Simon, Hands Off

Guame volunteers to succeed Adiane against the advancing humans, curious about the Lagann; the machine itself lies in a scrap pile aboard the Dai-Gurren, dead to Simon's touch. Nia finds Simon alone, carving figure after figure of Kamina with his drill, and listens as he confesses that digging holes is his only worth. Kamina alone never mocked him, and becoming such a man now feels impossible. She compliments the carvings and quietly keeps him company.

A distress call arrives from a village of women pleading for rescue from Gunmen. Nearly everyone smells a trap, but Kittan invokes Kamina's name to shame the crew into going. The five enemy machines scatter easily, the grateful girls come aboard, and then armed beastmen spring from hiding and seize the entire ship. Guame is behind it all. Nia surrenders herself on the condition that Simon goes unharmed, telling the frightened boy on her way out that he is not Kamina, and that he is fine as himself.

Guame confirms everything Adiane said, and worse: the immortal Spiral King breeds daughters for amusement and discards them once they bore him, despising any spark of selfhood in his dolls. He gropes Nia and offers to install her as head of the decoy village, grooming its girls for the king's court until they too are thrown out; she answers with a slap. Locked up and awaiting execution, the prisoners exhaust themselves battering the walls, while Simon alone keeps grinding at the rock with his tiny drill. Watching him, Yoko recalls Kamina's private confession: the bravado was always a bluff, and it was Simon's silent, unstoppable digging that saved them both underground, the image Kamina leaned on whenever his own courage failed. As those words replay in Simon's memory, his drill flares and the Lagann bursts through the stone in front of him.

Rattled by Nia's faith in the boy, Guame decides to shoot her on the spot, but Old Coco spoils his aim, and the Lagann erupts through the bridge floor. Simon carries Nia into the sky, lets her take the controls when she sees his ruined hands, and returns to the fight. Guame's personal machine, the Gember, nearly devours Rossiu's Gurren before Simon calls for the combination. Standing atop Gurren Lagann, Simon declares that Kamina lives on within him, that any hole he digs is his own to break through, and that he is nobody's imitation: Simon the Digger. A Giga Drill Break annihilates the Gember, though Guame ejects in time.

Afterward Nia has the team bury every discarded box in sunlight at the ravine where she was abandoned. Simon gives her a green stone from his digging days and tells her the Nia alive right now is the only one that matters; Kittan then hands Simon the leadership Kamina had always intended for him. Knowing Teppelin's location at last, the team sets out for the capital.

Simon climbs out of his depression, claims his own identity, and becomes leader of Team Dai-Gurren.

Nia learns the truth of her origin from Guame, whose personal Gunmen Gember is destroyed.

The Lagann answers Simon again, and the team learns where Teppelin stands.

News of the battle spreads, quietly raising human supporters across the world.

The green stone Simon hands Nia later becomes her engagement ring, and through it the means of tracing her into the Anti-Spiral dimension.

Guame's botched execution galvanizes humanity against the Beastmen, producing the reinforcements that arrive in Episode 14. He is also the only Supreme General to outlive the destruction of his personal Gunmen, and the last of the four to die.

The episode first aired in Japan on June 10, 2007, and in English on September 15, 2008.