Does having so many faces make you great?

Yoko, Leeron, Simon, and Kamina make their way towards the Beastmen's headquarters, and are nearly starving. In spite of the dire predicament, Kamina continues to train Simon by throwing rocks at him. In the midst of one such training session, a group of masked assailants falls on the party, thinking to save Simon from what they assume is a beastman in a ganmen.

The group turns out to be the "Black Siblings," consisting of eldest brother Kittan and three sisters: Kiyoh, Kinon, and Kiyal. The four work as wandering beastmen hunters. The girls set out to find food and come back with a pink fuzzy thing that, conveniently, was already dead. As they sit down to eat, the siblings explain that they've been keeping an eye out for a 16-faced gunmen. Turns out that the pink fuzzy thing is, in fact, sixteen pink fuzzy things-- the beastmen who ride the 16-faced gunmen. The beastmen quickly perform their gattai, and after some arguing between Kamina and Simon, they also unite into the Gurren-Lagann and defeat the beastmen, with the Black Siblings providing much-needed cover fire.

After the battle the two groups part ways, with Kittan and Kamina making mutual offers to allow the others into their group.

Controversy

Episode four marked a (temporary) departure from the usual style of the series, one that many fans didn't appreciate. As a result they stormed message boards, leading Gainax co-chair Takami Akai to have an online conversation with an animator on the popular social networking site Mixi in which they both laid out insults to fans on message boards.

These comments were uncovered by fans and as a token of apology, Akai stepped down from the Gainax board and ceased being a producer on Gurren Lagann. He has NOT left the company, however.