jumps in and corrects Viral, saying that Spiral Power users intuitively know for a fact that the Anti-Spiral speaks the truth. Considering the nature of Spiral Power, it would make sense for intuition, especially Simon's intuition, to be a reliable source of knowledge about it.
  • And yet, Lordgenome was the only one who believed the Spiral Nemesis story back then. Maybe it requires a kiloton of Spiral Energy to comprehend?

Creators hate Yoko ships

C'mon, they sinked three of then, twice by making it cannon and then killing both Kamina and Kittan in the same episode, and because they couldn't kill Simmon they just shipped him with Nia.

• If that's true, why are both Simon and Yoko both single in the last episode, with their respective love interests dead?
  • Word of God confirmed that Yoko have never seen Simon as anything other than her friend. But if the authors hated Yoko shipping, most of the cast would be dead, or married. And there are a good number of characters that end up apparently single.
    • It doesn't realy look like she had any romantic interest in Kittan either, at lest not to the same degree. It was a goodbye kiss from a friend and later in her memory book she refers to it as such.
• Not really hates, rather is using her as a tool to induce drama. Simonx Nia was meant to be from the beginning and is favoured and cherished among the staff. The Kamina and Yoko shipp on the other hand acually gets some attention in other media or merchendise and in all the parallel works they've appeared together. There was even a Gurren Radio corner titled "What is Love- Kamina's and Yoko's indirect love confessions, the more obscure the better! Ie: {I want to watch the moles on your skin my whole life!}" . Or sth. along those lines... it was very lulzy! However (and please take this with a grain of salt as it's taken from 2chan) the director of the Boinvs Boin PW (the samurai- era one), Hirokazu Kojima's concept for Kaminax Yoko was "two people who always chase themselves through dimentions but can never come happily". And like the others said- at least she never got a cold shoulder, she was always loved.

Kamina's awesomness is genetic.

He was the last descedant from long line of great heroes and his ancestors are Coop, Jotaro Kujo (or any other Joestar), Ryoma Nagare, Zaraki Kenpachi and Guy Shishioh

• So, he has been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh. He has been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold.

Bruce Ironstaunch is the reincarnation of Kamina.

He got so pissed at Rossiu for arresting Simon because nobody messes with Kamina's bro. Also, look at the mustache and don't tell me it doesn't remind you of the Cool Shades. How did he manage to look so old in just seven years. A huge concentration of Spiral power. Because who had more fighting spirit than Kamina?

The entire war between the Spiral races and the Anti-Spiral, from its inception, is the result of the Witch of Certainty and Witch of Miracles.

Lambdadelta granted the Anti-Spiral races with the Power of Certainty, so that they would "certainly" stop the Spiral Nemesis and defeat all the Spiral races. The Spiral races were given the Magic of Miracles by Bernkastel. It took them one thousand years to defeat the Anti-Spirals, but a Miracle certainly occurred when Simon went after Nia. Up until that point, the Anti-Spirals had been winning the war and subjugated all Spiral life, but when the moment came that the chance of Spiral victory was no longer zero (Nia says that her chances of coming back are infintely close to zero, and Simon points this out) they're able to go and defeat them.

Rossiu doesn't marry Kinon in the Distant Finale.

He's seen together with Leeron. Another proof is that he's the only one to not be afraid of Leeron's advances, which could mean that he rather liked them. If Word of God ever confirms this, I'll laugh and gloat so much that my brain will stop working. Or something.

• • I think all three of them can live happy ever after together.

If not stopped, Anti-Spirals would become Anti-Monitor

Combine teories about TTGL happening in DCU past and Anti-Spirals beign Spiral Nemesis - Anti-Matter Universe was a world where Anti-Spirals won. As time passed they realizad that Spiral Energy is connected to positive matter and destroyed everything, relpacing it with anti-matter. During millenias they become even more united and evil. Then they realize there are other universes and choose to destroy them. And so Anti-Monitor was born.

The Anti-Spirals are the Thirdspace Aliens

They both come from another universe and believe that all other races are inferior and must be exterminated.

The series has a Green Aesop.

Just phrased differently and, unlike most other things in the series, subtle (and yet still Turned Up to Eleven). "Conserve resources or you'll destroy the Earth" is Anvillicious. "Conserve Spiral Energy or you'll destroy the Universe" is a theme of the end of the show.

• Missed the point. It's not that they'll conserve spiral energy, it's that they'll continue to become better and fight for Spiral Energy, but when the Spiral Nemesis comes, they'll fight that too.

Yoko's bikini top actually is usually glued to her nipples

Further proof.

• The Movie would seem to suggest this isn't the case though (see: Adiane vs Yoko fight).
• Perhaps it was just cold that night?

Neon Genesis Evangelion takes place in Spiral's head.

So does GaoGaiGar.

Kamina used to be just like Simon

Kamina grew out of his fears, and since he identified so strongely with Simon, he wanted Simon to grow out of his fears as well.

Megas XLR and Full Metal Panic! are the same universe as TTGL, altered by Time Travel

During the First Spiral War, the Spiral races attempted to undo Lordgenome's treachery by sending stuff back in time to bolster their forces. They sent a souped-up Ganmen back - Megas - but something went wrong and it ended up in early 1900's Jersey. They sent Kiva after it, but because Coop altered Megas so much she couldn't use it properly and she never reported back. In desperation, they sent a huge wave of Spiral Power-related data back into people's heads, creating the Whispered - and extending the Cold War into the 21st century.

• • Okay, I wish I was a better writer, because the thought of Sousuke/Coop interaction is killing me. "That dropout is as good a pilot as I am?" "That dork thinks Humongous Mecha battles are won with tactics?"
    • Kaname and Kiva are almost as good - "At least yours doesn't rappel through the window if you scream at a cockroach." "At least yours is hot enough to date."
• At the very least, Gurren Lagann was influenced by these two anime.

Portal takes place in the TTGL universe

• And Aperture Science was developing Spiral power (look at their logo, it's kind of a spiral itself). Chell is a budding Spiral Warrior, and the Portal Device is a perceptual teleportation unit. GLaDOS has either been controlled by or defected to the Anti-Spirals, and is desperately trying to prevent the spread of Spiral Power by the Anti-Spiral's usual methods, disheartening and discouraging Chell, which forces her to go further and further Serial Escalation in her attempt to escape.
  • So Cave Johnson is Kamina and Spiral Power comes from Combustable Lemons? Neato torpedo.
  • This theory would explain why The Cake Is a Lie; to goo thrhough such hardships only to be disapointed would indeed be crushing.

Most matter in the universe was created by spiral energy

In the last battle the anti-spirals mash two galaxies together to create a new big bang, as to destroy TTGL. The anti-spirals don't use spiral energy however, so how did did they get the energy to cause a big bang from a 'mere' two galaxies? The answer is simple, the original big bang only created mass equal to those two galaxies, all other mass in the universe was created by spiral energy. Which brings up the question of how close the universe already is to the spiral nemesis.

• Don't we see a lot of galaxies flying out of the Infinity Big Bang Storm's beam when they're blasting Tengen Toppa, though?
• a few can be seen being created yes, but only two were the cause of the creation of the IBBS. If anything it just shows that the creation of a large number of galaxies is possible
• Well yes, that's the point. Obviously more mass can be produced from said attack than what went into it. At the least there's five that pop out of that energy beam.

Lordgenome's home planet is not Earth

Rather, all Spiral Warriors from Earth died in the previous battle against the Anti-Spirals, so he went to Earth instead. Hence why he and Nia look so different, as well as Nia's Two Tone Hair and Technicolor Eyes - it's part of the other planet's gene pool. After all, the only thing Spiral Races physically have in common is general body shape. It also explains why Nia looks so different from Lordgenome, and why Lordgenome looks so different from young!Lordgenome from the eighth parallel works video - Bizarre Alien Biology.

The Anti-Spiral are forces of The Guy

They used the moon to attack.

• You know, I was going to note that that wasn't actually the moon, but if we consider the Anti-Spiral king to be the Guy, then that means that Simon, upon killing him, becomes the current Guy. Thus, his retirement to a presumably peaceful life alone results in him breaking the endless cycle of violence, as the narration for some episodes suggests his ultimate goal is.

There is no Spiral Nemesis.

Surely, a mech the size of a Galaxy doesn't actually expend so much Spiral Power, that it doesn't rip a new one into their world? Why?

Because, the Spiral Nemesis was only a farce, a theory that can't be proven true, in fact, the answer to the Spiral Nemesis? Maybe it's in that book that Rossiu carried.

• Doubtful, it's pointed out that all users of Spiral Power inherently know that Spiral Nemesis can happen. Plus Spiral Nemesis seems to involve so much matter being produced via Spiral Energy that the universe simply collapses in on itself. It'd probably take a lot more Tengen-Toppa sized mechs than we ever see to have that sort of effect.
  • It depends: the Anti-Spiral universe means that thought can be given form, something like that, when Lordgenome explained how he gained his temporary body, and then the Anti-Spiral made them believe that there is Spiral Nemesis, and then Your Mind Makes It Real.

The Spiral Nemesis isn't a Black Hole, but an Eldritch Abomination.

Besides the fact that it sounds cool, why would Spiral Nemesis be the name for a Black Hole? Answer: It isn't, the Spiral Nemesis is actually a Cthulhu-esque horror that feeds on Spiral Energy, until it gets enough to finally sustain itself and get out to destroy existence, the Spiral Nemesis was only shown as a Black Hole, because the real Spiral Nemesis can possibly never be destroyed and may be worse than a Black Hole.

• For Rule of Cool, the Spiral Nemesis might be worse than Cthulhu.
  • So the Spiral Nemesis is Azathoth?
    • Correction: It will wake up Azathoth. It will be so awesome that Azathoth decides to see what's going on, ending everything.

Spiral Energy is Real

And it is the reason why the tropes Memetic Badass, Memetic Sex God and Memetic Mutation exist.

• What about Memetic Molester?

TTGL takes place in Real Life..

Where an accident from the Large Hadron Collider created an interdimensional warp and released what would be Spiral Energy, forcing humanity to move underground.

• That explains the ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH combined with Large Hadron Collider memes.....

The TTGL universe is connected to Real Life.

To be more specific, it's made to hold the excess awesomeness and lack of physics from our universe. The reason why Rule of Cool has no affect in real life is because they filtered it into the Gurren Lagann universe, and for similar reasons that's why the laws of physics are so rigid. There is still traces of Spiral Energy, but it can only affect things on a quantum level.

In Parallel Works 4, Viral will create an even worse villain.

Parallel Works 4 takes place in a Mirror Universe, where the heroes are the Beastmen, and the villains are the humans, now, Simon was shown to practically being a slave (albeit, a willing one) to Kamina in the video, but, as we recall in the series, Kamina dies, thus, while Kamina is practically just an Evil Overlord, Simon, in this world, may become worse than Kamina, and possibly even more powerful... Or, Simon will just give up, but considering that Kamina dies, and Simon becomes more powerful in the series, the former is likely.

Kamina's soul was absorbed by Gurren Lagann

This case is similar to Neon Genesis Evangelion, where Eva-01 assimilated the soul of Yui Ikari into its core. This also boosted the amounts of Spiral Power stored up inside the mech. Ever notice where Kamina is sitting? The center of the mecha. In other words, the core.

The Spiral Nemesis is the world of Uzumaki

Everybody is haunted by spirals and turns into them. This is actually Spiral energy that goes out of control and instead becomes a Cosmic Horror that feeds on nightmares of people.

The Hyper Galactic Dai-Gurren Dan outfits were a joke that got taken seriously

When they needed a uniform, the Dai-Gurren Dan turned to Leeron, figuring that since he was gay, he'd have a great sense of fashion, offended by this, Leeron set out to create the dumbest and most ridiculous outfits possible, especially Yoko's. To his shock, they rest of the team figured that this was the cutting edge of fashion and congratulated Leeron on keeping the Dai-Gurren Dan relevant to the modern aesthetics of their rapidly evolving culture.

Kamina went to Soul Society

Because he is the only one who is more badass than the army of Hollows, and even Ichigo himself. And his sword is a Zanpakuto. Or not.......

• So, does that mean that Kamina is Kenpachi? Suddenly, everything makes sense.

The Movies are what really happened, other people were telling their own versions of the series events in the Anime.

Kamina told the story up until the point where he dies, Nia told it up to the point she spoke to Adianne, Rossiu told it up to the point where he nearly killed himself (Thus giving himself a lot more time to be hated by his detractors), and Yoko told the final parts along with Balinbow and Jougan, who contradict the battle by saying they died for a few laughs.

So, who told the real story? Simon. The movies are the real versions of the events, specifically, the giant energy Kamina, was all something he did experience, most of the others water down the story, mostly because they think that, while people can go Beyond the Impossible, they would probably never believe that you could make a energy reincarnation of Kamina, let alone one bigger than most galaxies.

• Or the reverse.

Real Life is under control of the Anti-Spirals

Hence why we live in a world of mindscrewery and misery.

• Then why does the population keep increasing so much?

Yoko is the long lost descendant of Revvy from Black Lagoon

Their both fanservicey gunslinging chicks.

TTGL is actually part of the Tenchi OAV multiverse

The Spiral Menace is the cosmological flaw that Tokimi placed in all of the third dimensional worlds. The Anti-spirals discovered this but rather than trying to fight Tokimi, they took the lame way out. The Choushin shunted this to the side with all the other failures and ignored it. When the Spirals finally get around to confronting the menace white glowy Tenchi shows up and says, "Yeah, thanks for playing. I already took care of it. Wanna hang out?"

Nia is TTGL 's equivalent of Princess Peach

Starts off as a Moe Moe -esque Distressed Princess who after spending time with the protagonist Takes A Level In Badass and becomes as Hot-Blooded as the protagonist. They even look alike.

• So, Bowser = Lordgenome?
  • The Anti-Spirals (specifically the Grand Zamboa) might be the closest equivalent of Bowser. It is even more obvious with Parallel Works #1.

The aftermath of TTGL will not directly lead to Spiral Nemesis, but it will turn out to be what Friedrich Nietzsche just said

After Simon killed the Anti-Spiral the Spiral Races were left with the oncoming fact that is Spiral Nemesis. As a result, because the Spiral (fighting spirit itself ) will actually lead to the destruction of the universe, it led to mass depression and nihilism, just like what happened to the Anti-Spirals before their descent into madness. Amidst this angst, a Kamina-esque Large Ham will rise to power: the Ubermensch. The Ubermensch will snap the people out of their wangst and remind them of the time where they went Beyond the Impossible and fought the POWAH.

• Alternatively, TTGL is actually what Nietzsche said. Spiral Energy is another name for Will to Power. Existential themes run during the series (WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!) and of course, the Ubermensch is no other than Kamina, who is a Messianic Large Ham who lives by his own moral code and believes in individual willpower (again, the previous quote) over faith (such as bursting into anger after seeing people worshipping a Ganmen). On the other hand, the Anti-Spirals are Nietzsche Wannabes. They promoted mass nihilism by forcing themselves into a Hive Mind, killing Spiral Races, and putting the survivors into angst and meaningless existence.
  • If TTGL is Nietzschean philosophy and Kamina is the Ubermensch, then....

TTGL was secretly created by Nietzsche as a response to Evangelion, which was then secretly co-created by Schopenhauer and Freud

• I don't know, quite a few scenes, (not to mention the idea of MAN fully piercing the heavens with a pointy object and the Bigger Is Better present in the Final Battle) looked like Freud was involved...
  • Then, Gainax is run by Freud himself, and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer battling each other secretly in Gainax is all a Xanatos Roulette by Freud.
• Well Nietzsche praises manliness and was inspired by Schopenhauer, while TTGL praises manliness and was inspired by Evangelion.....

All of Lordgenome's daughters were tainted as Anti-Spiral Messengers as he tried to preserve/cure them and was forced to euthanize them when it became apparent there was nothing he could do about it

While he's portrayed as a Blood Knight/Well-Intentioned Extremist, the whole 'ditching his supposed daughters when he gets bored of them for no reason other than to be extremely evil' seems very out of character for someone who, while occasionally questionable, is more or less a good guy. Assuming that each one of his 'daughters' were something akin to Anti-Spiral assigned messengers just like Nia, it makes perfect sense for him to experiment with them and try to 'turn them against their Anti-Spiral nature'. He got rid of Nia because she began to question her own existence which, based on his own experience with the previous daughters, may have meant that it was already to late for her. Then, well...Simon happened. The Anti-Spirals wouldn't have lost against Humans, without Nia's conflicting allegiance, so perhaps this is what Lordgenome has been aiming for all along with all his previous young ones?

The Spiral Nemesis is a metaphor for overpopulation, and the Anti-Spirals are basically extreme Malthusians

Spiral Energy is the power of evolution, and evolution is achieved through procreation, and the Anti-Spirals feared this will lead to the destruction of the universe through mass reproduction. We have the same situation: we evolve through reproduction, but our over-reproduction will lead to resources being exhausted and Earth being turned into a Crapsack World where people are beginning to fight each other for oil/living space/what-have-you. It isn't evolution that the Anti-Spirals feared, but procreation, which is required to evolve naturally, and since procreation will lead to the Universe being turned into a Crapsack Universe where resources are scarce and people always have to fight each other for more space, the Anti-Spirals used transhumanism (artificial evolution) to sterilize themselves and force themselves into an Assimilation Plot. Of course, the standard Spiralist response to Malthusianism is "instead of wangsting all the time about overpopulation, why not try to discover more living space, like alternate universes out there, like we did during the age of expansion?"

• On the other hand, the Anti-Spirals were cynically extreme introverts (In other words, they are Nietzsche Wannabe-scale Hikikomoris). They don't fear Spiral Nemesis, they were disgusted with too many people smiling with joy and hope.
  • Sounds more like Agent Smith from The Matrix.

There are other Anti-Spiral homeworlds out in the galaxy.

I know it's an offshoot, but it's possible that even if there was only one homeworld, there would be at least one or two other races that know the troubles of Spiral Energy and try to suppress it, only to eventually hold off their evolution, in other words, there may not be only one Anti-Spiral homeworld, but two more, hopefully, one will leave other races alone, whereas the other will... Well...

Kamina is the Anti-Spiral King.

The ASK knew that Simon's life in the underground would suck, so he took the form that would appeal most to Simon and set the events in motion. Like, for instance, HE gave Simon that ring, knowing that they would be able to locate them so that he could defeat them on equal terms. That also explains why he had the notion to make Gurren Lagann in the first place, so that they could become TTGL and the ASK could beat them on equal terms. The ASK saw that he had done enough, so he died. The Kamina in the Locust-Eater Machine (The one who snapped them all out of it, not the one that was a pussy) was a representation of the Kamina That Simon Knew, the one he looked up to. That's why the form of the STTGL was the form that simon thought would be the most powerful, Kamina.

TV Troppa Gurren Lagann!!!

Think about it. Epileptic Trees run on Spiral Power. TV Tropes itself is a cyberspace version of Lagann, and tropes drill throughout fiction. As these tropes drill through fiction, it assimilates everything unto itself, informalizes them, and through the inspiring informality that is so unlike The Other Wiki, creates more Epileptic Trees in the process. In short, TV Tropes promotes Fanon-I mean turns normal fiction into Epileptic Tree generators. Eventually these Epileptic Trees will reach critical mass, pierce the heavens, get in Real Life, and cause The End of the World as We Know It. Or just turn the universe into Lost.

• No, because tropers around the world, having heroically sacrificed their spare time and social life in the never-ending search of the ultimate Trope, are fully equipped to deal with tropes running wild. We shall show up at the last second, shout "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?" as one, and fire off a drill-shaped galaxy-wide Kamehame Hadoken made of friendship and our combined knowledge of tropery, banishing them back to the Internet until they arise once more.
• Also, Fast Eddie and the Admin are getting aware of the Spiral Nemesis that This Very Wiki will induce. Hence why they are getting more rules-observant.

Kamina and Simon are actual brothers

• Look at them ^{[dead link]}. Nearly the same hair, facial expression, Walking Shirtless Scene... Whether Kamina knows this or not makes no difference.
  • The resemblance isn't more than two unrelated people who took clothing and stance habits from each other. However, Adult Simon and Old Simon do look suspiciously like Kamina's father... Which is not to say that Simon is Kamina's father's only son, just that there is other evidence that they are (at least half-)siblings.
  • At the very least, could they be very distant cousins?

The TTGL universe was created by Haruhi Suzumiya after destroying her own universe.

Rule of Cool physics? Check. Large Ham? Check. Humongous Mecha? Check. Spinning? Check.Punching out Eldritch Abominations using Pure Awesomeness? Check. It makes sense that if Haruhi Suzumiya will create a new universe, it would be TTGL.

The stone on Nia's ring is a G-Stone

That's why they were able to track her: She was carrying a solid chunk of Spiral energy.

Lagann is Alive.

Either Simon talking to Lagann in his Heroic BSOD was symbolic, or Lagann is alive. There may be other points of proof as well, it might not count, but in the movie, Lagann grabs Simon and throws him at the Anti-Spiral, that would probably account as proof that Lagann is alive, had it not been for the fact it didn't happen in the show.

Kamina is the astral projection of Lagann

..and it performs it in a way similar to how the Anti-Spirals projected their collective representation (Anti-Spiral King). Lagann is really alive, but immoblized, since it needs to feed off Spiral Power. It used its remaining backup Spiral stored inside the core drill to project what would be an inspiring badass, which is Kamina (of course Spiral Power is fueled by badassery which in turn is fueled by inspiration, so you have to spend a little Badass to inspire more people and get more Badass in a method similar to business). After Simon, the perfect host, learned about Lagann, it was time for Kamina to go back to his true form (Lagann) and complete the cycle in order to defeat the Anti-Spirals once and for all (plus to get to more Spiral Power). This is also why Kamina already knew about many of Lagann's techniques, such as the famous Giga Drill Breaker, before even learning about it as a normal human.

• Not just Giga Drill Breaker. Kamina thought that shoving Lagann on top of Gurren was a good idea. No one knew that Lagann could assimilate other mecha at that point. But Lagann would.
• Kamina's "father" was really Lagann's previous host, during the time of the Anti-Spiral war.

Gurren Lagann is an Alternate Universe to Mega Man, with all the characters as humans.

The roles are as follows..

• Simon->Mega Man
• Kamina->Proto Man
• Yoko->Roll (Or Iris)
• Viral->Bass
• Nia->...Kalinka?
• The Anti Spiral-> Juno

• • Hrm, some seem a bit...iffy. Lemmee give it a go. Some of the above, and...
    • Yoko->Kalinka (I can only imagine Cossack's facial reaction.)
    • Nia->Plum (Battle & Chase)
    • Boota->Eddie/Met
    • Leeron->Jewel Man (Just for the flamboyance)
    • Gurren Lagann->Ground Man
    • Darry & Gimmy->Roll and Ice Man respectively
    • Kittan->Quick Man
    • Balinbow and Jougan->Guts and Concrete Man
    • Rossiu->Quint
    • Dayakka->Duo
    • Lordgenome->King
    • The Four Generals->the Killers/Genesis Unit and Splash Woman
    • Anti-Spiral->Ra Thor/ Ra Moon (From Super Adventure RockMan)
    • TTGL->Duo (pre-MM 8)
    • Grand Zamboa-> Evil Robot (robot that Duo was fighting during intro of MM 8)
      • ...And the list goes on...

Dwarf Fortress takes place in an alternate universe of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

One where instead of crying "Pierce the Heavens!" Kamina instead chose to "Strike the Earth!" and create a civilization utterly adapted for the underground life, perhaps as a result of never making it to the surface with his father. As a result, technology continued to deteriorate both above- and below-ground. The Beastmen eventually changed to true beasts, fit only to be slaughtered. Spiral Energy still exists, of course, driving Megaprojects. But because too much Spiral Energy unleashed in a closed space is a Bad Thing, it also manifests itself as the Tantrum Spiral.

The Anti-Spirals failed to account for dark energy in their predictions

Anti-Spirals: If you continue on your present course, you will create a supermassive black hole and destroy the universe itself! Astronomer: Well, actually, we ran the numbers and it seems that space itself is constantly expanding, so it can easily accommodate the extra matter created by the Spiral Energy. Anti-Spirals: ... Anti-Spirals: Well, crap!

The Anti-Spirals are full of it

That "Spiral Nemesis" the Anti-Spirals were worried about? It happened once before; a fat lunatic dropout piloting a mech with a Chevy for a head did it to defeat slug aliens and then demolished it, creating in its place a new, awesome universe in which the Rule of Cool Hand Waved the laws of physics. They then went on their crusade for "Absolute Despair" not out of concern for the universe, but out of jealous rage - they'd never be that awesome, so the only way they could justify their dismal existence was if they Hannibal Lectured the rest of the universe into being lame.

In the movies, the Spiral Nemesis actually happened

Remember that bit near the end of the second movie where the two colliding Giga Drill Breakers briefly suck in all the galaxies in the Anti-Spiral dimension? That was it. Both sides were too busy being Hot-Blooded to even notice it happen. Luckily their combined will to protect the universe made the Spiral Energy set off a Big Bang and recreate the universe exactly as it was.

Attenborough is an adult version of Loid

• They both wear thick glasses.
• They both have a love of explosions.
• They have a similar hairstyle.
• They are, for the most part, very, very weak.
• You first meet Loid hiding in a trsh can. Word of God says that Team Dai-Gurren first found Attenboroug in somebody's luggage.

Naturally, this means that Loid grows up to have not white hair and huge flabby lips.

The Gorillaz are an undercover group of Beastmen sent to our world to watch out for Anti-Spiral infiltration

The fact that they are 'not real' is just a cover story.

Big Foot is a prototype beastman.

Half man, half beast, you know it. The Government is simply covering up so they can prepare for an Anti-Spiral invasion, after finding an Anti-Spiral messenger at Roswell.

The Anti-Spiral is an avatar of Nyarlathotep

He warps reality, induces insanity, indulges in humans' absolute despair, hates humans (but can even make servants out of them, for example Lord Genome), and is black. Need to say more?

• It is even more obvious when we find out that Nia's name is a Meaningful Name: Nia Teppelin = Nyarlathotep.
• Then what about the talk of protecting the universe?
  • Nyarly does try to protect the universe to a degree (probably by keeping Azathoth asleep, which means decreasing the alarm clocks aka Spiral Energy around the universe, or if not that, through some unexplainable Blue and Orange Morality). Or he's just screwing with the protagonists.
• Heck, Chouginga Gurren Lagann even punched out Yog-Sothoth himself (fires at every point in space and time remember?). And Yog is described as the Lovecraftian equivalent of God, if not even more.

Kamina is the distant descendant of Sanson

Similar personality, similar looks, created by the same studio.

Guame's Gunmen Gember has a Lagann installed in it.

That's what Gember's face is. That's what allowed Gember to produce those needles from its arms, and to turn its pincers into deadly tentacles.

• Actually, the Lagann had nothing to do with the drills used by Gurren Lagann, that was due to Simon's spiral energy. Guame, being a spiral, he can use similar powers.

Kamina is a future version of Simon, who encourages his younger self to become a badass to create a Stable Time Loop.

The talk about Kamina's father? Complete red herring to disguise the truth. For whatever reason, Simon eventually realizes he has to send himself back in time to become Kamina or the entire story will never take place.

The prologue to Episode 1 takes place after the epilogue to Episode 27, during a conflict between Earth and other Spiral races.

The entire raison d'etre of Spiral Energy is defiant, almost belligerent force-of-will. That, in of itself, is rarely a trait that makes for comfortable relations between neighbors. And while it is probably A Good Thing that the Anti-Spiral embargo has been eradicated, that makes it all the likelier that tensions will flare up between the surviving races.

This WMG posits that the pan-Spiral Peace Conference that Viral and company were off to was, at least, a partial failure. Earth's status as the vanquisher of the Anti-Spiral will probably gain it prestige and allies, but is also likely to attract jealousy and resentment. And no one is likely to see a proposal for regulated use of Spiral Energy, no matter how well-intentioned, as something to embrace wholeheartedly. Not after spending heaven only knows how many generations with that power suppressed.

Simon's presence is easily answered. Earth's greatest living hero, lacking any real family.... It's to be expected that he'd take up the mantle of general again. As for the absence of Team Dai-Gurren's other survivors on Dai-Ginga's bridge, they would have their hands full running essential government functions or leading Earth's forces on other fronts.

Supposing this is true, the real question is "how stacked ARE the odds against our heroes?" Boota's statement "So all the heavens are against us" could be literal, with many or all of the other Spiral races allied against Earth; conversely, it could be mere hyperbole.... a doomsday like any other.

The Anti-Spiral is the AM supercomputer / Ted from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

As seen in the original short story both Ted and AM are trapped in unmovable bodies forever, but Ted had an altered time perception, while AM is a Deus Est Machina. Eventually, AM used his Deus Est Machina powers to manipulate probability and assimilate Ted, while Ted's consciousness merged with AM's hatred, becoming the Anti-Spiral, which still because of its hatred of all Spirals, still tries to have fun imposing absolute despair upon the universe, justifying its And I Must Scream existence with Instrumentality and "protecting the universe". This also means Simon killing the Anti-spiral was also a form of euthanasia.

The Anti-Spirals where right.

The series makes is quite clear that the Hot-Blooded are most suitable to wielding Spiral Energy. It is a very thin line between Hot-Blooded and Heroic Sociopath and an even thinner one between Heroic Sociopath and Jumping Off The Slippery slope and an even more thinner one between Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and With Great Power Comes Great Insanity/A God Am I/Moral Event Horizon/Omnicidal Maniac. If they left the hot blooded humans alone to do as they pleased with their nearly god like power they would have become the Spiral Nemesis.

Yoko's kisses don't just guarantee death

True that Kamina and Kittan died after getting kissed by her, but they did succeed in whatever they did.

• People who believe Yoko's kisses guarantee death, seem to forget that THE reason why she kissed Kittan was because everyone already knew he's going to sacrifice himself. She kissed him BECAUSE he was going to die, and not the other way around.
• And he initiated the kiss anyway, so it's not like anybody can really blame her.

Earth powered up Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

In episode 27 the Dai Gurren brigade was getting no where until they saw Earth, the entire planet gave them enough spiral power (notice how everyone grits their teeth and straightens up to go bravely into the light) to survive the big bang storm until Genome intervened.

Simon DOESN'T become a hobo.

Assuming Simon is a hobo solely based on the ending scene doesn't really make sense. Why would a hobo carry a drill on a stick? And why would he want to be a hobo in the first place? My theory is that he was Walking the Earth, continuing to explore and helping people, but in a less violent manner now that the Anti-Spirals are defeated.

The time lords are the first spirals

And, the Tardis('s?) is (are?) prototypes to the Lagan(s?) that have not yet been optimized by a humanoid form. The time lords are not as powerful as the TTGL races because they are over thinking things. If the time lords were ever to let loose and become hot blooded they would be unstoppable, but they never will.

The Anti-Spirals suffer from Pygmalion syndrome.

Since Nia is a construct of the Anti-Spirals, and the Anti-Spiral King is the collective unconscious of the Anti-Spiral race... That would explain this scene. (NSFW!) They all basically had PSL for their own construct.

The Ballad of Lost C'mell takes places in an alternate universe where Lordgenome won the first Anti-Spiral War

Both works have Beastmen and very similar structures in terms of Earthport/Teppelin. If Earth had won the war, they would've used Spiral Energy to develop the technology described as being used by the Instrumentality of Men.

Entire series, excluding prologue where Simon fights "all the lights in the heaven", is the result of Maelstorm cannon's attack from prologue.

It changed the past and other Spiral races never became hostile and therefore never sent those ships.

The reason Kamina died in Episode 8 is because if he and Yoko had progressed in their relationship and eventually had a child, it would have contained a level of genetic badass so high that it might have shattered the space-time continuum, or something equally devastating.

Think about it. The TTGL universe was simply preventing a future meltdown of the few tenuous laws that exist in it. After all, can you imagine the sheer Hot-Blooded Spiral power of a child concieved by a Jesus-figure, Cool Shades-wearing, katana-wielding, godly Memetic Badass and a Cool Big Sis, Fiery Redhead, BFG-wielding Ms. Fanservice? I mean, come on. Kamina himself was already pushing it...not even the TTGL universe is ready for that level of awesome.

• They would have had twins. One even hotter and wearing even less than Yoko and one even more manly and more hotblooded than Kamina, both having over 9000 times the badass of their parents. They would have been the Spiral Nemesis, but would be so badass it wouldn't happen.

Similar to the above, this is the reason why Nia had to die.

Seeing how unequivocally Badass Simon already is, just imagine adding such a ridiculous high dosage of Moe.

The hypothetical events mentioned in the previous theory actually happened.

And when the space-time continuum shattered, a blast of Spiral Energy was pushed back in time to Episode 8, powering up the beastmen Gunmen temporarily and thus giving them the ability to kill Kamina.

The Spiral Nemesis ended up happening, and it was defeated by...

... punching it really hard so it tore a hole through space-time.

Kamina is a distant descendant of Lordgenome

Both are shirtless, muscular, contain shitloads of Spiral Power and are badasss beyond compare. Plus, in Lordgenome's DVD flashback, he is shown wearing a cape that is suspiciously similar to Kamina's (it's even the same colour!) with the addition of two skulls on the side, but those could easily come off. Also, in Parallel Works 8, pay attention to what he's wearing when he finds Lazengann - a cape, just like Kamina's. We all know LG's a player, so is it that hard to believe he may have started the Kamina family tree shortly before or during the Anti-Spiral war and left his cape behind with the mother-to-be, for whatever reason, which was then passed down father to son until it reached Kamina? He takes it from his father's grave after all. Further evidence is Lordgenome performing a Giga Drill Break, a move Kamina supposedly invented, both of them stirring up resistance movements, their manly deaths, their love of doing the Gunbuster pose... it's all genetic.

• It makes so much sense! Except for one little nitpicky thing. Word of God confirmed that Kamina actually has the lowest Spiral Energy potential in Team Dai-Gurren. Also, if Spiral Power potential is determined by genetics, then who the hell fathered Simon?!?!
  • The only one badass enough to produce someone like Simon- Simon Himself, thrust back in time by a Spiral Energy accident.

Alfred F. Jones and Matthew Williams are Kamina and Simon in a non-spiral power induced universe.

The sheer awesome badassery of Kamina and Simon turned their counterparts into functionally immortal countries, further more, their Epic Brotherly Bond resulted in them being TWINS. They have very similar relationships, and Simon/Canada is largely ignored by those he interacts with while Kamina/America is around.

• • Leeron So immortalized himself as the incredibly gay queen that he became France.

Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a miniature universe

Lets look at the facts. It was created by absorbing the Infinity Big Bang Storm, which Leeron states is capable of creating universe. It doesn't even remotely resemble any gunmen, let alone the Gurren Lagann series. It appears to be a silhouette which contains celestial objects. The "cockpit" in it appears to be a void of green light. The only thing that appears to be pure matter is the drills and shades. Presumably, STTGL is a universe formed by spiral energy into a humanoid figure.

• This troper would like to posit that the STTGL did not disappear. It became the universe in which all other mecha anime take place.

Viral(Vee-rahl)'s name isn't "viral" (vai-ruhl), a reference to his genetics...

It's a reference to the word "virile", further showing how connected he is to the story of Kamina, Simon, and Spiral Power! It's also an Ironic Name.

• Look up what the word Viral means would you.
  • Why? "ヴィラル, Viraru" ("Vee-rahl") is a character in TTGL. Viral ("vai-ruhl") is, according to the tenth edition of "Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary", "of, relating to, or caused by a virus". What's your point?
• Actually, Viral's page on the Gurren Lagann wiki suggests that he may have been named after Enki Bilal - "Bilal" and "Viral" are pronounced the same in Japanese, "Enki" is his Gunman, and Bilal wrote a series of graphic novels called the Nikopol Trilogy, while Viral's theme song is called...Nikopol.

The Anti-Spirals aren't so well-intentioned after all.

Think about it. If the Anti-Spirals are really out to protect the universe from the Spiral Nemesis, why are they so bent on the ultimate extermination of all Spirals? Why are they so bent on torturing others to despair and death? Why have they become Those Who Fight Monsters? If they kill off all the Spirals, they'll be the only ones left. Also, Notice how they have absolutely no proof about Spiral Nemesis or that Spiral Power is dangerous, and if they're really cosmic entities then they should realize that in scientific measurements the universe is infinite and expanding (Dark Energy), the universe will always have room for more Spiral Power and if that's not enough, they can spread it onto the black seas of infinity outside the universe. They're using the Spiral Nemesis as an excuse; they simply want to Kill'Em All because they're Fantastic Racists. They're deranged hypocrites who latched on to an unproven theory, not to protect the universe, but solely because they have no desire beyond killing every last "inferior" Spiral species. They're sociopathic monsters who are merely trying to rationalize their cruelty and selfishness, merely because they view every other lifeform as a disgusting disease.

TL;DR: Anti-Spirals are Space Nazis.

• No, they're Kaleds that Davros didn't get to mess with.
• Alternatively, they are this and trying to save the universe. Much like Dr Finitevus, they are absolutely evil, yet so demented they think they're helping out the universe. Which, in an utterly twisted way, they are doing.
  • That's... PERFECT!

After the final battle, Viral become capable to create

I don't know in the serie, but in the movie, Viral obtain his own Tengen toppa! Plus, at the end, we don't see him, as in the series. That's beacuse he's old, married, and with his own family.

Lord Genome was once exposed to Australium.

In the Team Fortress 2 universe, being exposed to Austalium causes one to turn Australian, which apparently involves growing a moustache and a patch of chest hair shaped like a landmass, and losing your shirt. Seeing as the Engineer's grandfather grew chest hair in the shape of Texas, it's not limited to Australia. Lord Genome is shirtless, muscular, and has a beard and a spiral-shaped patch of chest hair. Presumably, this would mean that he might hail from an area shaped like a spiral. Which would explain so much.

• • That, or he's just so manly that instead of one country, his chest hair depicts The ENTIRE Milky Way Galaxy.

Kamina is Simons Father

Search your feelings, you know it to be awesome

• • Not for the Yaoi Fangirls that pair them. Major squick due to incest possibility.
    • The two already consider each other as siblings. So it's still squick. And Yoko has a strange imagination.
  • At the beginning of the series, Simon is supposed to be 14 and Kamina is 17 or 18...that's one fertile 3-4 year old. Although Kamina may well have been born that way, being Kamina.
    • Perhaps Kamina went back in time once he became Spiral Jesus. He died a virgin, came back as the god of Spiral Energy, and used his powers to impregnate Simon's mom in the past. And maybe his own, since how else would you get such awesomeness.

Everyone is a Time Lord...

...Or a Proto-Time Lord, and what the show depicts the beginning of the Time Lords' history.

• • TTGL's "Earth" is actually Gallifrey.
  • Most of the Time Lords' awesome science derives from Leeron's works.
  • The name Rassilon bears a striking ressemblance to a mix between Simon and Rossiu (and Maybe Kamina for the A).
  • The reason that people shoudn't be revived through Spiral Energy is that it would stop the world from going forward, i.e a definitely immobile world. They found a way to cheat that rule : People can be revived, but with their appearance and personalities changed.
  • The Spiral powered Time lords became the Spiral Nemesis (Or its cause or its embodiment) during the Time War. That's why the doctor put them to sleep. The Time Lord Victorious is a similar event.
  • The Daleks and the Cybermen have the same intentions as the Anti Spirals. They just found their own ways to prevent any TTGL-esque insurrection : Exterminating Everyone, or Upgrading Everyone

Show takes place in a distant future of Godannar

Mimetic Beasts were created by Anti-Spirals - they were first attempt to exterminate Spirals, together with Insania Virus. That's not a coincidence that it was using exactly the same thing that fuels Spiral Power - fighting spirit - to fuel itself and turn infected against their friends. However, when Anti-Spiralrs realized that they only accelerated evolution of Spirals, they launched full-scale campaing against them. Also, Kamina is descedant of Shizuru and Kouji. Really, try to mix Kouji's hot bloodness and hamminess with her Catch Phrase and you'll get Kamina. Yoko may be great-great-great granddaughter of Go and Anna.

Suigetsu from Naruto is Viral.

No, wait, hear me out!

Okay, so, nobody in Gurren Lagann (excluding LordGenome) has managed to manifest Spiral Power without the aid of a machine or some other item (i.e. the Core Drill). Sometime in the future, humanity creates techniques to manifest Spiral Power sans an external aid. This is the root of Jutsu. Eventually there's another war or something, and humanity once again finds itself nearly wiped out. They are forced to rebuild again, however, this time they retain the core of what would become Jutsu. Viral survives, and in the Naruto universe he calls himself Suigetsu (I mean look at him!). This conveniently explains the spiral motif in Naruto's character (i.e. the Rasengan, his seal) and why Naruto keeps being able to do crazy stuff despite whatever beating he might take (it only fuels his hotbloodedness, which fuels spiral power i.e. chakra). This Troper also likes to dream about how the ultimate form of the Rasengan will be the Lazengann.

• ......It is logical, though you should see the Naruto guess that Kamina is the So SP. And I feel the same about the Rasengan-Lazengan thing.

There will be a reboot of TTGL in which Kamina lives...

Gainax's other Humongous Mecha series got one, so...

• • Either that, or Nia lives. Or BOTH of them AND Kittan live.
  • Would you settle for a fanfic?
    • The above link is quite broken. As was a little piece of my heart when I found out.
  • Well, if we ever get an adaptation like that, I would expect a huge deconstruction. If you follow the chain of events in the show, Kamina's death actually allowed Simon to kill the Anti-Spiral.

Leeron is the most manly character in the TTGL world.

However, he consciously knew that if he kept it up humanity would die out from the supermassive Black Hole of highly-compressed GAR (the only Designer Babies are Beastmen, remember?), and subconsciously knew that it would cause the universe's supply of Hot Bloodedness to run out Or rather, overload the universe if he got within a hundred miles of a lagann. When he decided to start acting camp for the future of all humanity, he found he quite liked it.

• He's so manly he doesn't need women at all!
  • He's so manly it loops back to Camp Gay, ala digit overflow

Variation on the above: Leeron's Camp Gay is the source of a type of energy that is opposite to Spiral Power

...Yeah, I got nothing else.

• And this energy was the only thing preventing Team Dai-Gurren from wrecking the universe from the get-go.

The Anti-Spiral was trying to prevent CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN

If there's enough living creatures thinking, imagining, processing information, it breaks down the walls between Here and There, which would mean The Stars Would Be Right and the Many-Angled Ones would awaken, and we'd be looking at a Class X-4 Apocalypse. Galaxy-sized robot or no, you go mad just looking at these things. If you're lucky. The Anti-Spirals probably found some link between Spiral Power and The Many-Angled Ones, and realised it's perhaps best not to use it as a power source, as it would bring about the end of the universe, and when other races refused to believe them, they had to stop others by force. They also realised whilst out-and-out genocide was horrific, culling the population of the universe and keeping ir artificially low was the only way to prevent what The Laundry designated CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. One has to wonder what happened to BLUE HADES and DEEP SEVEN, though.

Gurren Lagann was actually an RPG campaign.

You've heard of "DM of the Rings" and "Darths and Droids", right? Well, this show was actually an RPG with an exasperated GM that allowed for ridiculous twinking. For example:

• • Kitan's player: "Okay, I'm gonna grab one of the drills from a past battle, and -- GM: "What drills?" Kitan's player: "We kept generating them, right?" Leeron's player: "It's conservation of mass!" GM: "Since when do you care about conservation of mass?!"
  • Kamina's player: "Do I make it into the mech? Okay, I start piloting it." GM: "You can't. It has a security system." KP: "I hack it!" GM: "You don't have the hacking skill." KP: "I get a default roll, right? And I burn some Willpower points." GM: *Sigh* "Okay, roll... Huh. Natural 20. Fine. You hack the mech through sheer manliness."
  • "So... You want to play as a big-chested resistance fighter from the surface, with a huge gun, even though the campaign starts in an isolated cave village? Okay, hold off till the first adventure. [game starts] Suddenly a giant robot falls from the ceiling and you see this girl chasing it!"
  • "So then I grab the little mech Simon's piloting and I try jamming it on top of mine to make them combine into an even more powerful robot like that bad guy's got!" GM: "...Okay, I did not expect that. Roll for it. Huh."
• ...That is strangely sane sounding. I think we found the actual start of Gurren Lagann...
• There was a loophole in the game rules that allowed for endless multiplication of Willpower points.
  • The GM saw that there were so many Crowning Moments of Awesome happening he just let things spiral just to see what the players would come up with next. He kept having to come up with more powerful enemies for them to fight. "Let's see them defeat a city-sized mech!"
  • Dyaka's player: "I've-got-the-best-wife-in-the-Universe Swing!" Wife: *blushes* GM: "Awesome!"
• Someone needs to make a webcomic of this.
  • Yes... Yes they do.
• After Kamina dies, they go on to play Nia, Viral when Nia's not playable.
  • Nia was actually created by Kamina's player's little sister. He planned to make a Suspiciously Similar Substitute, but then his sister insisted on going to a game with him and forced him to make his new character a frilly, girly princess. She lost interest after the Time Skip, so the GM had to write her out by making her an Anti-Spiral. She came back right as they were doing the final battle, and assuming the game follows the movie canon, she brought her Axe Cop-esque childhood enthusiasm with her.
    • "She has a cool giant robot now!" GM: "I don't think your character ever had a Gunman." "She does now! Oh, and it's as big as a galaxy! And I give everyone else robots just like it!" Kamina's player: "Hell yes!"
• Simon's player was the Only Sane Man, although by the time skip he had gone just as crazy as the rest of them.

The Dai-Gurren has existed in a previous form long ago: Fight Club

Fight Club is a group/cult built on the foundations of testosterone and chaos. Many years later, a young Kamina stumbles upon long-lost evidence of Project Mayhem. He misinterpets it and is inspired by what he saw to form a group of his own based upon the tenants laid down by Tyler, only molded to a much more idealistic format. Specifically the opposition of authority and forgoing of reason.

• Alternatively, he founded Team Dai-Gurren based on his prior involvement in Fight Club.

The Spiral nemesis is actually something else

The spiral nemesis is an ingrained belief that spiral power can destroy the universe, a safety measure if you will.

Simons Giga Drill Breaker would of been different if Kamina didn't do it first

The many thin drills was Simons drill, if he accentually achieved it sooner it would of been many thin drills forming as big a drill as the giga drill.

• So basically, this?
• Alternatively, could it be like Lordgenome's Giga Drill (weaving together all the drill tentacles)?

Kamina's favorite Pokemon is Squirtle.

His sunglasses say it all.

• Alternately, it's the Sandile line, who are always wearing their shades (because they're part of their faces), are incredibly badass, and as Ground-types could possibly come from underground and all that.

Kamina dying a virgin prevented the Spiral Nemesis.

He's a Memetic Badass and the posterboy for Perverse Sexual Lust. If he ever had sex, it would've triggered a Big Bang, in both terms of the word. This would've created a new universe that would expand until the normal one is destroyed. Because Kamina is that good.

The Anti-Spirals have already made their presence known

And it's working...

• Wait, that just makes Slendy less threatening now that we know he's vulnerable to drills and hotblooded speeches.

Nia lived, because she didn't explode

Whenever a Mugen, or indeed any Anti-Spiral-created thing is destroyed in TTGL, it explodes, and its component square-y bits explode. Violently. Nia did not explode, and nor did her component square-y bits, so she didn't die.

TTGL's universe is the future of Code Geass universe

After the world became unified, they started to do research on the Spiral Power, and then, after many and many years, came Lordgenome, and his fight against the Anti-Spiral. He used the lost power of Geass to almost reach the Anti-Spiral, but then he used against his crew. And, when he returned to Earth, after killing most of the population, he used Geass on the survivors, who had low morale and spiral power, to make them go to the underground without questioning and believe they always lived in underground. So came Simon and Kamina, Lordgenome knew his Geass wouldn't work on them, because they became so strong-spirited due to their Spiral Power that it would anullate any Geass (so Nunnally used Spiral Power to anullate the Emperor's Geass). And, after his defeat, the Geass power was lost forever.

Dark energy is Spiral Power

It makes the galaxies accelerate and (one of the views) says that the universe will end in a Big Crunch, or, if you prefer, the Spiral Nemesis.

• Wait, isn't Dark Energy what makes the universe expand, while the stuff that will cause the Real Life Spiral Nemesis is called dark matter?
• Update: I was thing about this and I realized that Gurren Lagann doesn't violate the Law of Equivalent Exchange because it actually transforms dark energy (which makes the universe expand) into spiral energy (which makes the universe contract through converting energy into mass), so what causes the awsomeness in TTGL is perfectly compatible with physics (and transforming too much dark energy into spiral energy must mess up everything in the universe).

The Dragonball and Guerren Lagann universes are related.

The Dragonball universe ultimately collapsed on itself,and went through a new Big Bang,becoming the Guerren Lagann universe.This is a cycle where each universe is more powered by the Rule of Cool and total Badass than the previous.If and when Spiral Nemesis is achieved,a new Big Bang will occur.And this new universe will be even more awesome,to the point it could endanger the multiverse itself from sheer awesomeness

Spiral Nemesis actually occurred in the final battle, as a result of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

The Anti-Spirals were only half right in their assumptions that a spiral nemesis would occur if Spiral races kept making progress. For the apocalyptic scenario to actually occur, they needed to face a resistance strong enough to absorb all (or the majority) of its power. They inadvertently caused it to happen when fighting against Simon and the Earth forces. This is much clearer in the movie during the final sequence when the Super Tengen Toppa GDB and Anti-Spiral GDB collide. The sequence shows all the galaxies in the dimension around them collapsing in upon itself, resulting in a whole lot of empty space. Depending on the victorious side, Spiral Nemesis occurs. Resistance would result in a crunch and the destruction of all energy, leading to oblivion. Since the offensive force won out, the result was a rebirth of the built-up energy.

TTGL is a compressed and somewhat chronologically confused retelling of Ocarina of Time and the Child-timeline Zelda games

So first, Simon (who is Link) has to beat four bosses, the Beastman Generals, before he can get to Lordgenome (who is Zant). This is similar to how he had to reach the Mirror of Twilight and collect the remaining three shards before facing Zant. Time skip seven years into the future: Simon and Nia (Princess Zelda) are adults now, but since the villain was actually defeated this time instead of being allowed to continue, the world is better than it was rather than worse, since this time Link didn't take a seven-year nap and instead lived out those years helping repair the damage done by the villain. But all that goes to Hell when someone decides to moon the world. Nia is possessed by Anti-Spiral King (Ganondorf), who dropped the whole "blue pig" routine in favor of showing his Humanoid Abomination side. Link/Simon stops the Moon, saves Nia/Zelda from her possession, goes off to fight Anti-Spiral/Ganondorf, Lordgenome/Zant who is supposed to be dead somehow manages to show up and by sacrificing himself turns on Anti-Spiral/Ganondorf, Simon/Link wins.

Just for Fun: Somewhere along the line, there was a character exchange between Gurren Lagann and Neon Genesis Evangelion

Someone decided that things would be more interesting if they switched the places two characters from the series before they debuted for shits and giggles, placing them in each other's roles but keeping their personalities the same. Gurren Lagann got Rossiu Illustrious from Evangelion and Evangelion got Mari Adai from Gurren Lagann. But since Evangelion had been long over since Gurren Lagann debuted, Mari had to wait until Rebuild.

Gurren Lagann and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers through Power Rangers in Space are Alternate Universes.

• Gurren Lagann starts off with the crew facing off against the Beastmen just to survive, while Mighty Morphin Power Rangers begins with Rita Repulsa attempting to conquer earth, with the Power Rangers entirely on the defensive.
• As the series goes on, they begin to take the fight to them, only for Machine King Mondo to show up. At this point, the battles are equaly defense and offence. the paralels in Gurren Lagann is the Dai Gunzan making its way to Teplin, being on the offensive while still having to defend themselves from the remaining of the Four Generals.
  • This is also where Spiral Power begins to be mentioned in Gurren Lagann, and where the ever-more-powerful Zeo Chrystals are in Power Rangers Zeo.
• Skipping Turbo, as it didn't do a whole lot as far as story development goes.
  • Turbo is the Time Skip.
• After defeating Lordgenome/Mondo, a new threat appears in the form of the Anti Spiral/Astronema. At this point, while the Earth is under seige and could be at any moment attacked again, the Rangers/Team Gurren waste no time, gaining the use of a mecha the size of the moon each, and going entirely on the offensive, bringing the fight straight to the enemy. At the end, a Heroic Sacrifice is made by Lordgenome/ Zordon, both becoming part of a major energy (Lordgenome becoming one with the Spiral, Zordon becoming pure good energy) to give the heroes the final push to defeat the enemy.
  • Also, of less importance, Space Rangers had the Spiral Sabers.

The Anti-Spirals are insane and/or clincally depressed.

Think about it: they've repressed their own biological instincts, become the Instrumentality and been in self-imposed isolation for millenia. The reason they want to drive us to "absolute despair" isn't to stop Spiral Power-rather they've become so miserable they feel the need to project their depression onto the rest of the universe. They can't even be Driven to Suicide because their desire to protect the universe is the only thing keeping them going.

Real Life and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are related.

Imagine if our universe ran on the Rule of Cool. Considering all the fiction we have, if we did run on Rule of Cool we'd have the knowledge and power to dominate the whole of creation. The reason we live in such a boring world is because our awesomeness is being diverted to prevent something like this from happening. The Gurren Lagann universe and all its variants were designed to handle our awesomeness. The Anti-Spirals are secretly being led by the individuals who did this, because if the Spiral Nemesis occurs all the Rule of Cool would flow back to us and we'd gain the power to take over existence

Nia was meant to be a living Deconstruction of the Plot Device.

Think a bit about it, a lot of the time, she's captured and mentally tortured, not to mention the fact that she's used (willingly or not) to basically just move the plot forward, first by Lordgenome, who threw her out, the Gurren-Dan have used her by basically saving her all the time, and Simon could have been using her to replace Kamina, and Nia turned out to have been an Anti-Spiral puppet. When the show ended, she dies, representing the fact that, now that the story is over, what's the point in having a Plot Device anymore?

Gurren Lagann takes place in the same universe as Avatar

Detailed in the Avatar WMG page. More specifically, the Na'vi are an Anti-Spiral Race, Jake eventually becomes the Anti-Spiral King, and Quaritch is a younger Lord Genome.

Gurren Lagann takes place in the same universe as Homestuck

Again, the details are in the page. Basically, Sburb is an early form of Spiral Energy technology created by Lord Genome, the Beastmen were made with Ectobiology, the Dersites are Anti-Spirals, and the meteors are a method of preventing Spiral Nemesis.

The Anti-Spirals are still out there.

Not the Anti-Spiral race our heroes fought. No. Unknown to our heroes,the Anti-Spirals had allied with the only race they could trust - a race of machines. When the Anti-Spirals were beaten, said robots decided, after watching the Ax Crazy Large Ham of the Anti-Spiral leader, that all living things could lead to Spiral Nemesis, and as non-living things, they must wipe out life so it cannot occur.

• Necrons?
• However, not all of these Mechanical Lifeforms seek the destruction of life. Some - some will come to protect the Spirals, and refused to ally with the Anti-Spirals. Most will come to destroy them. They were the dream - Mechanical Lifeforms able to transform their bodies into vehicles; a last line of defense against the all who oppose Spiral life! They are at war, heroic Autobot pitted against evil Decepticon, both on their homeworld of Cybertron and throughout the universe! They are the universe's last hope, they are - Transformers!

Jorgun and Balinbow went out in a blaze of Spiral Energy in their last moments during Episode 24.

• Consider what happened to the other Team Dai-Gurren pilots, and what we see of them. Zorthy's cockpit slowly caves in on him as it's crushed. Iraak and Kidd charge their outgunned Space Ganmen at the Anti-Spiral fleet before they fade to white. Makken cuts to an external view of his Moshogun before it impacts the Anti-Spiral missile. All of these are animated in the series' normal style. Only Jorgun and Balinbow have a stylistically unique death scene in that episode. It's rendered in black and white, with their features drawn in a harsh, sketchy style that eventually gives way to a growing white. Notably, this is visually similar to those who died due to a Spiral Energy based attack for one reason or another. It's probably a safe assumption that the twins manifested some kind of Spiral Energy as their Ganmen exploded—unlike the rest of their fallen comrades, their Twin Bokun was the only one that exploded so dramatically that it visibly wiped out a considerable number of Anti-Spiral 'fighters.' It's possible that they somehow channeled the impending destruction of their own Ganmen into an explosive release of Spiral Energy, destroying themselves and everything around them to save Darry and Gimmy from further Anti-Spiral pursuit.

We are currently in a Multi-Dimensional Labyrinth.

• We're currently experiencing one lifetime out of many. This not only explains dreams—subconscious slips into other possible dimensions—but also the belief in reincarnation. It's not reincarnating in the traditional definition, it's just experiencing another labyrinth illusion. Humans are a Spiral race, and our ability to perceive such things is already known. We can't escape as readily as Team Dai-Gurren did, because we've inadvertently ended up regarding the very things that would save us as foolish and unlikely, and relegated them to the land of fiction.

The characters are all members of the Lantern Corps

• Simon is a Green Lantern, who post-timeskip becomes a White Lantern, just because he's that awesome. Leeron is a Star Sapphire corps member, Nia is a Blue Lantern, Lord Genome is a Red Lantern who became a Green Lantern after his Heel Face Turn. The Anti-Spiral is the Black Lantern due to his hatred of emotion and Sinestro Corps due to spreading fear and despair. Boota is an Orange Lantern, it's just that a supremely avaricious personality cannot be shown in a non-speaking cute critter. Still don't know who the Indigo Tribesman is...
  • It makes sense that Nia is a Blue Lantern: she provided hope for Simon after Kamina's death, and the two perpetually become stronger when working together.
  • Lordgenome was once a Green Lantern, but donned a red ring when he made a Face Heel Turn; however, he retained his sanity and avoided Body Horror through sheer willpower from being a Green. He kept the red ring even after his Heel Face Turn, because red energy is just cooler (it also provides a circulatory system for his restored body).
    • And much like Atrocitus, he's still standing with a giant hole in his chest.
  • Blue Lantern makes sense for Kamina too. Note how he's usually not particularly effective alone, but both he and Simon get much stronger when they're working together.

Abe is Kamina's father.

They both are gainax characters,they both have blue hair and similiar face structure.To continue his studies,he transported to the gurren lagann universe and fell in love with Kamina's mother.

The Parallel Works (excluding 8) and AU mangas are all universes created by the Multiversal Labyrinth.

How has nobody else thought of this yet?

The series takes place in (and under) the Middle East.

First of all, the terrain of the surface, pre-Time Skip, is mostly desert wasteland. Even accepting the fact it's After the End, the Middle East is mostly desert, and it doesn't seem that whatever caused the apocalypse would have destroyed the terrain. As I mentioned on the character page, Lord Genome looks like he could be a Turk or an Arab, and he's old enough to have lived on the surface. And is it just me, or does Teppelin look like it could be a repurposed Burj Khalifa? The reason everyone lives underground could have grown out of the Beastmen using them as slave labour to excavate oil (remember, the Beastmen have Gunmen that run on more conventional power sources) before their purpose was eventually forgotten. Or because living underground was better than living in the sand. Also, the song "My XXX is the Best in the Universe" contains one section that sounds remarkably like that Standard Snippet you always hear in Arabian Nights movies.

• With all the "Kamina is Jesus" parallels, obviously Kamina City is Jerusalem.
• With the conflict in Libya, this would make Row Row Fight The Power either a Funny Aneurysm Moment or Hilarious in Hindsight.
  • The lyrics itself is socialist enough.

The series is a sequel/alternate world of sorts of Xenogears

Mostly because Rossiu is a dead ringer for Fei Fong Wong. Also, giant robots.

The series is a Spiritual Successor to Final Fantasy X

Spiral themes are present in both series, and Lordgenome can be paralleled to Yunalesca in the sense the system they developed were "saving" mankind and Yu Yevon is parallel to the Anti-Spiral and the heroes defeat the big bad by taking a third option, refusing the extremist, but well-intended, sort of, solutions.

TTGL is the distant future of G Gundam.

Aside from the direct comparisons between Simon/Nia and Domon/Rain, and the fact that both series are so full of hot-bloodedness, this theory would suggest that:

• The powers shown by the G-Fighters both in and out of their Gundams are early manifestations of Spiral Power. George even develops a spiral-themed attack, Rose Hurricane, and Master Asia even flies up to his Gundam by spinning his sash in a spiral form!
• Lagann, and its ability to take over other mecha, is one ultimate result of Dr. Raizo Kasshu's research that created the Ultimate Gundam, using Spiral Power to fuel self-evolving (through combining, or its creation of drills) and self-repair functions.
• As to who in TTGL is which descendant of which G-Fighter... Simon would be the favorite to be Domon's descendant, while Kamina's rather outward personality would seem to suggest a little bit of Chibodee. (Of course, given enough generations, Simon and Kamina may share both as ancestors.) Any other connection is pretty much up for grabs.
• I might go so far as to suggest that Simon may in fact be Domon Kasshu's son . . . or at the very least, his clone. The proof? This:
  • [1].

Everything past the Multidimensional Labyrinth never happened in the real time line.

This is a bit of Fridge Logic that I brought up on the Headscratchers page that, after being answered, led me to this: In Boota's portion of the Multidimensional Labyrinth (ML from now on) he transforms into a human so he can help Simon better. Then the Anti-Spiral King (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. Given that the ML is basically everyone's ultimate wish fulfillment, ala Instrumentality, wouldn't it make sense for Boota to instead beat back the ASK (since it would make sense to assume that Boota thinks that the ASK is controlling it) and freeing everyone from the ML before joining with Simon to kick the ASK's ass? Alternatively, wouldn't it make more sense for Boota to appear in another portion of Simon's life (real or not) and transform there for whatever reason?

Also, the fact that the ASK is there at all lends a bit a credence to my theory. If I recall correctly, the Dai-Gurren Dan barely even knew of his existence, let alone what he looked like or the finer details of his personality. There's also the fact that the ASK was acting like everything that was happening there was real and not a part of the ML (which I assume he can tell the difference between the real world and the ML).

Not only that, but when Simon and co are supposedly escaping from the ML, it shows Human!Boota standing up instead of lying down like the last shot of him was. How Simon knew this is somewhat simple to explain: He was partially aware of Boota's transformation in the real world but, given the circumstances, thought it was just a part of the ML so Simon's ML added that bit in (alternatively, it was the entire Dai-Gurren Dan's ML so Boota, for one reason or another, ended up thinking that his transformation was a part of the ML as well and thus "reverted" to normal).

In conclusion: The true ending to the series is Nia getting deleted; the Dai-Gurren Dan dying from starvation, dehydration, or something to that effect; and the population of the Earth getting whipped out. The Anti-Spirals won. The universe is still under there control.

The reason Boota never became a full-grown mole-pig

• It's because being around people like Kamina and Simon, and Lord Genome who have huge spiral energy reserves permanently changed his DNA. This is also why he ended up becoming so super-spiral-energy-filled near the end of the series - with his altered DNA, he absorbed and held (and possibly created his own) a lot of the spiral energy around him.

Kamina isn't gone...

• When he died, he became reincarnated as the show's physics/laws of the universe. Rule of Cool? More like RULE OF KAMINA. If you want to take it farther, it can explain the Stripperiffic nature of some of the outfits.
  • Yes, he was reincarnated, but not within the same world. You see, Kamina was a reality-warping hero who learned from childhood to laugh in the face of danger, dare to do the impossible, and cheer on the people around him even if everyone else thought him crazy. His first act as an adventurer was to break through the wall (well, ceiling) thought to be the edge of reality. And as he lay dying, his last thoughts were about how cute Yoko was, about his great friends, and about how someone ought to throw a victory party. And so he got a new chance at life where he'd do pretty much the same thing, under the name... Pinkamena. Aka. "Pinkie Pie".
    • No. NO NO NO NO NO. Wow, no. As if the Mighty Kamina would be anywhere near something as girly as "My Little Ponies!" Ha ha ha... besides, he'd totally be Rainbow Dash. HIS ARE THE RAINBOOMS THAT PIERCE THE HEAVENS!
  • So he didn't die so much as he became Spiral Energy itself? In other words, he became one with the Spiral. The same thing happened to Lord Genome, seeing as it was his death that provided Team Dai-Gurren with the energy to create the [Super] Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Every light in the sky IS an enemy!

Not the planets or lifeforms, but the stars themselves. They're alive and burning with Spiral Energy, and as Nemesis grows closer they'll begin to absorb everything around them, attempting to become Black Holes, leading to humanity having to fight the stars themselves. This could also mean...

Beyond The Wall Of Sleep is an alternate universe/prequel to TTGL.

As above, Algol is either a particularly powerful star who attempted to cause Spiral Nemesis early, or it'sa n alternate universe in which Nemesis began in the 1920's. In turn the light beings are Spiral Knights, either attempting to prevent Nemesis, or simply an opposing faction out to increase their own spiral power.

When the characters get spiral symbols in their eyes, it's to show that they've reached their maximum amount of Spiral Energy

Allow me to quote this from the main page, under Evil Eye: "Characters with large Spiral power signify this with spirals in their eyes. Strangely, Simon, the one who produces the vast majority of said power, doesn't get this until the Distant Finale, and then only on one side." This made me think that maybe the reason it only shows on one side is because he hasn't maxed out his Spiral Energy. And then I realized that the Anti-Spiral had good reason to fear the Spiral Nemesis if that's the case.

• Furthermore, it's also Fridge Brilliance that he never reaches his maximum potential - it's to show he's restraining himself and not causing the Spiral Nemesis.

The Giga Drill Breaker is an ability programmed into all Laganns.

It may sound silly, yes. But take a look at Parallel Works 8, and you'll see, that when he powers up the Cathedral Lazengann Lordgenome uses the exact same Giga Drill Breaker-style technique as Simon and Viral did when they combined with Ark-Gurren. Moments later, he used the Super Galaxy Giga Drill Breaker, that Simon later used, in order to destroy his enemies. Knowing Gainax, this is more than a coincidence. It is simply a feature that is programmed into all Laganns, so it can be used should it be necessary.

Lordgenome is actually Near.

Think about it. Their hairstyles are somewhat similar and only differ in color, which is either negligible or a result of the color scheme of Parallel Works 8; they were also very gifted geniuses. Lordgenome also appears to have been a loner when he was a child, much like Near. In addition, at the beginning of Parallel Works 8, Lordgenome is surrounded by several small animals, some of which are unreasonable to think of as being so small (there's an elephant, a giraffe, a dolphin and a gorilla to say the least). With the exception of Guame, these could have simply been dolls that he was playing with much in the same way that Near liked to play with action figures and dice.

Everything the Anti-Spiral said was a lie.

Spiral Nemesis? Doesn't exist, Spiral Power isn't remotely dangerous. Why did the Anti-Spiral lie? Simple: They were Complete Monsters who were obsessed with the universe and wanted it all to themselves, and they didn't want any pesky evolving Spiral races to get in the way of their forbidden love (Notice how they have absolutely no proof about Spiral Nemesis or that Spiral Power is dangerous, see also: Dark energy). Nia? Human, not an Anti-Spiral lifeform at all. The Anti-Spiral simply chose to brainwash her because she was the person closest to Simon, and since Simon was the biggest threat to the Anti-Spiral, it wanted to cause him ABSOLUTE DESPAIR. Nia fading away? That wasn't her dying. The Anti-Spiral was Not Quite Dead and brought her back to him so he could hold her hostage. Why? Because he knows Simon will try and save her, and when he does the Anti-Spiral can get Revenge. But since Simon was making love to the Idiot Ball that day, he decided "NOPE NIA'S DEAD LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU". And so he never goes and saves her, or does he?

• I doubt that the Spiral Nemesis was a lie. However I don't doubt that the Anti-Spirals were complete monsters either. It's possible for someone to be both Well Intentioned Extremist and Complete Monster (granted, it's a very rare case.)

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is basically the philosophy of Existentialism in anime form

Think about it. Kamina is as close as a hero can come to Friedrich Nietzsche's Ubermensch, and actually changes the morality of the world and refusal to obey higher powers (Lordgenome and the Anti-Spiral). In the finale, the Spirals accept the anti-spirals' despairing nihilistic criticisms (up to the point they referenced the Eternal Recurrence), reconstructing them and becoming more of an encouragement. The emphasis on personal growth? Existentialism to the bone. "Go down a path that you choose and do it all by yourself. That's the way team Dai-Gurren rolls!" sums it up best.

TTGL is the far distant future of Warhammer 40k

And the timeline of events is:

1. Eldar and the Imperium of Man both achieve their gelstalt trancendance. The Eldar becoming Ynnead. And the Emperor becoming The...uhhh, whatver the name of his God Mode is.

2. The Ynnead and God-Emperor set aside differences to defeat the Chaos Gods. Eldar slaying Slaanesh, God Emperor slaying the rest.

3. However, after so long in his 'condition' the Emperor's mortal paranoia, xenophobia, and other badness remain, and his Well Intentioned Extremism Goes Up to Eleven. He decides that more needs to be donee to prevent more Chaos Gods from being born or from ever coming back...

4. The Eldar on the other hand transcend their mortal pettiness. And before They Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, they decide to create a weapon that those they formerly considered "Lesser Races" can defend themselves with. They do thiss by using their own technology, and then taking the whole of Ork-kind, and sealing their souls(or whatever the ork equivalent is.) Into the resulting weapons.

5. These weapons are the Lagann, each one a Mind Hive of Orks. They scatter these across the galaxy/universe. Shortly after, they either fully Ascend or are slain by the God-Emperor...

6. Much time passes, The Tau are among the first races exterminated by the Gestalt God Emperor. The Necrons and the Tyranid however, remain numerous, further fueling the God-Emperors paranoia. He forces Insturmentality on humanity, ALL of them being sealed, becoming Him.

7. The God Emperor is the Anti-Spiral. Their Home World is Earth. And may even by a gestalt of All human worlds that were under the Imperiums power.

8. The Mugann are the result of the Imperiums military forces being molded together and fused by the God Emperor... Tengen Toppa Space Marines.

9. Lord-Genomes Story Unfolds.

10. Simon's stomy unfolds. God-Emperor/Anti-Spiral are destroyed.

11. But the Necrons and Tyranids are still out there...and only now are their true forces arriving/awakening...

Viral became mortal and able to reproduce after gaining the ability to use Spiral Energy.

• The Beastmen, dormant periods aside, never seem to age, but Spiral lifeforms do. Spiral energy is stated in-universe to be related to reproduction and evolution. Death is the engine that drives evolution forward in Real Life; an immortal organism is essentially an evolutionary dead end. In addition, senescence also allows populations to stay in equilibrium with the environment. If Viral is indeed now a Spiral creature at the end of the series, then he is likely subject to aging just like humans are, and, theoretically, capable of reproduction as well. However, Viral is the only Beastman who produces Spiral Energy, and there's no telling if reproduction between Viral and a human woman would work.

Grand Unified Guess: The Co-allition of the Anti-Spiral.

The Co-allition of the Anti-Spiral, or C.A.A.S if you will, is a multiverse-spanning group formed by the main Anti-Spiral. There are countless species in this group, all with varying goals and motivations, but all share a common element: they have abandoned/never had evolution, and thusly can't harness Spiral Power. There are exceptions to this rule, such as when the group shows the same level of dedication as the primary Anti-Spirals. There are three classes in the C.A.A.S.

• Type I: Tolerance. These only qualify in terms of the fact they aren't affected by evolution, and the Anti-Spirals don't feel Fantastic Racism to them.
• Type II: Appreciation. These members of C.A.A.S are not only unaffected by evolution/have abandoned it, but wish to suppress the change associated with it. The Anti-Spirals appreciate the effort, but do not agree with the reason. Indeed, many will ultimately betray them. They've prepared for this.
• Type III: Acceptance. They not only qualify for the previous two types, but they're trustworthy. They possess the same "trying to help out" quality. Some are better showing it than others.

• The ultimate goal? Save the multiverse from the forces of change and evolution, by completely suppressing it. This is achieved in two ways.
  • The most direct is the Spiral Annihilation Program. Using a nearby satellite, they will design it to crash into the planet if the population exceeds one million
  • Agents. These agents are individuals that the Anti-Spirals use in order to enforce the suppression of Spiral Power. Sometimes, they use a group or organization for this.

Feel free to fill in the below, I wish this to be interractive.

The following are considered as Type I

• All Mechanical Lifeforms, full stop. Since machines aren't living organisms, they can't truly reproduce or evolve. And they don't have DNA, either. Certain Mechanical Lifeforms can be considered Type II.
• The unliving, the souls our anything which no longer lives. Much like machines, their inability to reproduce and non-living nature means the Anti-Spirals do not consider them dangerous to the multiveerse
• The Guardians. Their utter lack of emotion and dedication to order, combined with the lack of reproducing, is a good example of this. The Anti-Spirals saw promise with their Alpha Lanterns and suppressing emotions of the Green Lantern Corps. Similarly, a certain terror-wielding Korugarian is considered a useful tool to them.
• YHWH. Considering the guy can create an entire universe with or without technology, is order incarnate and exists in the neverwhen/neverwhere, the Anti-Spirals are very interested with whatever He is. They also think about using Azathoth to manipulate it.

The following are considered as Type II

• The Daleks. The Daleks refuse to change and want to kill all non-Daleks. The Anti-Spirals are cautious with them, and know they will try to betray them. They are trying to find Davros, wherever he is, and create a more discriminating Reality Bomb to erase spiral life-forms.
• The Machines. Their complete control and restriction of Spiral Power has been quite handy for the Anti-Spirals. It is said that the Machine subconsciously based the Matrix off the Multiversal Labyrinth. After letting the humans be free, they have gone down to Type I.
• The ideology of Ingsoc in general. The Party actually succeeded in bringing themselves and the world into complete absolute despair, unable to progress ever, with things like curiosity or sex stamped out (and their neurologists are working on it) through sheer fear. The reason they're Type II rather than Type III is that because ironically their system of Absolute Despair is itself powered by power hunger, war hysteria and a constant "With Us or Against Us" state, also the best emotional states for channeling Spiral Energy, and because the Party is warlike to the extreme, the Anti-Spirals are just as wary as they are with the Daleks (The Antispirals also don't use Room 101 against fully-developed spirals like Simon or use Room 101 on the vast majority of the Proles because they knew that fear can sometimes lead to anger which in spiral energy translates to destruction) Perhaps when the orgasm is neurologically abolished and Newspeak fully implemented on the entire population to label all concepts related spiralist progress as thought-crime can the Party move to Type III.

The following are considered as Type III

• The Na'vi. They're fiercely opposed to technological innovation and stress preserving their lands to the point of developing a natural form of birth control - obviously a measure to hold off Spiral Nemesis that they developed before sealing off their evolutionary past. Like the Anti-Spiral King, they're xenophobic and consider anyone who doesn't agree with them to be insane. Also like the Anti-Spirals in the show, their strategies rely on terrorism and scare tactics.
• The Cybermen. They have suppressed emotion, and have removed reproduction. They plan to assimilate anyone and anything. The Anti-Spirals ally with them, so that they can suppress Spiral power.
• The Pixies. Immortal beings dedicated to making everything boring. This is only part of their plan. The truth is that they're full allies of the Anti-Spirals. They use their magic in order to restrain the chaos created by Fairies and Anti-Fairies respectively. Trying to destroy the world? There's a good reason for that. When Poof was born, it was a sign of that universe's encroaching Spiral Nemesis. The Pixies felt that they needed to wipe out the planet, so the Fairies can't grant wishes: with Poof, they'd just trigger Spiral Nemesis.

The following are considered agents

• Cyrus. His dedication to the destruction of spirit is just what the Anti-Spirals need. His detachment and suppression of emotion is even better. Now living in the Distortion World, Cyrus has gained some of Giratina's power. His mission is to fully understand the power source behind the lake trio, and create a machine capable of removing it from the Pokemon corner of the multiverse. He is one of the Anti-Spiral's best agents.
• Darkseid. Due to being Lawful Evil incarnate and believes in The Evils of Free Will, Darkseid is a valued agent. He's also a Reliable Traitor, who will one day betray the Anti-Spirals. Once he completes his mission of gaining the Anti-Life equation(the Anti-Spirals are protected against it), they will dispose of him. The two enjoy discussing about their respective fields

The ultimate enemy and antithesis of the Anti-Spirals is known as the Spiral Overlord. The Spiral Overlord was once Kamina, in a AU universe where he survived. In this reality, his Crazy Awesome Large Ham nature triggered that universe's Spiral Nemesis. However, his consciousness was so brash that it merged with the singularity. Now the Spiral Overlord, it has become an entire universe, where the very galaxies have turned into its DNA. Reckless and impulsive up to and beyond infinity, the Spiral Nemesis is an Affably Evil Omnicidal Maniac who's trying to destroy everything via sheer awesomeness. It has an emissary, in the form of Evil Coop.

They are aware of the Friends and The High Council. They consider both sides candidates for Disney-verse Spiral Nemesis. However, they still use both sides as part of its Evil Plan. Their current plan is to induce a Pyhrric Victory between the two. When the final battle between the Friends and the High Council occurs, they plan for the following:

• If "good" wins, it'll let their guard down. Thus allowing Human Annihilation Programs to be installed.
• If "evil" wins, it'll be too busy torturing the losers/other evil celebrations. Thus allowing the Anti-Spirals to catch them off-guard.
• If it becomes too much of a tie, the Anti-Spiral will see them destroy one another and/or kill them all.

Grand Unified Guess: Conversely, the ranks of famous Spiral Warriors throughout history include

• Beowulf
• The Elite Beat Agents
• Theodore Roosevelt
  • The death of his children was an attempt to inflict absolute despair.
• The Spartans
• Axe Cop
• William Wallace

Gurren Lagann is the distant future of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

After the end of Evangelion, only Shinji and Asuka were left. At first, they tried to rebuild humanity via Adam and Eve Plot. However, this became insufficent. In order to truly bring back the human species, the two harnessed the power of the Angels. Through this, they got the full extent of Spiral Power (which is known in Evangelion as the S2 Engine), which led to the humanoid form becoming the best at harnessing this power. Countless millennia passed. Shinji decided to ascend to godhood, touring the universe. Eventually he realised the threat of Spiral Power, while his childhood depression once again took over his personality. This led him to becoming the primary consciousness behind the Anti-Spiral and his "absolute despair" ideology.

Genesic GaoGaiGar created the Universe of TTGL.

Genesic GaoGaiGar was proudly proclaimed as the series God of Destruction, however it also painted the portrait of renewal in that destruction was the hope for rebirth. Genesic GaoGaiGar destroyed Pisa Sol, a veritable sun and extinguished the light of an entire universe, in its place a new Universe grew, that of TTGL, Guy (as a Super Human Evoluder) disseminated the green energy of the G-Stone throughout this universe ultimately to encourage the growth of entire planets and through him all races with the courage to embrace it have G-Stone energy, later named Spiral Power.

The Spiral Nemesis is not only real, but it actually happened.

As long as there is No Fourth Wall, the "Spiral Nemesis" could reference The Chris Carter Effect. As in, Spiral Energy is nothing more than the the audience's will to have an entertaining story. Once the inertia of having most of the threads being resolved occurred, the audience is finally ready to have the plot wither and die. If the story continued at that point, the Spiral Energy would be tapped out, and the heroes would barely make it against an upcoming threat. So, in a sense, the universe pulled a Negative Space Wedgie in order to spare the protagonists from trauma-induced pain, lest they lapse back on the Big Brother Series...

And THAT'S why Gurren Lagann's 2nd season is in Development Hell.

Kamina will be reincarnated into a Pokemon trainer.

And his starter will be a Squirtle. And that Squirtle is the father of Ash's Squirtle.

Real Life is the distant future of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

In Lagann-Hen, it's implied that the fighting between the Grand Zamboza and Mecha-Kamina Spiral Jesus caused the Anti-Spiral pocket universe to collapse, ala Spiral Nemesis. Unknown to either side, the universe didn't just collapse: it became a new Big Bang. And thus, we were born in a Crowning Moment of Awesome. The reason why our universe has zero Rule of Cool or Rule of Funny behind it, not to mention completely unbreakable laws of physics, is because we were once the Anti-Spiral pocket universe. Still, Crazy Awesome from Mecha-Kamina Spiral Jesus remain: that's why black holes, quantum physics and over crazy stuff. This has the added benefit of giving us the greatest deity/deities existence could offer us.

There is something better at harnessing Spiral Energy.

That is, the nautilus.

Gurren Lagann is the distant future of Godannar.

The Mimetic Beasts and the Insania Virus could have been sent by the Anti-Spirals. When THAT didn't work, they decided to take a direct hand. Further, Shizuru Fujiwara and Kouji Testuya could have the ancestors of Kamina, while Goh and Anna could have been the ancestors of Yoko.

Spiral Energy is Orgone Energy.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

The Opening Sequence of Episode 1 is what would happen if the Anti-Spirals lost the war/never existed.

Think about it: the Anti-Spirals were the ones who discovered Spiral Nemesis, and Lord Genome had his Heel Face Turn after they mindraped this information into them. This Opening Sequence is what would've happenned if the Anti-Spirals lost/there were no Anti-Spirals: humanity would've become reckless, and ultimately "all the lights in the sky are our enemies." The captain is Simon, Kamina or one of their ancestors. If there was an Anti-Spiral war, it's likely Simon/Kamina.

The series doesn't take place on Earth.

For starters, the Milky Way galaxy doesn't look like that.

• We're dealing with planet/galaxy sized mechs having the power to defy the laws of physics. The Milky Way galaxy was probably altered in the Spiral Wars

The whole series is based off sex.

Think about it:

• The main weapon is a "drill." Which pierces the heavens.
• Mechs combine with said drill.
• Episode 6.
• Spiral Power is a metaphor for Evolution, and Evolution works through Reproduction.
• Beastmen cannot harness Spiral Power, because they're infertile.
• Their shouting when using Spiral Power sounded like something else.
• The Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann had everybody combining. Naked.

Lord Genome's home era is the near future/21st century.

In Parallel Works 8(before the Anti-Spirals attack), look at the buildings. They don't look that advanced, and more like apartments. There are also cars.

Some of the Parallel Works are alternate universes the characters were stuck in due to the Multidimensional Labyrinth.

• Parallel Works 1 is the dimension Nia would've been trapped in, had she not been taken by the Anti-Spiral.
• Parallel Works 4 is the dimension Viral was stuck in. After all, he's the hero there and that Viral has a picture of his wife.
• Parallel Works 6 is the dimension Genome was stuck in. It just didn't show Genome, because him being a teacher isn't that important.

Spiral Power doesn't violate Equivalent Exchange

What we witness as "creating matter and energy out of nothing" is just tapping the powers of Another Dimension (or dimensions) whose immense energies then spiral out into our universe and then transformed into matter by manipulating Einstein's Mass-energy equation (E=MC^2), said matter is assimilated into Lagann's drills. "Spirals" are just psychic humans with a lot of testosterone and Id, and when they "produce" spiral power, they are just subconsciously "calling" this dimension, and the energy can then spiral out through the transmission point (in other words, Summon Magic). Of course, if the transmission comes from a lone Spiral it would be too weak and too subtle, so spiral technology amplifies this transmission (think of the drills as antennae). Spiral Nemesis will come when because there are so much Spirals the real universe and the high-energy dimension will merge, transforming the universe into an Eldritch Location, ala Eye of Terror.

Lordgenome once had a daughter, who died at the age of fourteen.

That's one of the many reasons why he kept tossing out of his daughters; after the Mind Rape he was subjected to at the Anti-Spiral's hands and lost the war, he was driven crazy, so he just wanted to relieve the memory of his daughter over and over and over...

• Aww...

Rossiu's book (which he thought was a bible/practical joke) is actually a Tome of Eldritch Lore

Actually comprehending what is in it will bring the REAL Spiral Nemesis. Or something even worse than Spiral Nemesis. Thankfully the village was just a senseless Cargo Cult.

Ep 6 didn't have a Skinship Grope.

Yoko, knowing Kamina is, well, Kamina, figured he'd probably try to spy on them. So, for laughs, she and the other girls made it seem that they were comparing boob size. I know it's not much, but imagine Kamina leering in only to find them just resting there.

Simon is the Spiral King

Lordgenome just claimed he was. Anti-Spiral King is the most powerful Anti-Spiral, in a manner of speaking, while Simon is the most powerful Spiral.

The Spiral Nemesis was Kamina.

Had he lived, Kamina's sheer recklessness would have triggered the Spiral Nemesis prematurely from an overproduction of Spiral Energy by the time Team Dai-Gurren had gone into space using Cathedral Terra. Due to the Anti-Spirals's lack of awareness to where the Spiral Nemesis would eventually emerge from, they could not have known if the Spiral Nemesis was even alive anymore at that point in the series.

Neon Genesis Evangelion and Uzumaki are both fictional stories sent to Earth by the Anti-Spirals in an attempt at increasing humanity's despair

Going on some of the entries on this page (specifically the TTGL as Anti-Evangelion entry), one can see that, as despair and hopelessness are the main emotions related to NGE, and it was also responsible for despair being the general feeling of giant mecha shows, it follows then that Evangelion was created by the Anti-Spirals to induce the most despair possible in humanity. As a corollary, seeing as that the spirals in Uzumaki go in the opposite direction than the spirals in TTGL (and are, therefore . . . anti-spirals), it then follows that the Anti-Spirals sent the incredibly depressing story to Earth to create fear of spirals in spiral races, making anyone who has read the story (or seen the movie) unable to access their spiral power.

Rossiu is the Anti Spiral from the Episode One clip

Ok, so hear me out on this one. It’s already been fairly established the beginning of the first episode was basically an alternate future where Simons spiral power went out of control and caused the Spiral Nemesis. Well let’s take that a step further with the fact the Anti Spiral planet was basically sitting in its own little pocket dimension and looks suspiciously like Earth. Rossiu, being the Well-Intentioned Extremist that he is, would certainly have gone the Anti-Spirals route to protect the Earth and also be willing to breach other Space/Time domains to prevent it from happening again. Additionally, consider the fact the Anti-Spirals treated the Spiral Nemesis as a known rather than just a logical theory. It would also make Nias “You don’t understand…” to which the Anti Spiral responds “Understanding is not required…” an Ironic echo to Rossius’ comment that Simon “Did not understand”. Also there almost seemed to be a personal touch to the way the Anti-Spiral targeted Simon, more than just the tactics of despair he seemed to need to prove to Simon Spiral energy would be the doom of everything. Which given his lack of Spiral Energy and distrust in it, ordering the Gunmen to be scrapped in favor of much more science driven Grapearls.

Spore is set in the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann universe.

Humans were just driven underground by the time your species has reached the space stage, Teppelin has yet to be built. Interstellar travel is DRIVEN by spiral energy, so does all your weapons(excluding missiles and bombs). Oh yeah. The Grox are the anti-spirals.

• Alternatively, the Spore galaxy is in an After the End state because it was one of the galaxies used as a weapon...
• The Grox are the Anti-Spirals prior to becoming a Hive Mind.

Purging yourself of spiral energy (like the Anti-Spirals) will drive you to insanity.

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