Simon (Tengen Toppan Guren Lagann)

Simon, also known as Simon the Digger, is the central protagonist of the anime and manga series, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

Simon begins the story as a short, unassuming and lonely young boy, but grows up into a commanding and well-loved man. Hailed for being like a drill (a dynamic he explains at the top of this article), he became known as a legendary hero who overcame impossible odds both personal and universal and now stands eternally as a beacon for the good of all man and Spiral kind.

Appearance
Simon's most notable physical traits are his wild dark blue hair, short height, deep indigo eyes and strong lean build, but this was not always the case.

Earlier in the series, Simon was in puberty

for his age so he was quite short, shorter than even Nia, Rossiu and Yoko, all of the same age group. At age 14, he stood at approximately 5 feet, and was not as defined compared to the rest of the men in the brigade. He had a lightly tanned baby face which may have not been so bad, was it not for the rest of his body which made him look younger than he actually was. This, as a man, was much to his chagrin. Despite this, his attractive features were still noticed by some women.

In part two, 21-year-old Simon looks very different. He has matured considerably, now standing at an impressive 6'2'' (taller than both Kamina and Kittan) and is much more muscularly defined. His facial features have matured, gaining hardened edges in his jawline, and his voice dropped an octave or two. In addition, he is even more level-headed than he was before.

Early in the first episode, Simon wore a brown cloak to shield from rocks and minerals as he dug for premise expansion in his home village. Completing his typical wear were a pair of brown shorts, white socks, and brown boot-like shoes. White bandages encircled his abdomen and the Core Drill was typically found hanging around his neck. His cloak, lost when he reached the surface was replaced with a dark blue jacket with red stripes along the shoulders and sleeves, given to him and customized by Leeron with the Gurren Gang's logo on the back after the official addition of the Littner vilage people to the team. Later, he begins wearing a red armband. This band is a piece from the cape of Kamina's dead father.

After the timeskip, Simon has a relatively drastic change of wardrobe. Specifically during the escapade to win back his fiancée and save the universe with the newly reformed "Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren Brigade", he wears grey, low-rise jeans, a matching black neck brace and haramaki, and a long, navy blue trench coat with gold studs. Emblazoned on the back of this coat is the Team Dai-Gurren logo, identical to the way he wore it when he was a teenager.

In both seasons, Simon wore digging goggles with built-in light systems. He usually wore them on his forehead, lowering them over his eyes when digging. After transforming the Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren, Simon's goggles turned into red sunglasses similar to Kamina's, but with three extra points to make them resemble a star (presumably a tribute to the recently-deceased Kittan). These goggles were destroyed during the final battle against the Anti-Spirals.

In the epilogue, Simon's older self was seen wearing a large brown cloak, with a hood to conceal his face. He also carried a staff with a large drill on the tip. In the movie, he wears Nia's wedding ring as a necklace.

Personality
Simon is polite, humble, compassionate and brave. At the start of the series, he was a shy, extremely withdrawn boy, finding solace only whilst digging tunnels for the expansion of Jeeha village. He also had a huge fear of earthquakes after losing his parents in one, though this changed when he discovered that the Gunmen were responsible for those earthquakes. After finding Lagann and fighting a Beastman for the first time, he began to come out of his shell but continued to fear the pressure to be brave and fight for the rest of the team. Initially, Simon relied heavily on those around him to inspire him to fight bravely, especially Kamina, who often had to convince Simon to pluck up the courage needed in battle.

However, Simon displayed an uncanny aptitude for combat despite his timidness, and has even enjoyed himself on the battlefield, as seen during the first battle against Thymilph. He is also more than capable of being brave, and refused to just stand around while Kamina got himself killed. Simon is also very level-headed, and often kept the rash and reckless Kamina from making poor decisions; Kamina even remarked at one point that his level head is the only thing that kept him alive.

As a teenager among like-aged women, Simon was prone to jealousy and heartbreak. This was demonstrated when he witnessed Yoko, then the object of his affections, kiss Kamina. The image was burned into his mind during the pivotal battle against Thymilph, and Simon was unable to fight properly until he was, inspired to fight by Kamina, who ended up dying in the battle. The latter's death changed Simon profoundly, and Simon fell into a state of heavy depression. Initially, he disconnected himself from the rest of the crew and even once lashed out at Rossiu, mocking him for having once believed in a false religion. These same feelings forbade him from operating Lagann correctly. These frustrations greatly interfered with his fighting as well. Simon resolved to try emulating Kamina, but the Spiral rejected it, forcing him into a fit of nausea and discharging raw Spiral Power out of Lagann's cockpit. After meeting Nia, he temporarily forgot about his emotions in utter awe of her, though he sank once again into his depression after both he and Nia were safely aboard the Dai-Gurren.

With nearly everyone having "abandoned" him (at Yoko's urging, as she believed nobody could help Simon overcome Kamina's death but himself), he is at his lowest. Simon is eventually able to snap massively out of his delirium through a combination of his want to change Nia's desperate situation and his own resolve to rescue his crew. Behind him, the Dai-Gurren crew watch as Simon uses his core drill to diligently break through to freedom. It is in that moment that they were witnessing what Kamina saw all along; an unbreaking back that was in silence paving the way to their freedom. Not only were they seeing a man chip away at bedrock, but they were witnessing him chip away at himself and their leader slowly being broken out in front of their eyes. Shortly thereafter, Simon awakens and lays waste to the Beastman opposition. Performing the first solo Giga Drill Breaker shown in the series. From that point forward, the true Simon had awakened and the old Simon was gone. He also accepted that he could never be like Kamina, but that doesn't matter as he can still be his own person. Even after mastering his immense Spiral Power, however, Simon refuses to see himself as a god, and instead thinks of himself only as 'Simon the Digger'.

In part 2, Simon appears to have, as Gimmy has pointed out, gotten lazier, having fallen into the monotony of bureaucracy, though he wished to return to his hot-blooded life. When Rossiu has him imprisoned after saving Kamina City from the Mugann, Simon seemingly resigns himself to his fate, but shows that he still yearns to fight, shown through his heated battle against Viral in the prison showers. Once Simon and Team Dai-Gurren go to space to rescue Nia, Simon goes through his final evolution. He is much more outgoing and fired-up as opposed to how he was during his tenure as leader of Kamina City. He revels in being able to once again fight alongside his friends. In the final battle against the Anti-Spiral, Simon develops a hybrid personality between himself and Kamina, wherein he leads the team in a hot-blooded assault against the Anti-Spiral using the bravado once exhibited by Kamina without the arrogance or foolhardiness which frequently landed Kamina in trouble against tougher opponents.

One of the most prominent traits that Simon holds is that he cares about others more then his own well-being, as shown when he tells Rossiu to put a bomb inside of Gurren-Lagann to make sure he can't escape to save himself before he went off to fight an incoming group of Mugann during his trial in order to save Kamina City.

Spiral Power
Simon has the ability to use spiral power, as the humans of his universe are spiral lifeforms. By the end of the series, Simon is the most powerful spiral being, with limitless spiral power. In the first half of the series, his Spiral Power surpassed the great Spiral King Lordgenome, as stated by Lordgenome himself, and later that of the Anti-Spiral by the end of the series, making Simon the most powerful being in the entire Gurren Lagann omniverse. He had no control of his spiral power at first but he gained more control as he grew and eventually growing sufficient enough to transform Gunmen on a massive scale like Super Galaxy Dai-Gurren. He usually channels spiral power into his core-drill but towards the end he learned to unleash it alone. He can fire massive beams of spiral power from his core drill and can create drills for various purposes the latter requiring a gunmen.

When Simon was piloting the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann, Leeron noted that there was "...so much power in the engine it's like a galaxy is being born!" due to the large amount of spiral power contributed by both Simon's and the released Spiral Power absorbed by the Death Spiral Machine. In the final episode, Simon combines his own spiral power with that of his comrades to create the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which is more than a hundred times larger than the Milky Way galaxy. The actual limit of the mecha's abilities is immeasurable, as its power continuously exponentially increases depending on the pilots' will to win; it fights the Anti-Spiral (a being omniscient and omnipresent even on a multiversal scale) at forces powerful enough to create entire galaxies, being able to absorb the Anti-Spiral's Infinity Big Bang Storm (which has the power of a "Big Bang" explosions). The battle was so intense that it was shown to rip holes through various dimensions, showing that the power of each were god-like, furthered by the fact that they can alter the fundamental laws of reality, such as altering probability and creating matter larger than most galaxies out of thin air. According to the creators, Tengen Toppa also has the ability to create an entire Super Spiral Space universe (a universe much more complex and protracted than our own) within itself.

In Lagann-hen, after absorbing the Infinity Big Bang Storm, he combines that energy with his own spiral power (and that of his comrades) to create the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which purely consists of spiral power in the form of a faceless entity resembling both Simon and Kamina, and it is more than a hundred times larger than its preceding form.[2] After the Super Tengen Toppa finds itself in a stalemate with the Anti-Spiral, Simon's spiral power is therefore further emphasized, him surpassing the power level that the Super Tengen Toppa was at using even only the smallest and weakest form of the Gurren Lagann. After the Anti-Spiral shatters the Super Tengen Toppa's Giga Drill, the latter is forced to downgrade to the smallest form of the Gurren Lagann; despite the infinitesimally smaller mecha, Simon manages to summon enough spiral power to destroy the Anti-Spiral's Giga Drill. Simon then breaks the laws of reality by surpassing the Anti-Spiral in its entirety without any mecha at all.

Piloting
Skilled Gunmen Pilot: Simon originally had no skills when using a Gunmen. Simon never really fought using Lagann as most of the time, he was in Gurren-Lagann or taking control of a Gunmen. However, once Kamina dies, Simon becomes skilled enough to pilot Gurren-Lagann by himself. Simon also was skilled enough to pilot the other forms of Gurenn-Lagann, Arc Gurren-Lagann, Chōginga Gurren-Lagann and Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann. He is also one of the few humans able to use spiral power and has used it more often than anyone in the show. Some of the moves include the Giga Drill Break, "Drill missiles," and even drills that fly out and hit many foes.

Giga Drill Break: Simon forms a huge amount of spiral power into an enormous drill or number of drills much bigger than Gurren Lagann itself (an ability he learnt from Kamina).

Super Tengen Toppa Giga Drill Break: A much larger version of the Giga Drill Breaker used by the Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, with the drill being the size of a multiverse. When it collided with a similar and equal attack from the Anti-Spiral, it caused the entire Anti-Spiral space the fight was held in (itself the size of an omniverse) to collapse on itself as a side-effect caused by the ripples from their drills.

Other Abilities: Early in the series with the Lagann and Gurren Lagann mecha, his abilities include creating a durable energy shield which can deflect energy blasts even at short range, the ability to wield the sunglasses on the Gurren's chest as a melee weapon, a regenerative function which can restore accumulated damage, and the power to rip open a worm hole in space to travel great distances. Later in the series, his Arc-Gurren Lagann and Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann mecha sport an enormous array of missiles, beam weapons and shielding capabilities. The Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann has the manufacturing capabilities to create hundreds of Arc-Gurren Lagann sized mecha in a small period of time, and is capable of both deflecting and destroying objects on a planetary scale with ease (which the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann extends to a universal scale).

Spiral Power Abilities
Deformation skills of reality: Gurren Lagann uses Spiral Power to create drills from scratch. Later in the series, with Arc-Gurren Lagann and Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann-Mecha, he has the ability to tear apart the structure of space-time itself through pure brute force. The Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann can traverse other dimensions and universes, can alter the probability and is equipped with kilometers of cannons that appear in the wires of the burner holes, each capable of firing a beam directly through the continuous space, used for achieve objectives independently of their location and temporality in the multiverse, being able to reach objectives in the past, present and future. The Super Spiral Space within the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann allows the recognition of the pilots to become reality.

Metaphysical Powers: The epilogue shows that Simon alone has the metaphysical power to extend anyone's life and revive everyone back from the dead, but he refuses to do so, stating that the dead should stay dead. In the epilogue, Yoko explains to Gimmy that he should stop viewing Simon as a God, implying that Simon is omnipotent.

Superhuman Durability: Lordgenome was able to utterly destroy Lagann with his bare hands yet Simon was shown to have little more than cuts and bruises after being punched by the man during their fated battle. This implies that Simon has a durability beyond that of an average human, even when he was a child. He was also able to withstand the blows of the Anti-Spiral, an omnipotent being, in the midst of their hand-to-hand melee.

Superhuman Strength: Simon has displayed feats of physical abilities on a superhuman level on multiple occasions. One notable example would be in Childhood's End, when Simon is shown climbing up Shuzack with nothing more than his core drill and brute strength. There is also an instance in the third novel where, in the prison, he is able to physically beat up and take down an armed mecha that was used to guard the prisoners.

Skills
Skilled Digger: Simon is a skilled digger and one of the best diggers in his village. He saved himself and Kamina from Viral's particle laser by digging a tunnel in almost an instant. Early in the series with the Lagann and Gurren Lagann mecha, he can use his drill in various ways, ranging from projectiles and missiles to shields, screws and various melee applications.

Physical Combat: Simon is able to fight hand-to-hand, as shown when he fought Viral for a short time and hit Rossiu hard enough to not only knock him off his feet, but propel him backwards, cause a very tangible shock wave and disintegrate his hair tie all in one punch (though this may also be due to momentum). His punch is also shown to rip the fabric of space-time itself through sheer brute force. In the ending of Lagann-hen, the Anti-Spiralis defeated by Simon alone, without any mecha at all. Simon engages the Anti-Spiral in a fist fight, and he uses some of his own blood to create a drill powerful enough to defeat the Anti-Spiral.

Artist: Simon is a talented sculptor. Shortly after Kamina's death, Simon spends a chunk of his time sculpting statues of his fallen blood brother by using his drill. This talent is again later put to use when he sculpts the large iconic statue of Kamina which was on display in one of Kamina City's parks. In the Otoko no Jouken drama CD, Simon grows up to become a notable mangaka who creates a story loosely based off the events in the earlier drama CDs and calls it Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. However, the Simon from this story, Simon Avant, walks out of the pages and captures the mangaka in his own core drill.

Trivia

 * Etymology: Simon's name comes from the Japanese word " of shimo ' Pour ' under ' . The pronunciation of name son in the Japanese version reflects CELA.
 * Though the extent of his relationship with Nia is never fully explored, Gainax Studios has stated that "seven years is a long time" and that "During the seven year timeskip Simon and Nia did what had to be done."


 * Simon is the space captain seen in the opening prologue of the series' first episode. Though he is never again shown in the anime, he became the antagonist in the drama CD Otoko no Jouken. In this, he goes by the name of Simon Avant.
 * This Simon from the prologue was nicknamed "Garlock" by English speaking fans. "Gar" is a slang word that means "manly". The suffix " -lock" comes from a character named Captain Harlock and the main character of Space Pirate Captain Harlock. His outfit, along with the sound of clanking chains as he walked, was indeed a nod to this classic character. In Japan, this Simon is known as "Avant" by fans.
 * Respectively, the Simon from the space arc is commonly known as "Starlock" to fans. Starlock refers to Simon's goggles transforming into star shaped sunglasses. In Japan, this Simon is known as "Cosmo" by fans.
 * Simon narrates the episode previews from episodes 22 up till 26. A quote of his is used as the title for the episode he narrates, along with a paintbrush-type font.
 * Simon and Boota (and Kamina, according to the Otoko series, as well as Gurren Gakuen Hen) are the only characters in Gurren Lagann who can handle and enjoy Nia's cooking.
 * During his appearance in the epilogue, Simon's left eye was shown to have developed Spirals, similar to Lordgenome's. It may suggest that his dormant Spiral activity rate has slowly, but surely finally risen to uncontrolable levels as Lordgenome's had early in his youth, and as such he may or may not live forever, as Lordgenome was about 1000 years old before he was killed.
 * According to the novel, Simon's father and mother were officially named Takshim and Sheeta, respectively.
 * Simon shares the same Japanese voice actor (Tetsuya Kakihara) with Natsu Dragneel from the anime Fairy Tail.