S1E27 The Sky Is Yours

Gurren Lagann's finale aired September 30, 2007 on TV Tokyo and delivered the cosmic payoff that the series had been building toward since the tonal expansion in Episode 17. The shift from human-scale mecha combat to universe-scale conflict - the Anti-Spiral as the antagonist who fought on a scale commensurate with the show's escalation logic - required the finale to execute at a register that the series had prepared its audience for through twenty-six episodes of consistent escalation. Simon driving the drill into the Anti-Spiral was the image that crystallised Gainax's central argument across the series: the 'who the hell do you think I am' belief-system that Kamina had installed in Simon had not been merely a characterisation device but the show's philosophical thesis, and the finale's final image made the thesis legible as something more than a mecha action series' optimism. The IMDb score of 8.7 for the series from a broad base reflected the community's assessment that the finale had earned its cosmic scale through the accumulation of specific emotional investment the earlier episodes had built.