Summary:

The group hasn’t seen any enemy Ganmen in a while as they continue on their journey. In the meantime, Yoko is getting a ride inside the Gurren cockpit, but Kamina isn’t too happy about it because her butt takes up so much space. That gets Yoko angry enough to start firing at him inside the cockpit, causing quite a ruckus that leads to the Gurren getting launched into the air and falling back down through the ground. Simon and the Lagann fall underground with it, and they all end up in a pool of water being watched by a group of villagers. Yoko wakes up first and realizes that her top was caught on Kamina’s glasses, so she kicks him out while she reclaims her clothes. Kamina wakes up to the sounds of the villagers talking about a Face God, and he turns to see a stone structure that resembles a Ganmen. When he reaches to touch it, a boy named Rossiu stops him and takes them into the village. Rossiu feels that Yoko’s clothes are indecent, so he makes her wear a poncho, but Kamina takes the chance to lift it up and take a peek at her inside. Yoko proceeds to smack him down with her foot, and this causes Rossiu to ask her not to use violence if she’s from the heavens.

Their conversation gets interrupted when one of the villagers reports the birth of triplets. However, as the village priest notes, this brings the village’s population up to 52, which means that they have to choose two in a blessing ritual. Rossiu then approaches Kamina’s group and asks to hear about the heavens, but he tells them a little about the village and the priest first. The priest then comes and introduces himself as Magin, the leader of the village. Kamina immediately gets confrontational with Magin, but the priest just ignores him. The next morning, Kamina and Simon find Rossiu opening the cockpit of the stone-faced Ganmen. Kamina actually encourages Rossiu to try piloting it, but the priest arrives to stop him. This reminds Kamina of why he doesn’t like the priest – the man is resembles the head from Kamina’s old village. The priest simply asks Kamina’s group to leave and then heads off to preside over the blessing ritual. This ritual involves everyone drawing straws, and two kids named Gimmy and Darry end up drawing the red ones.

Kamina’s group finds out afterwards that they are to take the two kids with them to heaven in order to keep the village population at 50. Since Kamina doesn’t think that the children should go to the surface, Magin decides to proceed with the ritual as normal. Kamina, however, feels that the villagers shouldn’t go along with something they don’t like and attempts to undermine Magin’s authority, but it’s Rossiu who stands up for the priest and the village. Suddenly, a loud noise and bright light shines down the shaft as a Ganmen comes falling down to interrupt the conversation. It had been looking for the Gurren Lagann, so Kamina and Simon quickly get in their respective mecha and combine together. As the Gurren Lagann and the Ganmen face off, the stone Ganmen roars to life and gets in the middle of the fight. The enemy Ganmen starts fighting the stone one, but then gets knocked into hole in the wall where the stone Ganmen originally sat. Behind that wall is a waterfall, and the stone Ganmen charges into the enemy Ganmen, knocking it into the empty void under the waterfall.

The pilot of the stone Ganmen turns out to be none other than Magin, and his life is in danger when the stone Ganmen starts to fall through the hole in the wall. The Gurren Lagann saves him, and in the aftermath, Magin admits to Rossiu that he was the one who decided to keep the population limited at 50 people so that the entire village wouldn’t be ruined. Rossiu decides to go with Gimmy and Darry to the surface with Kamina’s group, and Magin gives him the holy book to take along.

Preview:

Well this episode had everything more or less return to normal in terms of animation style and quality. I really don’t have any complaints about it except for wishing for a little bit more color, even if they are underground. Yoko was the real winner this week, with some very funny fanservicey moments. I’m not sure how much I like the fact that the group is growing, especially since I sometimes find myself hating the bratty kid characters (like those three kids from Eureka 7). Gimmy and Darry don’t give off that same feeling yet, but I still question if they’re needed in the group. The same goes for Rossiu, whose character design reminds me a lot of Wufei from Gundam Wing.
Next week looks like a ton of fun with Kamina appearing to go nude at a hot springs resort and Boota covering him up.

23 Comments

  1. It was another “meh” episode for me… it didn’t seem they accomplished anything but to wreak havoc among a village’s beliefs. The fight with the gamen at the end seemed forced. The highlight for me was when Yoko sat on Kamina’s head with her lovely butt.

  2. What happened with the 2ndchannel case of :

    — The producer of gurren lagann resigned his producer´s post —
    after a comment from a fight started from otakus ( they told the woman that the animation quality sucked like hell on the last episodes) with a woman that worked on gainax she said that she hates otakus with the phrase:
    woman : ” DIE DISGUSTING OTAKU!!! ”

    And after that comment the producer stated that:

    Akai Takami: ” TO READ 2CH IS THE SAME AS BREATH WITH YOUR FACE IN YOUR ASS ”
    so after this 5th episode he is no more on the team!!!

    (LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL) I liked BOTH!!!
    But we can learn some lessons here my friends:
    ” NEVER SPIT ON A CLIENT´S FACE !! ”
    OBS: the animation from this anime NEVER dropped for a sec….only got better and better!!
    😀 😀 ” THE POOR GUY LOST HIS WORK FOR A BUNCH OF MONKEY SPAKER GEEKS THAT ONLY LIKE TO SAY ALL THE TIMES PHRASES LIKE :KAWAIIIIIIIIIIIIII OR KONEKO CHAN TARA OR ANA KOTO, SONA KOTO,KONA KOTO ” 😛 😀

    tensai_otaku
  3. Meandering through a few “needless” plots will be nice for this series–considering that One Piece + mecha – water = Gurren Lagann. It’ll give us time to get used to the characters and develop more attachment to them (even though everybody loves Kamina already, he is ALL THAT IS MAN) so that when a longer, more involved plot starts, it feels more important.

    Anonymooo
  4. Glad to see, that they seems to pick up the animation level of the first 3…
    Sorry, but episode 4 feels like out of the place animation. They are not making Lucky Star!

    Germanguy
  5. Well, the character design is back to normal but the animation is not really back to the level of the 1st 3 episodes, though it’s quite better than ep 4.
    So I hope they would make some nifty sequences again in the coming ep 6 🙂

    xiny
  6. GAINAX seems to always find an excuse for b&w episodes. There is no color because they are underground…right. It would of course destroy the whole realism of the show otherwise. The real reason for firing the guy must have been that he used colors in the first episode underground!

    That might actually be kind of true, I guess he burned the whole budget for the first 3 episodes…

    Chris

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