Review of SSSS.Gridman

Godzilla represented the fears and destruction of nuclear weapons, so what if a lonely human created kaiju, then what do these human created kaiju represent for the one that created it? SSSS.Gridman is something like a modern retelling of the 1993 Gridman the Hyper Agent tokusatsu series. SSSS.Gridman follows Yuta Hibiki voiced by Yuuya Hirose having woken up with amnesia but later on told by Gridman voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa on an old computer screen that he has a purpose, with his friends Rikka Takarada voiced by Yume Miyamoto, Akane Shinjou voiced by Reina Ueda and Shou Utsumi voiced by Souma Saitou to help him out,until the kaiju's appeared...

Some Spoilers Ahead...

Now LA really doesn't watch tokusatsu series but was mildly interested in Power Rangers at one point or another, but nonetheless the basic premise is nearly the same as it's 1993 counterpart, but where SSSS.Gridman is different is where one certain character just changes up the formula of what would be a typical "monster of the week" serial, that being Akane Shinjou.

SSSS.Gridman has two main plotlines that it goes throughout the anime, one of Yuta and how he is linked with Gridman, the other of Akane Shinjou herself. Yuta's story is mainly fixated on his amnesia and who he is which coupled with his friends interactions and the strange instances of the city and it's people "resetting" as it were to piece together why the kaiju appears and that answer comes in Akane Shinjou, see Akane Shinjou is shown VERY early on that she's not the typically nice genki girl, as she's the one creating the kaiju for her own personal reasonings, some for the mildest of indiscretions and tries killing them. The typical monster of the week plays out for the both Yuta and Akane with Akane closing in who Gridman really is and Yuta closing in as to the strange incidents being linked to Akane in the process. There is one chaos factor as it were and that is Anti voiced by Kenichi Suzumura, a kaiju made human having a vendetta against Gridman and something of a repeatable monster that Gridman and Yuta fights often within the anime and he later get major character development on it's existence as a human-kaiju.

Yuta's plotline IS interesting as it ties up loose ends as ti were, but the downsides are that Yuta is something of a doe-eyed main male protagonist with his amnesia NOT helping matters and he's a little bit dense but not too dense as it were which is probably helped with the Neon Genesis Junior Highschool Students (yes really that's their group name), 4 suited mysterious people who give Gridman different transformations and this being adapted from a tokusatsu series, YUP Gridman can combine with them. Anyways the Neon Genesis Junior Highschool Students are like the voice of reason to Yuta as well as Utsumi and Rikka in many ways and it's because of their involvement they make things interesting to say the least, not only because of Gridman's fancy new weapons but with the character interactions, LA's favourite Neon Genesis Junior Highschool Student being Borr voiced by Aoi Yuuki, for having the Macross Missile Massacre installment but also for her brash personality. With favourites, LA's favourite character would definitely be Rikka Takarada as her personality and involvement in the anime was just interesting compared to Yuta and Utsumi, though Utsumi was something of a audience surrogate, especially towards the tokusatsu fans.

Now for Akane, the MOST interesting character of the anime, with Akane able to create kaiju it embodies her desires and feelings as it were, she is something of a god as it were and the dynamic of her obsession with kaiju and making friends comes full circle for LA when it compares to Yuta's situation of being the "hero" that fights against the kaiju, as it were dispelling the negative emotions Akane creates with the kaiju in the city. For LA's interpretation, Akane WANTS to have friends as it were and she is already popular but with her being a god, is her being popular is fake due to how she orchestrated it all and she's creating kaiju not only because it's something she likes to do but to also get Rikka to truly be her friend in the process?, as both of them share a great deal of screentime together. There's also the notion of the "god complex" as her having a world all to herself, she one, can't handle the outliers and two, her personality leads herself into almost self-destructive state that she would rather destroy it all, not helped by Alexis Kerib voiced by Tetsu Inada the bigger bad as it were. Akane is a pretty complex and interesting character and bringing up that Akane is the Big Bad very early on was refreshing and different to say the least and what they do with her later on and thoroughly commit to this was executed excellently.

SSSS.Gridman's animation is impressive to say the least and from Trigger along with Tsuburaya Productions who does special effects on tokusatsu shows, this to be expected, with many of the kaiju battles being 3DCGI but used excellently well and the motions and choreography being somewhat intentional to harken back to the old tokusatsu series but still the level of animation was amazingly done. Character designs are vibrant and interesting looking, with standouts from Akane, Borr, Anti and Rikka to say a few. Trigger and Tsuburaya Productions did amazingly well to modernize a tokusatsu into anime format with detailed background work, character designs and those awesome CGI Gridman vs. kaiju fights were the icing on the cake. Expected Trigger but also major props to Tsuburaya Productions for making the CGI seamless to the traditional animation done with Trigger.

As for voice acting, well LA will commend Reina Ueda as she once again for LA has been typecasted but exceedly typecasted well as Akane, in voicing another "genki character with bloody steel"-type characters (the other one LA can remember is μ from Caligula) but seriously Reina Ueda easily earns LA's MVP award in terms of voicing acting as she went all out with this role. The rest of the voice cast were great as well, from Yume Miyamoto as Rikka who had some great emotional range, Kenichi Suzumura as Anti, sounding like a semi-hyped Accelerator most of the time and Hikaru Midorikawa as Gridman for the name attacking moments which SSSS.Gridman does OFTEN. What can LA say a great voice cast!

SSSS.Gridman gives us two spices as it were with either one pleasing, if you want to see kaiju fights then get your adrenaline pumped for that with it's amazingly done animation work done by Trigger and Tsuburaya Productions, but if you want intrigue, character development and interestingly drastic changes to the plot that accompanies the kaiju fights then that will satisfy you as well, SSSS.Gridman does have some weakness with both these plotlines converging of course, that of our main protagonist may not be a bit bland with Rikka and Utsumi taking up the slack but that's a small flaw to what is a great anime celebrating tokusatsu in all it's CGI glory.

Thank You Gridman and welcome to the Melancholy of Akane Shinjou