Old Coco

Old Coco's most striking feature is his oversized nose, the trait that suggests his Beastman stock derives from a proboscis monkey. Otherwise he is an aged, unassuming presence who fades into the background of nearly every scene he occupies.

Silence is his signature; he speaks aloud a single time in the whole story. Behind the muteness sits total devotion to Nia: he watches over her without being asked, intervenes at exactly the moments she needs him, and when she prepares to board Gurren Lagann to face her own father, his encouragement arrives as one wordless nod.

He surfaces in Episode 6, guiding the heroes to a hot spring resort that is really a Beastman trap, then switches sides on the spot, boosting Kamina onto the hidden Gunman and trailing the group after its defeat. Once Simon brings Nia aboard, he quietly appoints himself her keeper, drawing Guame's attention away while the general holds her at gunpoint and catching her when Adiane's Gunman is forced to release her on the road to Teppelin.

The timeskip reveals the truth: he is a Beastman who tended Nia through her years in Beauty Village and never stopped, princess or not. After the Anti-Spiral abducts her, he hands Simon the flag flown at Teppelin's fall, used to christen the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren before the rescue voyage. And when Nia returns in the final episode, Old Coco greets her with a wedding dress he made himself, breaking his silence for the first and only time.