Review of SSSS.Gridman
It's an anime version of the ultraman/power ranger type of Japanese live-action show that used to be popular. I used to like them as a mindless kid but they are rather cringe-inducing as an adult. It's B-movie cheesy-ness is an acquired taste. But like a lot of weird or fantastical styles of entertainment, it can become much more bearable in a less realistic medium such as anime. There is no guy struggling under an unwieldy monster suit or dorky ultraman costume, no toy guns or low budget effects, and no distorted facial expressions from actors trying to ham it up. The campiness is still there,but you can focus on the more enjoyable aspects, like the monster and mecha designs and transformations, the fighting, and of course the explosions and ultrabeams. It's not too serious and has it's own quirky comedy.
Until of course halfway through the series they decide to ruin the flow by introducing a whole bunch of crammed in, manufactured angst, existentialism, and drama. Not only do they have references to Neon Genesis Evangelion (a previous gainax/trigger anime), they are literally ripping the playbook from it scene by scene. Eery silence punctured by cicadas. Loud ambient noise of trains. Flashing traffic lights. Slow pans of characters laying in bed listening to music while deep in thought. Mumbling, half-baked conversations littered with confusion and trailing, abstract thought. All it's missing is the game of scrabble with bible references.
They also run wild with the weak-willed, ground-staring, passive Japanese stereotype. The villain gets away with murder, hundreds if not thousands dead or wiped out of existence, without so much as a hand raised in opposition. Even an in-person stabbing of the MC yields no reaction from the dozen characters standing around, some carrying swords and knives, and the villain just waltzes out. This passivity and hesitancy extends to any and all meaningful dialogue and actions. A giant monster is rampaging and the MC is running out the door because no way is he going to let them die, but then his friend tells him to wait, mumbles about something frivolous, people die in the meantime, and then the MC goes nonchalantly back to his hero work. You wonder how ER doctors in this world even perform operations. There's a car accident. A man is rushed in. His head is hemorrhaging profusely. The doctor starts to stabilize the patient, but his colleague suddenly starts mumbling, "eeto, eeto, ano, that thing I said yesterday. I mean, I'm not sure...but. It might be something, I'm not sure how to say this, possibly, could be, didn't really mean to, but maybe, you might understand, but I didn't mean to, truly, say it in that way, but just, hope that it wasn't misconstrued in such a manner, but was actually what I really wanted to say, or that's what I think I wanted to say but am unsure." A loud persistent beep is heard as the patient flatlines, because it would be rude otherwise to interrupt someone in the middle of them bearing their very confused soul out to you.
Either stick with the light-hearted campiness and one-dimensional characters or properly build a convincing narrative with genuine character development. Don't shoehorn a convoluted, pretentious plot at the tail end and spin your characters into something they aren't.
The animation is high quality and especially the mecha and monster fights have all the bells and whistles of 3D cel-shaded action without the awfulness of looking like inanimate video game models. It starts bogging down later on though, as you see some of the same canned animations more than once and some of the cheap canned explosions are used to cover up the screen and save the animation budget. There's even a deja vu episode that is nothing but reused assets from the first episode, as if the NGE influence wasn't beaten enough to death. As well as the sound, following NGE, is mostly ambient noise. There are some short, unremarkable tracks during initial fight encounters, and the victory theme is just the opening theme and gets grating fast.