Don't believe in yourself! Believe in the me that believes in you!

Gurren Lagann feels impossible for me to do justice in words, but I'm going to try.
Kamina, a man dreaming for more, a purpose, desperately wishes to break out of Giha village in order to reunite with his father and prove his strength to him. After commandeering some Gunmen from the Beastmen, Kamina digs up a grave in a fight with them. Once the fighting is over, Gurren Lagann plays the first card up its sleeve, in this universe, death is real unlike many other shounen/comedy anime. Actions have consequences.

It is not long after this harrowing realisation that Gurren Lagann will play maybe its cruellest trick for the entire runtime, killing Kamina only 8 episodes in. Death is real and it can come for anyone. Yet despite this, it won't be the last time we hear from Kamina.

Don't believe in the me who believes in you! Believe in the you who believes in you!

Kaminas death takes a severe toll on the entire team of Dai-Gurren. Everyone copes in their own, not necessarily healthily ways. Yoko overeats and obsessively conducts target practice with her rifle, Kittan attempts to be Kamina, and Simon carves statues of Kamina out of stone. During these drab and dreary episodes, the only source of light and colour, quite literally, comes from Nia. Nia, of course, never met Kamina, she never could have, and so only through her perspective can Team Dai-Gurren snap out of it, Kamina isn't coming back, and nothing can change that. You must be yourself; you will never be Kamina.

Let me see you grit those teeth!

With their newfound resolve, Team Dai-Gurren will overthrow the Spiral King Lordgenome and end his age of tyranny, but at what cost? He leaves them with a simple warning, when one million humans walk the Earth, it will end. Following a seven-year timeskip we see the team have grown up, and grown into anxieties about Lordgenomes grim prediction, they attempt to force people to live above ground against their wishes for the purpose of taking a census, yet we later learn they are repeating the same sin of Lordgenome himself. They fight over politics; they aren't really the same men anymore.

When the millionth human is inevitably born, Lordgenomes predication comes true, and the true antagonist of the series is revealed, the Anti-Spiral.

Do the impossible! See the invisible!

Once again, each member of Team Dai-Gurren attempts to cope with this existential realisation in their own way. Simon attempts to solve things the old-fashioned way, but when lives and homes are lost for it, Rossiu steps in to attempt to rights wrongs with diplomacy, his own coping mechanism. He sentences Simon to death as a scapegoat to appease the public and convince them to trust the government to evacuate to the underground and to board what would come to be known as the Arc-Gurren.

Kittan and other members of Team Dai-Gurren would rather go down fighting and so that is what they intend to do, Kittan takes Simon's core drill from Rossiu with the intent of freeing him from jail to fight the good fight. When it becomes obvious Arc-Gurren is in mortal peril, Simon and the team have no hesitations about helping them.

Touch the untouchable! Break the unbreakable!

Ultimately, Simon and Team Dai-Gurren take the fight to the Anti-Spiral, gaining the power of the big bang, the creation of a universe, and losing more comrades along the way, each of them willing to lay down their lives for a cause bigger than themselves, with the utmost faith in Simon and his inevitable success.

ROW ROW, FIGHT THE POWER!

Gurren Lagann is about so much, death, mourning, coming of age, regret, religion, philosophy, but more than any of that, it’s about never giving up, ringing true to Kaminas word at the very beginning of the series. Lordgenome is not condemned for forcing humanity underground but for surrendering to the Anti-Spiral, Rossiu is not condemned for sentencing Simon to death but for attempting to commit suicide to escape his regret. Simon is not condemned for being scared but for running from difficulty. Truly, the greatest disservice you can do to yourself and those around you is to run away and avoid hardship instead of taking it head-on, even if it seems like you have a 0% chance of success.

Gurren Lagann is just, really good, it changed my outlook on life when I first watched as a teen. Episode 26 never fails to make me cry like a little baby. I cannot emphasize how much this anime means to me. I wish it didn't treat the women so weirdly though...