Final Thoughts – SSSS. Gridman

TRIGGER is back, baby.

And in Fall, they began an answer to a question. That question is: “What if we threw Haruhi Suzumiya and Neon Genesis Evangelion into a blender, hit puree, didn’t put the lid on, and dumped a shitload of Gurren Lagann into the mix?” While Gridman is already a developed “franchise”, SSSS is just so uniquely TRIGGER-flavored that I really can’t compare it to its source material other than saying that it’s definitely my favorite show of its kind.

Like I said before, watching Tokusatsu shows is pretty tiring by yourself because they take a very long time to tell what is usually not a very complicated story, so distilling one down into a single season and pacing it perfectly is enough to really pique my interest all on its own, but in a year where this exact studio already collaborated on a different robot-themed show that made my want to tear my hair out, and a year where Gundam Build Divers let me down, Gridman was such a breath of fresh air that I found it compulsively watchable and very deliberately saved it for (almost) the last show I finished this season.

It looks how you’d expect from a TRIGGER production – that is to say, cool as hell – and this is probably the best integration of CG and traditional animation that I’ve seen in a TV production, and without spoiling too much, the story really seriously manipulates the viewer into thinking they can predict what happens next, just to keep the Holy Shit Quotient healthy when it starts sprinting in the opposite direction.

This really sounds like I’m about to give it a perfect score, but I’m not, and it’s because of what happens in episode six, which I’ve already discussed – namely, that the main character gets the crux of the plot essentially infodumped at him by a character who then vanishes for the rest of the story. I hate so much that this happens, even though it is basically the last time any sort of exposition dump happens in the story, because it forced me to compare it to Another, which is utterly heinous in comparison to Gridman. Blech.

Still though, it’s easily the best “mech” show I saw all year, and it’s sitting at a ridiculously low 7.48 on MAL, and that’s a damn shame, because this one’s going in the Hall of Fame.

9/10!

Updated Impressions – SSSS. Gridman

TRIGGER returns to glory with their personal take on one of the oldest genres in Japanese television.

So, speaking as an adult, I loved Power Rangers when I was a kid (I started watching right around Ninja Storm) but, trying to go back in now, I can’t stand how cheesy it all comes across as. It’s something that I just can’t put nostalgia goggles on for and can’t sit through comfortably because it just feels so immature. While Power Rangers certainly started in Japan (and I’ve not been able to really give Super Sentai shows their own shot due to them being largely unavailable here), the fights against giant monsters at the end of every episode were more or less their own separate genre, with their most recognizable entry being the Godzilla franchise.

Of course, there was also Ultraman, which even briefly tried to be A Thing when Saban got a hold of it and started airing it in the U.S., but having tried that, the entire thing seemed really silly to me. What I wanted was something much less episodic and more tight. These shows go on for over fifty episodes just to keep perpetually airing, and though they do tell a story, most of them could be effectively told in half (or even less) of that time. (I recognize that I have totally enjoyed shows like that – Brave Beats, for example – but usually they have a pretty distinct personality to get me really hooked.)

Thank God for TRIGGER, coming along and doing exactly that, telling a tightly-plotted story about fighting giant monsters in only twelve episodes, while giving it just the slightest bit of maturity to make it way more palatable for adults. Every genre staple is accounted for – lots of different monsters that do different things, lots of toyetic attachments to the main robot hero, and a reset button that undoes all the destruction after every attack so this doesn’t turn into a disaster story – but it’s all presented in a way that won’t make adult viewers think of it as lazy writing.

Speaking of lazy writing, though, something that happened late in the sixth episode is tripping me up here, though, and it hurts me to mention it because the creative direction of the sequence in question was genius. In the sixth episode, there exists a really terrible infodump that frankly drew comparisons in my head to Another, one of the most poorly-written shows I’ve ever seen, and it really harshed my buzz, so I have to give out yet another 7/10 thus far.

Premiere Impressions – SSSS. Gridman

It’s Trigger, how is this so far down the seasonal popularity chart? Did FRANXX really do that much instant damage to their reputation?

Well, at least for now, Gridman looks like a return to form. Not everybody is gonna be as into this as I am, but it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a Super Robot show not explicitly for kids, and this one is shaping up really nicely so far.

Like I’ve said many times, execution matters more than originality. While the setup for the episode seems pretty standard (boy with amnesia starts hallucinating a robot on a computer screen that’s telling him to embrace his destiny), I have a feeling, based on the end of the episode, that there’s gonna be a good ol’ Trigger twist coming up in the near future.

I appreciate the fact that we’re essentially starting with only four characters to keep track of (five if you include Rikka’s mom), since a number of Trigger properties have tossed much more into the mix and come out of the gate struggling a bit to get us invested in all of them (Darling and Kiznaiver are especially guilty of this, though I’m not sparing Kill La Kill from this criticism either). We get a bit more of an idea about what they’re about, and while Main Kid Yuta is pretty archetypical for the genre, I like that Rikka isn’t immediately coded as a tsundere as would be normal for female characters in her position.

Basically, if you want more Trigger without A-1/CloverWorks’ involvement, this is what you’re gonna get this year. Get into it!