Dai-Gunten

A fortress-type Gunmen that takes to the sky, the Dai-Gunten is Cytomander's flagship. It looks the part of a giant airship modeled on an aircraft carrier, laid out with four runways, two long and two shorter ones off to the sides. The long strips run either side of a bridge shaped into a wild-eyed face, and a pair of huge missiles sit tucked beneath them.

Two levia-spheres keep the craft aloft, and its considerable weight leaves it far from nimble. Its main job is to launch and recover smaller Gunmen fighters and bombers, though the carrier itself also packs bombs for ground targets and homing rockets to swat down aerial attackers. In a pinch it can fire its two colossal homing missiles for crippling damage, though they seem to struggle against smaller, quicker foes. The syllable read as sky or heaven in its name fits its role as an aerial unit.

Cytomander commands the Dai-Gunten. It debuts in his campaign against the Dai-Gurren, where Simon and Yoko, aboard Gurren-Lagann, fight Viral's Enkidu deep in its belly and wreck it from within; the Dai-Gurren then launches off a cliff to batter it with kicks and snatch one of its levia-spheres. A month later it joins the defense of Teppelin alongside Guame's Dai-Gundo, only to be run through by the flying Dai-Gurren's bladed bow, killing Cytomander, its falling debris landing on the unharmed Dai-Gundo. In the film it survives long enough to merge with the other Dai-Guns into Doten Kaizan.