Gurren Lagann II: Beastmen

Throughout the beginning part of the series, the main antagonism is between the humans, including Simon, and the Beastmen. There are three chief species on Simon's planet: Humans, beasts, and Beastmen. While the animals don't pose any threat to humanity, the Beastmen are intrinsically anti-human. Their very existence fights against all that is human; in physiology, values and power.

They are a hybrid between Man and Beast, affording them the brute strength of an animal along with the rudimentary ability to follow orders. Because they are hybrid, with a chaotic degree of variation and mixed-ness, some are smarter than others, and these usually hold higher offices in the Beastman-army's chain of command.

Beastmen in Mythology

Hybrids have been featured all throughout Classical history; the Centaur, the Faun, the Minotaur, all hybrids in some varying degree and all distinctly monsters; all anti-human in sentiment. In Greek mythology, the Nymph is always juxtaposed with the Faunus; the Nymph is pure, fair, beautiful, distinctly human so much as godly (since at this time humans looked like gods), while the Faunus is lustful, dark, ugly and subversive, he has animal urges and reasoning but he can use many human abilities and appear like some kind of human. The Faunus is always seen as trying to rape the Nymph; that is, to destroy her purity by mixing their blood, giving birth to more monster offspring. It should be known that Nymphs in Greek mythology were originally land spirits; Dyads were the spirits of trees while Nereids are of the sea. This reveals the primal nature of the Nymphs as something of spirit and being godly. What, then, is the Faunus? He is a hybrid between these spiritual forms, manifested in earthly bodies, and the lower animals that inhabit the earth.

In the show, Beastmen are programmed to suppress humans. Human civilization, scattered in subterranean segments, is destroyed wherever it comes to the surface; the Beastmen continually hunt over the surface of the planet for any Humans to eradicate. The Beastmen are shown as being hateful or envious in some points against the humans; even without their orders, they know they are built for destruction. They thus indirectly actively suppress knowledge of Spiral Power, which is the spiritual power and potential of human beings.  Thus the Beastmen pose a serious threat to the continuation of the human genome (human survival) as well as human evolution; humans cannot break through the surface or transcend their world, and therefore they can never improve. Their underground settings will, in the long run, lead to devolution as they continue to rot and be trapped in the underground world.

With a little artistic licensing, we can draw an analogy from this similar to Plato's Cave. Simon's people, the humans, are trapped in their "earthly world" (represented by the fact that they live underground), unable to go to the "higher world" or to the heavens. They are trapped on earth, in their physical forms, their spirits suppressed in this earthly world and kept ignorant of the "spiritual" world above them (that is, since they will advance in their understanding of Spiral Energy only if they break through to the surface world, as we see later on in the show). The Beastmen are keeping them underground; they are preventing their evolution, their transcendence and their advancement of any sort of spiritual evolution. Therefore the humans are severely underpowered, since they are only limited to their physical beings and have not gained knowledge of their spiritual "Spiral" power. The Beastmen stand as a symbol of deterrence from the path of transcendence; that which keeps people tied to earthly things, the corporeal, the temporal, the bestial, the crass and vulgar.

Even though the Beastmen are sterile, since hybrids are often known to be sterile, they represent an active mix between Beast and Humanity. Since Humanity is capable of spiritual power (Spiral Energy), and the Beastmen are not (since the Spiral King created them so that they don't have Spiral Energy and therefore undetectable to the enemy Anti-Spirals in a long war before the series starts), this means naturally that the mixing between Beast and Human invariably devalues the human genome, since the offspring lose the spiritual faculties of the latter. This miscegenation or mixing between the Beast and the Human creates a spiritually inferior offspring, which is polluted with the ugliness and anti-humanity of the Beast, resulting in a Frankenstein-esque monster whose animal urges make it hate mankind and act inherently destructive towards it, yet possesses human faculties to realize its situation. It has rudimentary intelligence enough to subvert human kind and to bring it down. The hybrid Beastman also represents a destruction of the spiritual human DNA that affords humanity the potential to evolve spiritually and physically; this is represented in the fact that Beastmen are sterile. By mixing the genes, the recessive and superior human genes are blotted out by the dominant inferior genes of the corporeal Animals.

This relationship represents an old myth that has been the founding mythology for many civilizations and its traces found in nearly ever ancient civilization. The mystic anthropologist and "theozoologist" Lanz von Liebenfels, in his early 1900's works "Ostara" and "Theozoology", described Biblical accounts which allude to the mixing of an initially divine Human race, which had been a race of spiritual and physically superior and capable beings descended from Gods (the so-called "God-men"), with the inferior spirits and beings which originated on Earth, therefore giving rise to a species called "Beastmen" that were inferior to the God-people, which were the first Humans, yet possessed enough power to be a threat. The original mix happened for one reason or another, and in many cases it comes down to either two reasons: to create a sub-class of slaves for manual labor or because of the decadent spiritual degeneration of the primordial civilization. In every case, the Fall of Man is related to the latter; Humanity en masse begins mixing with the Beastmen until no pure Humans or anthromorphic Beasts exist; only hybrids between the two, in varying degrees, some purer than others and some with more Human/God blood than others. That was the creation of the current humanity; the reason why the humanity of Today is inherently different from the Humanity described in the Golden Age and the Age of the Gods in Classical mythology. That is also why the Mankind of the past was able to use magic and communicate with the gods, and the Mankind of today cannot; Modern humanity has fractured or absent spiritual faculties which are suppressed by the Beastman influence. People today are separated from the gods, the spiritual and the divine because their God-blood is distorted by the Beast-blood, in both body and soul. This is often associated with the mixing of the human races, however one should note that the mixing is not only physical but spiritual as well.

Biblical quotes about the mixing:
"There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the Sons of God came in to the Daughters of Men and they bore children to them" Genesis 6:4

The reasoning for this relation goes on and on, which will not be gone over here. Liebenfels' book can be read here: http://www.archive.org/details/EuropaHouseTheozoology
Download: Von Liebenfels - Theozoology


Therefore, it becomes obvious that the Beastmen are an archetypal symbol of the inferior genome and the process of devolution. They are the earthly forces standing against Mankind's spiritual evolution and the realization of their spiritual selves, like Simon did in the Final Battle against the Anti-Spirals (thus achieving Godhood). Humanity can only "re-achieve" godhood and the genetic potential it has lost by overcoming the bestial and carnal elements in life, by overcoming the earthly with the spiritual and letting the spirit prevail over the physical. It is only then that spiritual evolution and the transcendence of worlds can take place, that mankind can evolve and become one with the immortal stream of divine spirit-driven existence. The Beastmen are temporal entities, and by mixing they make everything else temporal; it is only when man abandons this bestial nature that he can rise undeterred to a more eternal existence, and therefore be able to survive as an eternal rather than temporal (subject to eventual death) existence. 


The Beastmen represent Mankind's first obstacle in the quest for spiritual transcendence. They represent the physical forces in humanity, which are inherently antithetical to the spiritual and therefore Spiral Energy. Being a Spiral Being, Humanity becomes subject to destruction from outside forces when it is suppressed of its true inner energy, Spiral Energy. Therefore, in order to unlock humanity's true evolutionary and transcendent potential, they must harness Spiral Energy and defeat the Beastmen which pose the greatest immediate threat. Once this force is neutralized, only then can they go on to fight within the metaphysical realm, and this is represented by Simon's fight against the Anti-Spirals. The process of Transcendence takes place in two parts (battle with the corporeal physical, and then the metaphysical). These are the two parts of Gurren Lagann; the first on earth, the second in the wider cosmos. 


The Tragedy of the Beastman

However, Gurren Lagann also relates the personal aspects of Beastmen. Though most are too crude to understand things or have any notion of human values, there is one member of their hybrid species in the show names Viral. He is a mix between three creatures, yet he looks the most human on the exterior, with shoddy blonde hair and light golden eyes. He is a creature far superior to the other Beastmen; his human intelligence and reasoning makes him one of the Spiral King's greatest warriors. We can see an unmistakably human nature in his actions; under the Beast exterior, he feels human emotions and sentiments like loyalty, honor, disgrace, sacrifice and perseverance that the animalistic Beastmen lack. He represents an example of a hybrid whose peculiar mix of genes gives him a distinctly human-outlook and spirit; without the body, Viral's spirit would be just like a human's. And that is the tragedy; his mixed blood makes him eternally inhuman. He was born as a Beastman, yet possesses the human faculties of full consciousness and critical thinking, even philosophizing. 

Viral, after the Battle of Teppelin

Later on in the series, Viral, who becomes a pivotal leader in the small faction of Beastmen holding out after the war, realizes that it's better to ally himself with the humans and fight for humanity. Why would a Beastman fight for Humanity? It is because he feels he is human on the inside; he feels that Humanity is what's right, that it is the honorable thing to do, despite his own mixed nature; he still perseveres for his Human/spiritual values. He knows that he can never live as a human, although this is his deepest and most tragic wish; he wants to have a family of his own, with a wife and children to share his happiness with. He will never have this; but it is the beauty of that dream, the very universal substance that it's made out of, that lets him continue his fight alongside Simon. He genuinely feels like one of Simon's own, and Simon accepts him as such, since Viral is truly on his side. Even as a Beastman, he becomes one of Simon's highest warriors because of the nature he acts with; the superior nature, the godly nature, the transcendent nature of the eternal; the embodiment of the very values which Viral holds dear.  In the end, Viral is "saved" from his own status as Beastman-born through his righteous cause and actions. Having overcome the bestial, he has overcome himself and his own demons. Though he will always bear the fact of his inferior origins, he has achieved a personal salvation through a hero's sacrifice. 

Viral's dream

Viral's tragic character will never allow him to reach his one true desire. Such is the tragedy of the Beastman.


Beastmen have always been antithetical to humanity's progress, and the earthly factor which keeps Mankind from achieving spiritual gnosis. Mankind is prevented from achieving gnosis and realization in Spiral Energy, his true spirit and knowledge of the divine, by these carnal earthly forces. Further analogy can make this a battle between the human mind and will and the impulsive carnal-driven body. Therefore he must conquer the things which prevent his will from being done, the chaotic physical factors that affect him, in order to take full control over his own being. He must seek purity and the regaining of his lost wisdom; purity in body, spirit, and every other aspect. Only this purity can allow Humanity to realize the greater truths of the universe, and not have their heads stuck on earth and with insignificant material matters. 


We see degeneration happening in our modern world all the time. Materialism is paramount, and everything is valued around paper money and material objects. We see how Gurren Lagann quickly becomes an expression of an inner yearning for a reconnection with the spiritual, with the higher, and with our "Spiral Energy", something that is lost in the world of modernity and post-modernity. 


Next time, I'll talk about Gunmen and what they mean, along with the issues of Identity with the main characters.