Gurren Lagann

Gurren Lagann stands as the central Gunmen of the series, formed from the union of two machines: the head, Lagann, ridden throughout by Simon, and the body, Gurren, first held by Kamina and later by Rossiu and eventually Viral. The pairing first happens in a clash against Viral's twin-faced Enki. Envious of that dual-face look, Kamina rams Lagann drill-first into the top of Gurren, expecting nothing more than a crude imitation. Instead Lagann rights itself atop Gurren, patches up the damage, and reshapes the entire frame into something far more capable, letting the pair defeat Viral outright. Kamina caps the win by tearing off Enki's headpiece and fixing it onto the new machine, which absorbs it as its own horned helmet. Later in the Beastman war Simon impales a flying Gunmen and attaches it as a set of wings, granting true flight.

Nearly all of the machine's power flows from its knack for conjuring drills of wildly varying size and purpose from countless points on its frame, serving as projectiles, shields, screws, and melee tools alike. Its ultimate technique, the Giga Drill Break, pins a foe with the thrown sunglasses before a colossal drill dwarfing the mech itself bores clean through. It also fields a durable energy barrier, wields the chest sunglasses as a sword or boomerang, briefly regenerates while its halves stay joined, and can even rip a wormhole through space. Its most defining trait is fusion: by merging with Gunmen far larger than itself, it wins sweeping power boosts and fresh arsenals. That yields a ladder of escalating forms, from the battleship-scale Arc-Gurren Lagann and the colossal Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann to the galaxy-spanning Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and, in the films, the universe-dwarfing Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. By the finale it summons enough might to shatter the Super Granzeboma and cross gulfs measured in billions of light years.

Simon anchors the machine from the head for almost the entire run, until he passes his Core Drill to Gimmy. The torso, by contrast, rotates through a long roster: Kamina first, then Rossiu, Kittan, Yoko, Kinon, Viral, and finally Darry, with Nia riding along at points. Simon and Kamina's original bond ties the Gunmen to Team Gurren, which Kamina rechristens Team Dai-Gurren before the Dai-Gunzan battle. Once Teppelin falls the machine becomes a symbol of humanity's triumph, though Rossiu resists ever deploying it. Each part carries its own history: Lagann is Simon's small personal unit drawing power through the Core Drill, Gurren is the rebuilt Gunzar that Kamina restyled, and the helmet and wings are trophies claimed from beaten enemies. In the end the preserved Gunmen is handed down to Gimmy and Darry as their own.