Review of SSSS.Gridman

SSSS.Gridman has always been a mystery to me. I always find the show when looking for Japanese related media, but given the age of the show, I always thought it was a classic from a previous generation similar to Star Trek. A show to be remembered but not to be taken seriously. Well after hearing trigger was doing an adaption of one of the older shows I decided that now was better than never. Story: An underwhelming beginning that seems to lead nowhere, but was that the point? The first episodes can only be described as boring, bland and unstructured. It’s episodic in nature with nextto no development of any kind and the characters couldn’t be weaker. At episode 6 I was willing to drop the show entirely, which is very rare for me especially this far in but by continuing on I was in for a surprise. The next half of the show took an entire 180 approach to the story and really change the perception of where they were going. The story made some really interesting twists and threw the characters into a curveball I did not see coming. I believe the large contrast of the first half to the last half was to subvert the expectations of the viewers and try to appeal to older fans. Trigger knows the “monster of the week” trope doesn’t work in today’s age but at the same time, they can’t abandon the legacy of the show as well. But presenting the show as its original structure then changing the show into a more modern appeal they get best of both worlds(albeit the beginning reception of the show wasn’t the best because of it). The characters also follow this idea very closely and how they develop through the story. Most if not all get flushed out in the second half rather then first because of the above story structuring, except for the main character. Yuta was incredibly shallow and never once showed any significant emotion or progression. While many of the characters were questioning themselves or challenging themselves to do something, Yuta was absolutely hollow. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the main character this poorly written but luckily the rest of the cast picks up the slack and somehow pulls the story along. I would like to state that at times there’s references or mentions of the “predecessor” for Gridman. I have no idea what that means or who that is and it never gets explained at all, because of this I believe I’m missing some critical information towards the plot since it’s apart of the ultra series. Above all else, the story wasn’t drawn out to its full potential but the ending was better than expected.

Animation: With it being studio Trigger you can already tell what style animation will be used. Rather here it’s how effective the animation was used. Studio Trigger definitely doesn’t like to have a lot of still idle images in there works, their art style fully shines when in scenes of action and quick movement. The problem is that it's not necessarily used for action scenes of the show but rather some really impressive special effects and what I believe is CGI. But in return when it’s only used for a majority that isn’t quick motions it heavily drags the showdown in quality and feels. It almost seems like I’m watching something out of 2011 rather than the current year and that’s not a compliment. I will add that the show was made by all new animators from studio Trigger so while the typical animation is as sharp the future looks really bright for Trigger.

Music: I was ecstatic to hear that Shirou Sagisu was creating the soundtrack for the show and with him being one of my favorite composers of all time I really want to hear it succeed. Unfortunately, it was not what I expected, but wasn’t bad in any regard. The soundtrack mostly composes of EDM and more then half the OST is made up of alternative versions for the soundtrack, meaning there’s not much there to listen to. I did enjoy one song being HumanLove_CH_edm_all which, for the most part, is pretty plain but at least it spices it up with some interesting variations. Overall, it was a soundtrack to fit a type of show rather than be more experiential like Shirou's other soundtracks.

Conclusion: If you find joy in watching old style fights and have nothing better to watch then go for SSSS.Gridman but other than that I wouldn’t recommend the show to really anyone. You can find it legally streaming on Crunchyroll with a home release not yet announced.