I Will Head Towards Tomorrow

With the Four Generals gone, only the capital remains, now revealed as the mountain-sized Gunmen Dekabutsu. Nia asks to ride with Simon to face her father. To slip Gurren Lagann past the fortress's colossal hand, the Dai-Gurren rams it, blasts a corridor open with its full arsenal, and fires its pointed bow as a missile with Gurren Lagann riding the tip. The gambit lands the machine inside the royal tower, but leaves the Dai-Gurren wrecked; the crew ejects the bridge section and detonates the remainder, taking the fortress's arm with it.

Inside, Viral waits in the four-armed Enkidudu, and lasts two punches: the first shatters his swords, the second drill-blow hurls his machine across the chamber. Worse than the defeat is what Lordgenome tells him afterward. Viral's undying body was never meant to bring victory over men, since no beastman can match a spiral-powered human; he is to survive as a storyteller, carrying the tale of the Spiral King's triumph through eternity.

Nia steps out to question her father, who names himself the guardian of the human race; the world he built is mankind's only road to survival, and those who defy it can die for the species' sake. A drill erupts beneath Nia as he finishes speaking, and the King boards the Lazengann, a machine Rossiu recognizes as Gurren Lagann's own kind. It dominates every exchange, catching the Giga Drill Break in its jaws and snapping the drill clean off. As Rossiu loses heart, Simon repeats the brigade's creed about kicking reason aside and borrows his brother's oldest request: believe in me. A drill punch takes one of Lazengann's arms; a counter-drill spears Rossiu through the shoulder. Simon detaches the Lagann to burrow into the enemy machine, and Lordgenome destroys his own remaining arm to shake it loose.

Declaring that the Simon whom Kamina believed in cannot lose, Simon drives the glowing Lagann drill-first through the Lazengann's massed drill form. The King simply climbs out of his cockpit and batters the little machine with his bare fists, tearing its arms away and throwing Nia clear. Caught in the giant's grip, Simon rams his Core Drill into Lordgenome's chest and turns it, blasting a hole clean through him. The dying King offers one last riddle: when a million apes cover the land, the moon will become hell's messenger and erase the world of the Spiral. He smiles and drops backward off the tower. Nia bids her father farewell and vows to walk toward tomorrow. Teppelin crumbles, its Gunmen fall still, and on the morning of the seventh day the capital falls with every one of Simon's companions alive.

The Dai-Gurren is partially destroyed, its crew abandoning most of the ship to breach Teppelin.

Lordgenome dies for the first time, leaving a cryptic warning about one million humans and the moon.

Viral is defeated and spared, appointed the Spiral King's eternal storyteller.

Teppelin falls, closing the Beastmen War arc.

Gunmen bearing the Transformers faction insignias and a brief Gaiking lookalike appear among Lordgenome's forces during the assault.

The King greets Gurren Lagann's arrival with a Star Wars paraphrase about the Spiral Power being strong in Simon, and the sequence of Simon effortlessly parrying Viral's assault mirrors Neo's awakening fight against Agent Smith in The Matrix.

The episode first aired in Japan on July 8, 2007, and in English on September 29, 2008.