Later, Buddy

On the eve of the operation to seize the crippled Dai-Gunzan, Simon lies awake in Lagann atop a cliff when Yoko stops by to check on him. Watching the distant volcanoes, he compares Kamina to one, a man who burned underground until he erupted onto the surface, and in that quiet moment realizes he is in love with her. He never gets the words out. Later that night Yoko finds Kamina alone, and after telling him she cannot afford mistakes tomorrow, she kisses him; he answers with a kiss of his own and a promise of one ten times better once the fighting ends. Simon witnesses the whole exchange and flees to Lagann's cockpit, wrestling with heartbreak he tries to disguise as happiness for his bro. Kamina, assuming simple pre-battle jitters, reassures him before the team moves out. The strategy is straightforward: the brigade draws the enemy into the open while Simon sneaks Lagann aboard the fortress and takes it over from within.

At the pit where the Dai-Gunzan fell, Gunmen disguised as wreckage spring Viral's ambush, though Kamina anticipated as much. Rocks rain down from the human side, Dayakka's Dayakkaiser pounds the command tower, and Enkidu locks blades with a solo Gurren while Yoko picks off attackers from the Einzer. Simon tunnels out of the mountainside into the battleship's blind spot and lands his Lagann Impact, splitting the command tower. But the takeover stalls: Lagann runs on its pilot's state of mind, and Simon's concentration keeps dissolving into the memory of the kiss. Kamina pins Enkidu to the ground with Gurren's sunglasses, storms across the deck, orders Lagann's hatch open, and punches Simon square in the face, telling him to grit his teeth and believe in himself. The fusion resumes. Then, as Kamina turns back toward the fight, an energy blast erupts through the deck and tears straight through Gurren. Thymilph himself rises from within the fortress piloting the Byakou. Viral batters the wounded Gurren with its own hurled sunglasses and flings it into the path of Byakou's diving attack, whose glaive punches through the cockpit and its pilot.

Kamina's life signs read zero on the monitors, and Simon's anguished scream sends his Spiral Power out of control. The Dai-Gunzan thrashes wildly, hurling its crew out of the windows, triggering a volcanic eruption, and swatting Viral into the distance while an unresponsive Simon sinks into despair. Only when Gurren's severed arm smacks against Lagann does a familiar voice return over the intercom: Kamina, back for one last word, telling his bro to celebrate the capture he has earned. Simon completes the fusion and turns the fortress around in triumph, but Thymilph attacks again, vowing to destroy the battleship before humans keep it. At Kamina's request the two combine one final time, declaring that their bond can break through any wall. Gurren Lagann shreds the remaining enemy Gunmen with drills sprouting from its whole body, crushes Byakou's Condemn Blaze barehanded, pins the enemy mech in midair with its thrown sunglasses, and annihilates Thymilph with a brand new finisher, the Giga Drill Break. As the brigade celebrates, Kamina whispers a farewell and goes still. Under pouring rain, the team gathers to find their leader dead in Gurren's cockpit, his last smile intact, while Simon's voiceover mourns the loss of something that can never be replaced.

Yoko and Kamina admit their feelings for each other with a kiss that Simon secretly witnesses. The Dai-Gunzan falls into the brigade's hands, giving the team its future flagship. Kamina performs the first Giga Drill Break, destroying Thymilph and the Byakou, and dies of his wounds moments later, the first of the Four Divine Generals' battles to claim lives on both sides. Simon, blaming his own faltering heart, loses his will to fight and slides into depression.

The episode aired in Japan on May 20, 2007 and in English on August 18, 2008. Kamina's fate is quietly foreshadowed during the final combination sequence: Gurren's pilot status icon displays black instead of its usual orange, the color code for a pilot with no life signs. His dying pose also nods to Ashita no Joe, whose hero Joe Yabuki appears to die sitting in a similar posture.