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This story is fundamentally about obscene ambition and social outcasts. Those concepts are interconnected in this context. We start with a clip of humans considering how to fight a ridiculously powerful enemy and the protagonist responds with equally ridiculous confidence and bluster. And that’s it. That’s the core of the story in one sequence. It‘s a good intro.


Gurren Lagann is full of outsized plot elements, behavior, and imagery (I'm imagining some volcanoes right now). "Fighting all the stars in the galaxies" is an accurate advertisement, not a throwaway line. That's precisely because this story is about achieving what 99% of humanity 'knows' is physically impossible. It's an intentional stylistic choice to reinforce that thematic element of Gurren Lagann. It needs to 'feel' impossible to you, the viewer, as you are immersed in the experience, because that's the whole point of this story. Gurren Lagann is an endless spiral towards more and more ridiculous levels. This is entirely congruent with 'doing what common sense dictates is impossible.'

This story is about a human being becoming wildly successful and reaching the “1%” after starting a lot lower. It’s about the mindset that is a prerequisite to accomplishing such a feat. Gurren Lagann’s creators tell us exactly what they think that mindset looks like, in the form of a character. Obviously, it’s Kamina. They are 100% right. I have interacted with many people who worked their way to ridiculous accomplishments starting from very little. Universally, what is striking about them is:
(1) an insane propensity for optimism
(2) a penchant for ‘doing things’ instead of thinking about them, and
(3) a large amount of disdain for ‘the average man.’

Kamina is all of that, turned up to 11.

Let’s take a moment to make something clear. I said it’s a prerequisite, not a sufficient condition. Those people are lucky. Others with the same bravado get unlucky or make an untimely mistake and get obliterated for it. We consider them losers. That’s a good segue into the topic of social outcasts. Why is Gurren Lagann about social outcasts? Because the person who actually tries to achieve an insanely high goal must accept the role of a social outcast.

This is trivially true if you think about it even a little bit. You are never going to get above the rest of the herd if you follow the same common-sense recommendations as everyone else. You need something better. Well, experiment in too many areas and you are a weirdo. You become an outsider by default. Kamina, for better or worse, has the perfect personality to do this because he has complete and total conviction that his way is right. He refuses to accede to societal norms simply to get along with others.


Now, Simon has average ambitions, but large talent. Gurren Lagann tells us that the hero trailblazer marries that talent with obscene conviction and confidence. Simon, without Kamina, doesn’t have a heroic future. He’ll be a nerd in the corner all his life: very good at what he does, but no more.


Kamina infuses into Simon that capacity for conviction and confidence and propels him to new heights.

As an aside, consider the two other initial members of Gurren-dan. Yoko is a very masculine female and Leeron is a very effeminate male. It’s common for these archetypes to end up in the ‘social outcast/pioneer’ roles of society. The reason is that just acting naturally already makes them weird. I know this experience firsthand as an effeminate male. Once you accept that there’s nothing you can do to fit in, it becomes easier to ‘lean in’ to that weirdness, and buck the mold in other ways. You’ll be a partial outcast regardless; might as well get the benefit of experimenting and finding better ways of doing things.

Gurren Lagann reminds us that there are better ways of doing things with Rossiu and Father Magin. In this village, the leader has perpetuated a convenient lie that keeps his society stable. This is crucially important to the thematic content of Gurren Lagann. At the end of the day, humans need to cooperate with each other enough to maintain civilization. If everyone is haring off to do whatever they want (as Kamina does) everything falls apart. Every society has convenient lies that outcasts can benefit from (simply through the inherent advantage of the truth). Gurren Lagann's story continues to riff on this topic, and its take is impressively nuanced.

The primary way that people fail in the journey to the top is that they can't accept being an outcast. For most humans, loneliness is highly distressing. When everyone around you says, “That’s crazy, you should do it the other way,” it takes a special person to say “nah, fuck y’all, I’m doing it my way instead." Kamina is that ‘specialness’ embodied. Gurren Lagann is Kamina’s invitation to pursue the life of a social outcast, with all the potential for heroism that entails.

An individual’s pilot skill in a Ganmen is entirely a function of that ‘specialness,’ that conviction, that confidence. Has nothing to do with technical knowledge or physical coordination or any of that. This is what Kamina means when he says it takes ‘fighting spirit.’ Ganmen pilot skill allegorizes a certain psychological mindset that is rare in humans.

This is why it matters so much that Father Magin and Rossiu can pilot Ganmen. Because it shows Father Magin has the same capacity for heroic transcendence, but refuses the call. He chooses instead to lock his people up inside Plato’s cave and perform horrible rituals to sustain them. He couldn’t find it in himself to “surpass the impossible and kick off with momentum” (Kamina’s signature phrase). And this is why Kamina hates Father Magin. Father Magin didn’t have the optimism and belief to take a risk that might make life much better for his people. He settled for the ‘safe route.’ Similarly, when Kamina says Magin looks “just like their old chieftain," it's an excellent example of Gurren Lagann being facially nonsensical (the two are nothing alike under any superficial metric) but profound in actual meaning.


Kamina is referring to the proclivity of societal authority to suppress the exploits of renegades.

And that’s why it makes perfect sense that Rossiu eventually joins them. He can pilot Ganmen, so he has the same innate potential to express that contrarian spirit. Kamina inspires him, just as Kamina inspires Simon. Kamina and Simon elaborate on this topic in an entirely metaphorical discussion which starts with Kamina talking about our eyes being in the front of our heads.

How else do we know that the Ganmen are an external representation of interior psychology? Well, Simon keeps flickering on and off in the ability to use his Lagann. When Kamina manages to boost his confidence, he can do it. When he gets discouraged, Lagann is just another piece of scrap metal. Later on you’ll discover that Simon is pretty much the only person in their crew who can successfully use Lagann, which says a lot about his talent. Gurren-dan is seriously dependent on Kamina’s ability to encourage Simon so Simon doesn’t waste his potential.

What’s the deal with combining? Outcasts are lonely. Unless you’re a Kamina, you will experience self-doubt at times and the safe route will be tempting. But two lone wolves is a different story. When Simon and Kamina combine, it represents the mutual reinforcement of that psychological mindset, the virtuous feedback loop magnifying their confidence to take them to new heights in their rejection of the ways of normal society. It’s much better to be Lewis and Clark and not just Lewis.

And this is the reason for all the rigamarole of a manly-looking combination. This message is all about mindset. A functional but ugly visual image of Kamina jamming Lagann into his dome is the wrong vibe. It doesn't show us the 'coolness' of 'the two of us against the world,' the aesthetic of 'nobody can do it the way we can' that only the outsider has access to. (In one of the translations, Yoko literally says "there's nobody like them" after one of their combinations.)


That's what a 'glorious combination' means. It's not extraneous to the story at all, nor is it some sort of a joke. But you only see it if you process the story on the level of its meaning and not on the level of the literal actions. The literal actions are silly.

There is a lot in this story where the literal meaning is complete nonsense but the figurative meaning makes perfect sense, is profound, and is extraordinarily helpful for anyone who aspires to be a trailblazer like Kamina.