Gurren Lagann The Movie: Childhood's End

Gurren Lagann The Movie: Childhood's End, released in Japan as Gekijōban Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Gurren-hen (the Crimson Lotus Chapter), is the first film in the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann series. It reworks episodes 1 through 11 of the television anime into a single feature, folding in material from episodes 12 through 14 to tighten the story. A prologue built from Parallel Works episode 8, narrated in turns by the Anti-Spiral and Lordgenome, recounts how the Spiral races fell and how the Spiral King and his Beastmen rose before the title card appears.

Simon, a digger from the underground village of Giha, unearths a small drill-shaped key and a buried mecha head. Alongside his sworn brother Kamina and Yoko Littner, a rifle-toting girl from the neighboring pit of Littner, he pilots the machine, dubbed Lagann, and drills the group up to the surface. There they steal a Beastman Gunman that is refitted into Gurren, and Kamina discovers that Lagann can fuse with it to form Gurren Lagann. Repeated victories over the Beastman commander Viral inspire other humans to hijack Gunmen of their own, and the swelling rebellion christens itself Team Dai-Gurren.

During the operation to capture the walking fortress Dai-Gunzan, General Thymilph runs Kamina through. Refusing to fall, Kamina combines with Simon one final time and wipes out the general with a Giga Drill Break before dying with the words 'Later, buddy'. Simon spirals into despair until, in the depths of a ravine, he opens a discarded box holding Nia, a gentle girl who proves to be the daughter of Spiral King Lordgenome, thrown away by her own father.

The three surviving Supreme Generals, Adiane, Cytomander, and Guame, join Viral's new Dai-Gun in a coordinated strike meant to execute Nia before a worldwide broadcast and crush the rebellion's spirit. Scaling Cytomander's Gunman bare-handed to reach her, Simon rediscovers his resolve, proclaims himself Simon the Digger rather than a stand-in for his brother, and annihilates Cytomander with a Giga Drill Break. Yoko defeats Adiane in a duel on the burning deck, and the whole team channels its firepower into a single drill that pierces all four combined Dai-Guns, destroying Guame and Adiane. Viral alone crawls from the wreckage, swearing vengeance. At Kamina's grave, Simon accepts leadership of Team Dai-Gurren and welcomes Nia as its newest member, while in Teppelin, Lordgenome calmly notes that the boy has yet to learn true fear.

The Japanese DVD edition packaged the film with Otoko Do-ahou! Gurren Lagann, the middle chapter of the Otoko Series of shorts. The English title borrows from Arthur C. Clarke's famous novel, a book the creators of Evangelion acknowledged as an influence, while Gurren-hen doubles as wordplay on the name Kamina gave his Gunman.

Rather than replaying the television episodes outright, the film restages them as mirrored reflections. Attentive viewers can spot a young Guinble Kite among the crowds watching the Do-Ten-Kai-Zan fall, and the animals surrounding the young Lordgenome in the prologue, a turtle, a bird, a scorpion, and a small gorilla, appear to prefigure the Four Supreme Generals, with Pikachu and Mew hidden among them. The official DVD subtitles also misprint a line of the closing song Continuous World, repeating 'your everything' where Shoko Nakagawa sings 'my everything'.