Artenborough Cortich

Everything about Artenborough's design reads faintly clownish. He stands short, with brown hair flopping over his head, lips of an odd roundness, and a little red nose. Through most of the opening arc he wears one striped shirt in pink and purple; after moving to Leeron's science division he adopts its standard uniform.

Hyperactivity is Artenborough's defining trait. He is impulsive and hopelessly trigger-happy, mashing whole banks of buttons to dump volleys of ordnance on an enemy, or lurching the Dai-Gurren into motion, without telling anyone first. Time does not mellow him; his restless energy survives the jump to the science team intact, and his habit of firing everything at once eventually lives on as one of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's own attacks.

Artenborough's origin is a joke the series only explains later: he simply turns up aboard one day, and it comes out that he smuggled himself along inside somebody's luggage. During the war against the Beastmen his role stays small, surfacing whenever the fortress needs its guns fired, with results that vary wildly. After the timeskip he resurfaces on Leeron's science team, where he once sends Leeron's chair spinning after misreading an instruction. When the Anti-Spiral war begins he reclaims his old weapons post aboard the Arc-Gurren Lagann, helps wipe out the fleet of Ashtanga, falls into the Anti-Spiral's illusion alongside the rest of the crew, and serves among the pilots of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in the final battle. He attends Simon and Nia's wedding afterward, present but silent.