Tell Me The Secrets of This World

Nia's broadcast cuts off before Rossiu's technicians can trace it, and the government drowns in panicked calls from frightened citizens. Rossiu descends to the newly activated biocomputer, clears the room, and orders the reconstructed mind of Lordgenome to wake and account for the world's mysteries. Simon goes hunting for Nia instead; when Gimmy and Darry relay orders grounding Gurren Lagann, Darry persuades him that the symbol of humanity's reconquest cannot roam the skies without stoking fears of another war. He surrenders the Gurren half and continues the search in the Lagann alone.

Nia finds him first, appearing at a waterway to announce that the two of them are incompatible. She lays out the Anti-Spiral creed: Spiral Power drives runaway evolution toward the Spiral Nemesis, the destruction of the universe itself, and the Core Drill Simon carries is that catastrophe's emblem. In the laboratory, the revived Lordgenome supplies the history. Spiral Power is the power to evolve, written into helix genes and spiral galaxies alike; the Anti-Spirals arose in fear of it. Lordgenome once defended this galaxy as a spiral warrior, with Lazengann, Teppelin, and the Gunmen all forged as weapons of that war and the Lagann among the strongest, a core machine able to command others by joining with them. After the spiral armies lost, the victors seeded inhabited worlds with extermination systems triggered by population counts, so Lordgenome herded humanity underground and ruled through fear, knowing that no words could ever suppress the spiral instinct to climb toward the sky.

Nia tells Simon the same story from the other side, pointing to the explosive pace of the past seven years as proof of what spiral beings become. Simon begs her to come back to herself; she answers that the messenger cannot, her dormant Anti-Spiral genes having taken hold, and a dark coating spreads over her body while, unknown to Simon, every screen in the city broadcasts their exchange. She and the biocomputer deliver the same sentence: in three weeks the moon will abandon its orbit and crush the planet. Rossiu orders the machine to keep the deadline secret, but the moon probe has already been destroyed, and the whole city heard everything.

Two more Anti-Spiral machines, now codenamed Mugann, emerge from a portal that swallows Nia. Simon recombines Gurren Lagann and destroys both, with Gimmy and Darry shooting the explosive fragments out of the air before they can level more streets; Leeron explains that a Mugann's whole body converts to energy when it dies, and everyone recognizes the tactic cannot scale against larger numbers. The cost is public terror. Thousands of protesters mass outside the government tower, a thrown rock bloodies Rossiu's forehead, and he barely stops his soldiers from opening fire. Concluding that someone must shoulder the blame, Rossiu comes with troops for the man staring up at the moon and thinking of Nia: Simon is placed under arrest.

Lordgenome returns as a disembodied biocomputer and reveals the history of the spiral war and the extermination systems.

Nia completes her transformation into the Anti-Spiral messenger, and the moon is revealed to be three weeks from falling.

Simon destroys two Mugann, but the resulting unrest ends with Rossiu arresting him.

This is the series' great exposition episode, recasting Lordgenome's tyranny as a desperate quarantine and reframing the entire first arc in the process.

Darry's argument that Gurren Lagann now frightens the public marks the machine's shift from savior to political liability.

It first aired in Japan on July 29, 2007, and in English on October 6, 2008.