Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Cosmology Blog

 

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Cosmology Blog:

TTGL is peak 10/10 media and YOU should experience it…

Before We Begin:


Before we begin, let's discuss some specifics for the cosmology that should be addressed beforehand, so let's lay them out:


First, I am aware of the concept of the “Triggerverse”, in that all of Trigger’s franchises all take place within one greater multiverse, and that TTGL is a part of it. Theoretically you could use this to scale to TTGL, but this blog will lack any Triggerverse scaling for three reasons.


  1. I want to focus largely on TTGL’s cosmology on its own solo merits based on what it itself presents as its cosmological scope.

  2. I do not want to watch like 10 different franchises and have to consume all of their auxiliary media to feel like I can make a safe assumption on the greater overall “Trigger Multiverse”.

  3. I’mma be fr I think the Triggerverse cosmology would mostly just be bumming off of TTGL and what it brings to the table LMAO, to my knowledge it's easily the most impressive franchise under Trigger’s repertoire.


So yeah, no Triggerverse, just TTGL and it's Cosmology here!


Second, I want to give a massive shoutout to Galo de Lion / Stocking Anarchy / STTGL, to my knowledge while under different aliases, it's the same person behind all accounts across three different forums who has made some of the most comprehensive coverages and compilations of TTGL content in versus, and just translations in general. Without their ridiculous amount of work, research for TTGL’s more obscure assets such as the novelizations or the 4th drama CD would be near impossible. Many sources in my imgur albums are taken from their translations, and proper credit will be given, but I wanted to give the appropriate shoutout before beginning.


Third, you’re going to notice that I have a lot of imgur albums that are just screenshots of translations and images from the VSBW Gurren Lagann Cosmology Blog (another excellent source btw), as well as the aforementioned STTGL Threads. Why do this instead of linking directly to the threads instead? Well, for well over an entire year due to Imgur being a finicky shit of a service, made a change that resulted in nearly every source listed in STTGL’s threads suddenly dying and becoming inactive, which made TTGL research nightmarish. So instead of risking the chance of all of that going down and TTGL becoming near unresearchable again, I’m going to be creating my own links that should hopefully stay up for an extended period of time, so all of TTGL’s research isn’t linked to a single source that’s at risk of suddenly dying one day again, lol. In spite of that I will still include links in the Imgur album to exactly where the translations originated from for proper credit. I’m just being paranoid so something like that never has to happen again for future people trying to get into TTGL in Vs!


Almost finally, I wasn’t able to read EVERY piece of TTGL media for this blog, as to be frank, a lot of it is still completely untranslated or difficult to access. The Otoko Manga is completely untranslated (and has 8 FUCKING VOLUMES), the second half of the 3rd Otoko Drama CD isn't translated, the fourth Otoko Drama CD isn’t fully translated yet (though I read all that was translated of it), I wasn’t able to play the TTGL DS Game for this (and it, for some fucking reason, has never had a full english translation play through uploaded), and the novelizations and data books are only partially translated in chunks across various respect threads and sources, etc etc, you see the issue. I’ve read and compiled everything I’m able to and did some mild translation work, but ultimately, there is still a possibility I could’ve missed something. Therefore, this blog may or may not receive occasional updates, which will be noted at the very bottom of the blog for any future updates I may release. I’m confident that this is probably the most up to date coverage on an extended TTGL cosmology at the moment though!


Finally, I won’t be accounting for any crossovers here with this blog, such as Gurren Lagaann’s appearances in Super Robot Wars. As fun as I think SRW would be to look into, that series is a rabbit hole in of itself, and then I’d have to research like 16 other mecha franchises to scale TTGL to.

Sources Used:


Lets cover the various sources I looked over in order to prepare this document.



If you’re curious as to why there’s a lot of random sources that don't seem to be adjacent to the main canon, it'll be explained in full later, but the short reason is that every alternate canon showcased in TTGL side media exists in the greater Gurren Lagann Multiverse.

Spiral Power:


One thing we’ll need to establish first is Spiral Power, also known as Spiral Energy, also also known as “fighting spirit”, and the role it plays within how the cosmology functions at large is important to have established earlier on.


Spiral Power is the fundamental, universal energy system of all reality, the very power of evolution itself. It is the force that binds together life-forms, as well as the very universe. 


Spiral Power is used in a variety of ways throughout the series, capable of performing things from feats of superhuman abilities, regeneration, warping reality and space-time, to even things as absurd as creating entire universes, allowing to bridge the gap between lower and higher spatial dimensions, and traveling to higher spatial dimensions. It can be manifested and harnessed within an individual by their fighting spirit, amplifying and increasing drastically with more fighting spirit, but lowering and dissipating as their fighting spirit falters.


It can be harnessed by anything that’s represented by a spiral shape in some means, ranging from helical strands of DNA in a human, to the spiraling shape of a galaxy. Harnessing this energy source can allow individuals to be amplified to infinite extents, magnifying them immensely. It's an underpinning force of the entire universe, allowing one to harness the power of the infinite universe. The Anti-Spiral believed that the humans would lose control of their Spiral Power after enough evolutions, resulting in the Spiral Nemesis, functionally the complete and utter destruction of all space-time, with all life becoming their own galaxies, devouring each other, then eventually becoming a black hole and consuming all reality.


In short, Spiral Power is the ultimate energy source that pervades all of reality within TTGL. Spiral Power ties together every aspect of the cosmology, not only binding together the entire cosmology, being what creates universes and connects and can create spatial dimensions, but could even be capable of bringing reality to its complete and utter destruction. This is important to establish now, as it’ll become important later.

Spatial Dimensions:

Oh boy, everyone’s favorite!


TTGL is one of the most popular franchises in versus debating to use spatial dimensions / higher dimensional arguments in scaling, and is generally considered one of the “gold standards” of it within the scene. Despite how well known it is, it’s still a good idea to give a basic rundown on how spatial dimensions work in TTGL… as well as provide some interesting findings from external media that may reveal some things that were unknown until this point of how spatial dimensions within TTGL work!


How Spatial Dimensions Work in TTGL:


It might seem weird and out of order to tackle spatial dimensions first in a cosmology blog, but that’s due to the nature of TTGL’s multiverse at large, so we’re gonna break the mold and explain everyone’s favorite part of any cosmology debate first, and that would be spatial dimensions!


TTGL’s spatial dimensions are stated to work off of dimensional axes, functionally, coordinates/directions. Higher dimensions are thus larger by having more directions, and thus, more space to fill. It also generally shows itself to be analogous to and follow the concepts of string theory and brane cosmology, with specific mention of the existence of dimensional membranes, clearly meaning branes from brane cosmology, with these dimensional universes being contained in their own membranes, and coexisting in gravitational equilibrium. The Anti-Spiral Universe is even directly stated to exist BETWEEN these membranes, specifically the membranes of the 10th and 11th spatial dimensions/dimensional universes. Nakashima in an interview stated that the multiverse in his view is 11 dimensional, even saying how it was originally believed to be 4 dimensional, clearly referencing how time is often believed to be the 4th dimension of space.


It's also noted that the Anti-Spiral Universe itself is an imaginary oscillating space-time, clearly in relation to complex projective space, a theory which makes use of things such as a euclidean plane which can be considered “imaginary”, with one example of complex projective spaces being a complex manifold.


All the scientific malarkey was basically just to say that TTGL applies for most reasonable metrics of mathematically higher spatial dimensions, utilizing concepts such as different dimensional axes/directions, brane cosmology, and complex manifolds within its greater scope. Those are just the basics though! There’s something much crazier than that


Something very notable within the Otoko no Jouken! Gurren Lagann drama CD occurs in relation to spatial dimensions, but first let's cover what the Otoko CDs are. The Otoko TTGL drama cd’s are functionally an alternate universe within the TTGL Multiverse where the cast of TTGL live in a modern-day Japan equivalent, covering a long standing battle between the Japanese Dai-Gurren Academy and the American Teppelin Foundation.


Within Otoko no Jouken, Otoko Simon decides he wants to create a manga based on their adventures and battles, but on a much larger scale, with him writing a story very akin to the mainline TTGL timeline we see in the anime. He ultimately begins work on writing a manuscript for the manga, but something interesting happens in the process. This Otoko Simon doesn’t use a Core Drill for this, instead manifesting his Spiral Energy through his pen, in the process creating an entire fictional, 2-Dimensional Universe through writing the story!


In the process of writing the story and creating the universe, Otoko Simon’s Spiral Energy was able to tie his universe and the 2-Dimensional universe together. This, in conjunction with the power granted by Otoko Simon’s voice, allowed for that dimensions’ Simon (named “Garlock”) to use “spatial teleportation” in order to transcend his world and enter Otoko Simon’s dimension. Otoko Simon ripping the manuscript also made it so his powers created a “gateway” between the dimensions. The act of writing and making changes to the manuscript also noticeably affects the reality and “plot” of the 2-Dimensional universe, changing the story of Garlock to make him meet a Kamina in order to help pave him into a better person.


So functionally… It's noted that the difference between a 2 Dimensional Universe and a 3 Dimensional universe is quite literally a difference between fiction and reality. The act of Otoko Simon using a pen imbued with his Spiral Energy wrote a fictional story, which created an entire 2 Dimensional universe that was literally fictional to him and his 3 Dimensional Universe, and that he could effortlessly manipulate said universe through changing the script. This would mean that, functionally… a single jump of higher dimensions within TTGL is a case of Reality > Fiction Transcendence, which means the jump from 2D to 3D is Outerversal (possibly 1D to 2D as well), with every individual spatial dimension afterwards higher layering further and further into Outer, as each dimension above views the one below as fictional and unreal in comparison! 


Now, what I just said above was a massive nuclear statement after all, so it's probably best to address any potential elephants in the room immediately.

Does this meet R>F Standards?:

"R>F is simply the new arms race to make your verse wank incarnate... why no, I haven't read R>F standards!"
-Discount Ginger


R>F is a very touchy argument, as it was rather recently boosted up to the main argument/way  to get Outerversal on VSBW, and has always been a bit more of a silent method to argue a verse to Outer for several years now on other sites / circles. However, with its recent massive push and boost on VSBW, the standards to apply for R>F have been made much, much more stringent and difficult to apply for, with anti-feats and disqualifiers becoming means to instantly deny a verse R>F. These standards, however, can vary from place to place and person to person in terms of how many of these requirements necessarily have to be met, due to how new R>F as Outer and its requirements are, there’s still not necessarily full agreement anywhere yet. However, for this blog specifically, I’ll be tackling why R>F would apply just fine for TTGL by VSBW’s particular, strict standards, to show why it works in full. 


Before I begin though, in case you’ve somehow gone through this section and the above being unaware of what R>F Transcendence is and why it's Outer, read this page here, as it's relevant for tiering, as well as the discussions about potential disqualifiers we’re about to have. Now let’s start for real:


Simon travels from his 3D Universe to the Anti-Spiral Universe between the 10th and 11th Dimensions with his own power, wouldn’t that be a disqualifier?:

In the main anime (and movies), Simon, in order to access the Anti-Spiral Universe to save Nia, has to transport the Arc Gurren from the 3D Universe to the Anti-Spiral Universe, which resides between the 10th and 11th spatial dimensions. Once again, this could be a potentially valid disqualifier, however, there’s notable context around how this feat, and in general, any feats in TTGL involving dimensional transcendence are performed, and that’s the nature of Spiral Energy! As mentioned earlier in the blog, Spiral Energy is the force that binds together life-forms, as well as the very universe, even within the Anti-Spiral’s Universe which exists between the 10th and 11th Spatial Dimensions. While one may think there’s no Spiral Energy within the universe, they just prevent it from being manifested, and in spite of that Simon and co are still able to utilize Spiral Energy there.


Notably, for Simon’s aforementioned transportation feat, he states that you can use your “spirit” (referring to “fighting spirit”, which is used as shorthand for Spiral Power), to “fly anywhere” to explain dimensional transportation to the rest of his team. This means that dimensional transportation has to be performed by harnessing Spiral Energy. Why is this relevant?


To emphasize the point further, Spiral Energy was what Otoko Simon used to create the lower fictional 2nd Dimensional Universe of Garlock’s world, showcasing that Spiral Energy can create, bind together, and even connect lower fictional realities to higher realities. This, on top of the fact that Spiral Energy is what binds together the universe and the life forms within, would mean that Spiral Power is, at minimum, an Outerversal / 1A Energy Source, and it being used to transcend and travel different spatial dimensions wouldn’t be an anti-feat or disqualifier at all. In fact, harnessing a 1A Energy Source to perform 1A feats or transcendences is specifically allowed by R>F Standards. 

Garlock transcends a lower fictional reality into a higher reality, isn’t that a disqualifier?:

If there was no further context, yes it would be. By VSBW’s standards, a lower entity cannot break into higher realms of their own accord or their own lower powers, so Garlock transcending on his own would be a potential instant disqualifier. However, the easy immediate response to this would be that Garlock didn’t transcend through his own power, he was explicitly amplified by Otoko Simon’s power through his voice. Notably, Otoko Simon not only exists in a higher reality than Garlock, seeing his world as a fictional story… but is the literal creator of the lower reality Garlock hails from, being the one who wrote and created his universe through his own Spiral Power manifested through his pen.


The entities of the 2nd Dimension noticeably couldn’t transcend the dimensions on their own, only able to transcend once Otoko Simon’s Spiral Energy either empowered them, or created a gateway between dimensions and allowed for them to transcend. Spiral Energy is notably the energy that ALLOWED for the creation of the 2 Dimensional universe to begin with, and is the energy that binds together all of reality. 

Does Otoko Simon’s Voice Empowerment Count as “Dispersing” Himself?:

It should be noted that Simon isn’t “dispersing” himself down to a lower reality in doing this, which would be another disqualifier. Simon isn’t being broken down into smaller portions and made to be “lesser” to the point of becoming less real, it's just that the sound of his voice and his powers from the higher realm were able to reach/access the lower realm and empower entities within with his own Spiral Energy, which would fit within the 1A Energy Source standard allowances, and thus not be a disqualifier.

TL;DR:

Thus, TTGL meets all the requirements for Reality > Fiction Transcendence, and notably doesn’t meet any of its potential disqualifying traits due to how Spiral Energy works. All in all… that means that individual spatial dimensions within TTGL are an R>F difference between one another. The difference between the second dimension and the third dimension is a difference of qualitative superiority, and thus, every spatial dimension jump is actually an R>F Jump, meaning every dimension higher in TTGL is a layer higher into Outer. So now the question would naturally divert to, how high does this go? How many spatial dimensions are there to determine how high into Outer Simon gets?

How Many Spatial Dimensions are There?: 


At least 11 Spatial Dimensions are directly mentioned in main canon, with Lordgenome stating that the Anti-Spiral Universe exists between the dimensional branes of the 10th and 11th dimensional universes. 


However, thanks to the goated Otoko no Jouken! Gurren Lagann drama CD, we may actually have a solid number for the amount of spatial dimensions beyond 11D… that being possibly up to 20D! Within the drama, one of the big bads is capable of twisting forces into the 20th dimension, with the word used for dimension being congruent with other mentions of numbered spatial dimensions in the series, making it very possible that TTGL isn’t limited to 11 Dimensions in it's cosmology, and could possibly have up to 20. 

The Multiverse / Extra Dimensional Labyrinth:


Gurren Lagann is notably a multiverse story, as stated by its creator, but nothing within the series is quite as blatant as the Extra Dimensional Labyrinth, or Multiverse Labyrinth as it's known colloquially. The Multiverse Labyrinth is an extradimensional space where the Anti-Spiral traps Team Dai Gurren’s consciousnesses within, with it being a multiverse designed to trap people within infinite possibilities, with it noted that every possible future change, results in the creation of its own universe to accompany the change. Considering there’s an infinite amount of possibilities, this would obviously be an infinite multiverse. The novelization elaborates further on the size of the multiverse, stating that it's multi-layered, further supporting its higher spatial dimensions. 


The Extra Dimensional Labyrinth is notably larger than just a single infinite multiverse though, notably, every single member of Team Dai Gurren trapped within the labyrinth had their own multiverse, Simon, Yoko, and Viral all seem to have had their own multiverse, with several other multiverses for the rest of Team Dai Gurren. Each of these multivers contains the infinite possibilities and variations of the lives they could’ve lived, meaning it's realistically more of a superstructure of multiverses combined! The labyrinth is even compared to the idea of an “expanded interpretation of quantum cosmology”. 


These Labyrinths notably contain all the alternate universe/multiverse versions of TTGL that exist as supplemental media. For example, the Parallel Works series is intended to be all universes from within the Multiverse Labyrinth, with 3 of the Parallel Works Universes even being seen contained within Yoko’s Labyrinth in the movie. The Otoko CDs & Manga are referred to as “an important part of the Gurren Lagann Multiverse”, and are even seen as one of the universes contained within the Multiverse Labyrinth that Simon absorbs at the end of their manga. This would reasonably allow for all alternate versions of the TTGL story to exist within the greater TTGL Multiverse, and is supported in canon.


Anti-Spiral Universe:


One of the most important places within the cosmology of TTGL, where literally 90% of  the verses’ high tier feats occur, and where some of the greatest moments in fiction occur, is the Anti-Spiral Universe.


The Anti-Spiral Universe was created by the Anti-Spiral, and exists between the 10th and 11th dimensional branes and exists “in a universe with a different set of dimensional axes”, meaning it's not from our usual 3 dimensional universe. It’s stated repeatedly to be an “isolated/closed universe”, one separated from the time and space of the rest of the multiverse. It notably has a massive, obscene visual scope, containing uncountable planets, stars, and galaxies (which could possibly be universes?) It’s also stated by the TTGL Website to exist on the edge of the multiverse (despite it being a closed off space…), further cementing that all spatial dimensions are contained within the greater “multiverse”. It’s also worth noting that the Anti-Spiral’s Universe is stated to be infinite in size a multitude of times, and this is further pushed by Leeron, as well as the alternate ending of the DS Game.


The Anti-Spiral themselves are noted to have complete control and dominion over the Universe, and their power actively sustains it and its existence. In fact, they have such control over it that the Anti-Spiral literally controls if the universe has a flow of time or not, able to actively turn off and return it's time flow specifically for the arrival of Spiral Races.


Considering the universe exists between the 10th and 11th dimensional branes, we can’t say for certain if it's 11D, but it should at the least be 10D, and considering it's known to have a temporal element that the Anti-Spirals can turn on and off, that would thus make it a 10-Dimensional Space + 1 Temporal dimension, making it an infinite 11D universe regardless.


Universe = Multiverse ???:


So something that comes up in TTGL debates every now and again is the argument that a handful of feats can’t be multiversal, because they’re stated to only affect the “Universe”. At a glance this could be seen as true, but TTGL, for some fucking reason, fancies itself to use the word “Universe” to refer to the entire multiverse, and sometimes even the entirety of the cosmology.


Multiple times TTGL will state things such as “The “Multiverse” is a universe that becomes real at the moment of recognition”, using the word “universe” to refer to an entire multiverse. When the Anti-Spiral is referring to the effects of the Spiral Nemesis, he states that it will destroy “the entire universe”, but in that same breath also states that it would reduce all of space and time to a dimensionless point… something that could only be done if it's affecting the multiverse and it's higher spatial dimensions as well, because to have a dimensionless point there’d have to be no spatial dimensions left. Considering this is referred to as the opposite effect of the big bang, it should stand to reason that the Big Bang would be equal in scale and power, yet opposite.


Something else notable to discuss however, would be that TTGL frequently makes use of quantum cosmology, it's mentioned a multitude of times after all. One thing to keep in mind with quantum cosmology and how it functions is that the main theory of quantum cosmology in of itself isn’t about a multiverse, it's focused on the big bang, it's creation of the universe, and their relationship with quantum principles and physics. However, it's stated that TTGL utilizes an “expanded interpretation of quantum cosmology”, meaning it's not restrained exclusively to the original theory, rather an expanded idea of it, likely one relating to the multiverse. This could further support the idea of something like a big bang not exclusively creating a single universe, but rather the multiverse at large, for instance.


So functionally, this blurb is to speak about and defend the idea of some feats that are stated to affect the universe, actually referring to the entire multiversal cosmology at large. It should be noted that not EVERY feat just saying “the universe” is multiversal by nature, but you should look at the context of the statements referring to the universe to determine if it is in full cosmological scope.


Overall:


All in all, TTGL’s cosmology is at the absolute bare minimum infinite 11D to 20D off of the stated number of spatial dimensions, for a High Complex to Hyperversal Cosmology.

Most likely though, TTGL’s cosmology is at minimum Outerversal due to every spatial dimension actually being a case of R>F Transcendence over the prior, meaning that Simon would be 9 - 19 layers of R>F above baseline, depending on if you use 11 or 20 spatial dimensions, and if you think the R>F jumps begin when jumping from 2D to 3D, or from 1D to 2D and onwards, placing TTGL ridiculously high into Outerversal!


In short Simon is That Guy™.


If you’re curious about what feats scale to what part of the cosmology, I’ve compiled a list of the most notable ones, and gave them ratings based on the cosmology tiers discussed above:


Cosmology Scaling Feats List:



Yeah that’s all for this one, hope y'all enjoyed it! Good luck to Kyle in that Death Battle by the way.

Comments

  1. Axelalienlols23August 30, 2024 at 12:12 AM

    Does Kyle win though?

    ReplyDelete
  2. RyoMizumiAugust 31, 2024 at 6:42 AM

    no

    ReplyDelete
  3. DefinitelyNotBatman1999September 1, 2024 at 5:17 AM

    I didn't realize Gurren Lagann's cosmology goes that high. Nice job on the blog!

    ReplyDelete
  4. DefinitelyNotBatman1999September 2, 2024 at 7:51 AM

    I have a question: are you going to make a Content Revision Thread in VS Battles using this blog?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kirbonic PikminSeptember 2, 2024 at 9:37 PM

      I currently have no interest / plans of pursuing this myself, but if someone wishes to use my arguments to do so I have no issue with it! I'd just like credit/mention of my blog if possible (:

      Delete
    2. DefinitelyNotBatman1999September 4, 2024 at 5:31 AM

      Oh, okay. I'll see if I can make a thread once I make an account. I'll be sure to credit you in the thread, whenever that's made. Thank you for your permission!

      Delete
  5. HassanSeptember 2, 2024 at 9:45 AM

    I have a question, are you planning to make a Cosmology blog for Madoka Magica?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kirbonic PikminSeptember 2, 2024 at 9:38 PM

      At the moment, no, as I've yet to watch Madoka myself. It is on my list though ! If I end up really liking the series a lot I'll look into it, I've noticed Madoka has a lot of different side media, I see manga at different shops I visit now and again.

      Delete

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