Review of SSSS.Gridman
(There will be spoilers in this review.) Art and Animation: For me personally, the word mediocre perfectly encapsulates it. I see people heaping a lot of praise on the CG of the Gridman, but being slightly better that your contemporaries, in this department, hardly warrants all the commendation. 2D animation can be summed up by the word decent. Sound: I think this section is highly subjective. I didn't like nor the OP nor the ED, and can't remember a single piece of background music, but that doesn't mean you won't like any of the music in Gridman aswell, you'll just have to listen to it and findout for yourself.
Story: It's sort of there, but at the same time it's not. Essentially, pretty much every episode follows an extremely simplistic formula of "Have 15 minutes of inane chit-chat in a high-school-esque setting, then be alerted to the presence of a new Kaiju and have a 5-minute long one-sided fight", and that's about it. I will elaborate on what final episodes bring us a bit later.
Characters:
Yuuta: He's not a character, he's merely a vessel for Gridman. The fact that he's an amnesiac is also very convenient cause that just takes off some work from the scriptwriter, as the typical amnesic character is defined solely by that trait and, therefore, doesn't require any personality at all.
Utsumi: By his own admission in the last episode, a completely useless character that serve barely any purpose and is defined by a single trait of being a Kaiju fanatic.
Rikka: At first she seems somewhat interesting, as she's protrayed as an apathetic person that sighs every 10 seconds and hardly seems interested in anything, but later evolves (devolves?) into your typical "friendship is paramount and is above all else" character.
Akane: I will cover her more in-depth down the line.
Hyper Agents: They're so cookie-cutter you can guess their personalities from their design. It seems like their reason d'etre is to simply provide upgrades for the primary Gridman unit so he can show a new attack in an episode. They claim they have a purpose and are here to deal with Alexis, but strangely enough spent 85% of their time lounging in Rikka's shop, doing absolutely nothing.
Rikka's mom: She's there. She mostly just cheers the main cast from the sideline, even though she appears to be bewildered by everything that's going on.
Rikka's classmates: They're also there.
Anti: A very moody young man who is defined by a single trait of wanting to destroy Gridman, as that his reason for existance. He later undergoes a character development after standing for 30 seconds in the rain and listening to Akane, after which he decides he's a good guy now.
Alexis: He's an evil man that's evil, he takes pleasure in depraved acts of destruction and suffering of the people. Your typical Trigger antagonist.
Ending analysis: My take on the ending is that Akane is actually a real-life person, that appears to be bullied at school, probably because she's geeky and nerdy, due to her affection for Kaiju and Gundams, so when she comes home she, probably, writes a story (aka the actual Gridman show we see), and that's her method of releasing her frustration and coping with the stress (as she destroys things, then fixes them right back, and also removes umpleasant characters).
What supports this theory is that characters in the show recognize her as a god, just like writer is technically a god to the characters he created. The symbolism in Gridman and Alexis, is that Alexis is the evil within Akane, due to all the bullying, and Gridman is that proverbial remaining light of hope, which fixes everything by the end (he does this quite literally with his Fixer Beam). Rikka is just a perfect friend that Akane wishes she had in a real world. Utsumi low-key looks like a love interest Akane would've liked, as he's a giant Kaiju geek and all. The final frames are also that of real world, shot with an actual camera, and we can see Rikka's gift to Akane on the table, which further confirms my idea.
All said and done, by no means do I think this is correct, or anything plausible to begin with, but who knows. Seems a little too deep for a show that essential a one giant homegae to a lot of different titles.
Overall: A typical Trigger fair, style and action over subtelty and substance. I personally cannot recommend it, even if it had some interesting moments and, perhaps, even some meaningful and intersting concept that ended up being butchered.
I think the original Gridman, with it's abundance of pyrothecnical effects and models of cities being crushed by actors wearing monster suits, is a vastly superior experience. But if that's (understandably) might not be your cup of tea, and you would rather watch some mecha anime, then I would recommend you Shin Getter Robo Armageddon, Gundam franchise (Zeta and 0083, specifically, are quite good) and even TTGL, even though I'm not a fan of it.