Review of SSSS.Gridman

When I first watched SSSS.Gridman, I wasn’t too sure what was going on. I learned that there was a 1993 live action kid’s show called Gridman the Hyper Agent long after that SSSS.Gridman is based on, and I wanted to watch it both to deepen my knowledge of toku stuff and to revisit SSSS.Gridman with some more context. While you certainly don’t need to watch Hyper Agent to understand what’s happening in SSSS.Gridman, I think it will certainly deepen your enjoyment of it. SSSS.Gridman is a show that has a ton of attention to detail in it, and this includes direct concepts, cameos, and callbacks fromHyper Agent.

As for Hyper Agent itself, I think the best way to describe it is charming. Its plot is interesting, its characters are endearing, its jokes are funny, and its jank is also funny. Being a kids show, I don’t expect everyone to enjoy it as much as I did, but I at least recommend at least skipping around. If you want specific episode recommendations based on things that appear in the SSSS…s, I’d say episodes 1, 2, 5, 6, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, 38, and 39 have relevant plot points and miscellaneous things. Unfortunately I don’t believe you can find Hyper Agent without machine-translated subtitles (even the Blu-ray!), but at worst you can understand what characters are saying.
Also, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad is a (gratuitously) American adaption that reuses all of the computer world footage from Hyper Agent while making its own live-action plots around them. I don’t think you need to watch it after Hyper Agent unless you’re curious; the only thing worth noting is that they have separate people pilot the support tools (like the jet and plane).

Back to SSSS.Gridman, the plot starts off as a monster-of-the-week affair that you’d expect. However, with the mystery of the city resetting itself alongside a healthy influx of characters and reveals, the pacing of the show doesn’t get stale. In fact, I was surprised how quickly the plot points moved on my rewatch. Plus, the fights themselves are great. Maybe I’m too used to the monotony of Hyper Agent’s fights, but SSSS.Gridman’s fights had consistently cool power-ups…even if they were short. However, the main appeal of SSSS.Gridman isn’t the fights, but instead when the plot opens itself up halfway through and starts getting a bit off the rails. I’m obviously not going to say, but the way the anime blends the cool Gridman kaiju fights with the discomfort of the plot creates an…interesting feeling overall.

Unfortunately, the main protagonists of SSSS.Gridman weren’t much. They had good personalities and their moment-to-moment conversations were fun, but at the end of the day they didn’t feel strong enough. The story acted through them instead of the other way around. On the bright side, I liked pretty much everyone else. Even Gridman himself has some more character this time around (even if that’s not saying much)! The antagonists in particular steal the show; Alexis being a more polite Kahn Digifer is very funny.
There are voice dramas that you can play after each episode that have fun little scenarios with the characters. They’re charming and funny, but more importantly help flesh out the characters (even side characters) more. Definitely add them to your watch!

I’m surprised how invested I was in SSSS.Gridman, both from the overall plot and all the Hyper Agent callbacks. Maybe I’m more sentimental about it than others, but I certainly recommend it!