Review of SSSS.Gridman
Gridman is one of those shows that tries to do a lot of things at once, and fails in all of them. The show is a reboot of the homonymous tokusatsu from the 90s. It has lots of similarities to it and tries to be a lot more ambitious at what it’s about. It’s definitely better in terms of themes and presentation, since the creators had the liberty to do a lot more with animation than what the low budget live action could allow them. It’s a shame they didn’t make it fun. And by fun I mean the battles not being exciting. They are fairlybasic in choreography, short, and mostly predictable. Action is the main attraction of these types of shows and Gridman is not particularly good at it. They made the monsters move like people in rubber suits despite being fully CGI, but that is again nothing more than homage and not something that improves the battles.
The show also tries to be homage to tokusatsu in general while smiling at the camera, as if it tells you it’s self-aware. For example, any buildings that get destroyed by the monsters are instantly repaired. That is what was supposed to be happening off screen in all tokusatsu. It doesn’t improve the show in any particular way. It makes it more self aware to its silliness but it also ruins the tension and can be very immersion breaking for the same reason.
It also tries to double down on the homage and have a meta-commentary on the escapism nature of technology. Despite the buildings getting repaired, the same does not happen for the people who get killed. They stay dead and even disappear from the memories of the living. It sounds very creepy when described that way, but it has little to no impact when nobody seems to be bothered by it. The population of the city is literally seeing giant monsters being frozen in the distance and everyone runs away to save their hides on a daily basis, but life is otherwise exactly the same as it would be if there weren’t monster attacks.
The characterization is not much better for the major characters. It’s very bland and even eye-rolling when you have to suspend your disbelief with what they are doing all the time. Yuta for example is a cookie cutter boy scout type of protagonist, suffering from amnesia and the one who has to fight the monsters with no motivation other than to protect his friends. Gah! More generally speaking, male characters are defined by a single trait (usually an emotion or an ideal) while females have the camera constantly ogling all over their feet and thighs.
Down to it, Gridman is not a good tokusatsu. You can still appreciate the visual directing, which is stuffed with easter eggs of the previous version, the genre as whole, and even a few shot-by-shot recreations of Neon Genesis scenes. It’s all about the meta than the actual in-story experience. And even then, it’s not very successful, since the only thing most people remember from this show is Rikka’s thighs.