[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Final thoughts: Overall this mini was a fun, if not particularly deep, delve back into live action, even if some elements didn?t necessarily translate well outside of the anime format.

It's always nice to take a trip to the quarry. Thanks so much for sharing this!

[Kamen Rider Die]

GRIDMAN UNIVERSE



It is amazing to me that, after years of watching Kamen Rider, and seeing what felt like a million movies where they cross over different expressions of the franchise to muddled if not diminished results, that an animated movie I literally didn’t even know existed a week ago would somehow be the best inter-franchise toku movie I’ve maybe ever seen.

It starts with how smartly this film took what SSSS.Gridman was best at – talking about how we learn about ourselves through toku, and in turn how we reveal ourselves through our toku fandom – and weds it to what SSSS.Dynazenon was best at – talking about how we only become our best selves by connecting with other people, and the compounding of those connections is how we find happiness. There’s a threat in this story that starts mundane and becomes metaphorical, that can only be resolved by making as many friends as possible. This movie uses Gridman to talk about Dynazenon, and then Dynazenon to talk about Gridman. It’s perfect, that engine. Best goddamn way to use these two casts.

Just… that moment when Yuta has to go outside of Gridman Universe (the story) to see the scope of it, to understand that it’s a story Gridman’s telling about them, made up of the story they’ve been telling about Gridman… I love stuff like that? I loved the way SSSS.Gridman foregrounded toku fandom, and how we tell stories to make sense of our world, so you know I’m in the bag for a movie where the connective tissue is the cast of Gridman writing a play about Gridman. (I mean, it’s no TV series adaptation of their adventures, but these are just kids! They got no budget!) It’s all them processing their shit through Gridman – Rikka, mostly, but Yuta as well – and it’s the literal text of this story. We are big screen now, and it’s time to push the subtext into the biggest, boldest conception of the themes and messages of these shows.

Which, y’know, helps to have the cast of Dynazenon here, too! While their job here is a little more Unfinished Business amongst their own cast, owing to the messiness of their show’s conclusion versus the cleanliness of SSSS.Gridman’s, their presence is the power of their show, brought to bear on the dilemma of collapsing narratives and chaotic guilt. “It’s fun with more people around,” as a main theme. Gridman’s power is that he’s a story that the kids can tell about him; this movie just adds more voices, more perspectives, more ideas to the mix. Gridman’s power-up at the end is basically that there’s no story you can’t tell with toku, no such thing as tonal dissonance, and everyone here proves that.

Also: Holy shit this thing was just a blast to watch! The new designs for old characters were uniformly great (Gauma/Rex and Chise S-Tier, everyone else really good), the action was continuously appealing, the various weirdo sequences were jaw-dropping (Yuta outside the Gridman Universe! THE LIVE-ACTION PARTS!!!), every good song showed up somewhere, the jokes were reliably perfect (Chise losing it at Access Flash killed me), and I genuinely could’ve watched this thing for another two hours. I cannot believe how good this movie was.

I was honestly sort of trepidatious about watching this? SSSS.Gridman’s ending was so tight it was practically hermetically-sealed, while SSSS.Dynazenon’s ending was elliptical and open to interpretation – I sort of didn’t want to see a continuation of either one, for completely opposite reasons. And yet, this movie not only worked in its own right as a thrilling adventure that beautifully wedded two different shows’ messages in a way where they felt like one cohesive statement, but it honored where each of those shows ended by shining them up just a little bit with some sweet grace notes: Yomogi and Yume are doing well, and he brings her to meet his family; Gauma and the Princess reconnect sweetly -slash- in the most ridiculous way possible, but just for her to tell him to stop living in the past; Akane helps her friends, the way they helped her once; and Rikka and Yuta finally tell each other how they feel. It’s not massively evolving or undoing or explaining or inverting anything from either show (you could seriously skip this movie and you’d be fine on both shows), but instead it feels like a charming and inessential epilogue – little moments that reflect their successes, nothing more. It’s what these shows did best: finding the mundane in the extraordinary, to find the extraordinary in the mundane.

This was such a treat to get to watch. What a gift this was to fans of both shows, and toku in general.

[DreamSword]

Kamen Rider Die watching Gridman Universe:



Fish Sandwich watching Gridman Universe:



DreamSword watching Gridman Universe:

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

DreamSword watching Gridman Universe:

[Androzani84]

Have to say, I probably wasn’t expecting them to reveal Knight and Nidaime were simply clones of Anti and Kaiju Girl, but in retrospect, it probably makes some amount of sense.

Also I like Rogue Kaiser Gridknight mostly because it fixes my biggest gripes with Kaiser Gridknight. Less keen on Knight Powered Zenon, due to how weird the head looks.

(There’s no Sounderous Battle Mode in that video because that toy is only coming out this month)

Also, I didn’t do it when DreamSword watched the movie (focusing a bit too much on a subtle hint that everything was going wrong), so I’ll include references to the OG Toku here.

The fortune teller on Utsumi’s horoscope flier is a traced screenshot from a fortune telling game featured in the episode “The Day Earth Died” (and its Syber Squad adaptation Que Sera Servo).

The CG model seen when Anti and Kaiju Girl explain the Gridman universe is taken from the first episode of the original show, with Gridman taking his form and name from said model.

Also referencing the first episode, our final boss Mad Origin is a homage to Gilarus, the monster from that episode, even down to sharing the same VA (specifically, before being a mindless monster, Gilarus was the protagonist of an online video game, Monster Gilarus’s Torture Dungeon, who the local misanthrope repurposed as a computer virus).

Utsumi’s shirt near the end features on screen computer text from the original show, most evident with the fact it read “Inoue Yuka” (the show’s female lead).

There’s also a novelisation of this movie, and it’s kind of a once a thread thing for me to explain interesting tidbits from it. Most notably, it reveals that Yuta’s first thought upon waking up and being told he’d spent two months possessed by an Ultraman like being was to think he was being pranked (then he realised Rikka woudlnt prank him like that and checked the date), and has Gridman and DynaSoldier fight off the Noirdogma horde using their individual combos (Max Gridman and Striker Combine, Buster Gridman and Diver Combine and Sky Gridman and Wing Combine) before doing the big ones.

And finally, before I do the casting trivia, I’ve already mentioned two of our monsters are Mad Origin and Noirdogma, but the other two are Dimorgan and Domgiran. I’ll let you figure out the theme naming.

In terms of casting:

Maya Uchida (the Princess) previously portrayed Hiroyo Hakase in adult-oriented Sentai Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger, in addition to performing the ED to both SSSS shows.

Nobotoshi Canna (Mad Origin)in addition to the aforementioned Gilarus, was also Giant Beast Hunter Bangray in Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

I?ll include references to the OG Toku here.

Neat! Thanks!

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Holy shit this thing was just a blast to watch!

Music to my ears.
Now, go watch the 1993 toku.
Just kidding, I'm really glad you enjoyed Gridman: Universe, though. I remember watching it and thinking this is just like a really satisfying Kamen Rider Movie Taisen flick.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I could go on about this thing endlessly, which is itself one of the reasons I love it so much.

Gridman Universe means way more to me on a deeply personal level than I can possibly get across in any condensed fashion, so rather than even attempt to do that, I'll instead simply focus on trying to enrich the experience of Die and anyone else reading the thread by adding further context to some of the things in the film.

For starters, the music video for the theme song is basically mandatory viewing. (It even comes with subtitles!)

The song itself is great, of course. Doing the same thing UNION did where the lyrics cleverly speak literally about the story while at the same time speaking to the potentially quite jaded target audience. Yuuta forgot about Gridman; you maybe forgot about the wonder of imagination, that sort of thing. It's an extremely uplifting tune, and the video makes for a great way to remind yourself over and over and over again of any good times you had with these shows and this movie. It also goes much much further than just that, because it was personally directed by Akira Amemiya himself, which absolutely shows in how detailed the choice of images gets. In particular, the entire thing is constantly highlighting the many times shots in these projects are quoting one another, complete with a speedrun montage of all those Dynazenon backgrounds that were secretly just Gridman backgrounds the whole time, and many other moments you'd have to be pretty hardcore to notice totally on your own. So it's even handy as a study guide, worth going through frame-by-frame at points, on top of simply being a fantastic way to celebrate the franchise.

And while we're on the subject of the quotes in these things, there's one in particular that's a great example of what the actual purpose of them can be as a storytelling tool, beyond simply being a reference for the sake of it. In the final episode of the original Gridman, the very last shot consisted of the main characters standing on a hill, looking off into the distance and expressing their thanks to the titular hero for everything he's done.



In Gridman Universe, the scene where Gridman leaves is set on the same exact hill, and framed almost the same way.



...but it's the parts that *aren't* the same that are important to note. They're both scenes about saying goodbye to Gridman, but they're also mirrored images, because in the live action show, the sun is setting, drawing the adventure to a close, whereas in Universe, the sun is rising, which I think connects to how the goodbye in this context is now more of a new beginning, a "see you later" that reflects the overall nature of this particular story, which is in part actively about how creative works infinitely inspire further creative works. Maybe that all seems like a stretch to some people, but even though my exact reading of it is entirely my own, the sunrise/sunset thing itself is something I know for a fact was intentional, because I heard it straight out of the director's own mouth.

That's the magic of it all. Everything works well enough on its own without any wider reading, but knowing more about where some of these things come from can add further meaning that makes a good story that much better. The first time I saw this movie, it had been long enough since I'd watched the original Gridman that I didn't realize the play Ustumi and Yuuta see is a recreation of a specific episode of the old show, but not only did I catch it after rewatching everything, I realized that particular episode is kind of a microcosm of the broader plot of the show, which was also the broader plot of SSSS.Gridman. Which is neat, just like how that guy on the motorbike who helps Yuuta go meet Gridman is another voice cameo for the actor of Gridman's original protagonist Naoto, this time even quoting his own character from his show's first episode, calling attention to how the story beat is basically the old hero coming in to save the day without having to derail the plot by making that too concrete or explicit.

Really, the references alone could already provide me enough material to keep talking about for a good while. Another particular highlight is a recurring background character with a design that sticks out way too much for a mere extra... because apparently she's actually a refugee from a completely different concept for the film's plot they ended up abandoning to do what we got instead, which, like... just think about that fact alongside what the finished plot ended up being about.

Again, the specifics are way too much to get into, because there are just that many layers to even seemingly inconsequential details, whether they involve references or not. Heck, I could do a whole 12-part analysis of my own just on how cute Yuuta is in this thing, if I really wanted to. I was profoundly moved by this film, to say the least. It's so intricately crafted in a way that made me immediately go watch it again, because it's like every single shot is entertaining in its own right, and as I just spent paragraphs talking about it, it's the kind of film that only gets more entertaining the more familiar you are with it, rather than less. It inspired me to go watch all the previous shows again, it helped inspire me to get back to posting on this forum again, it just inspires me in general, really? The whole movie is such a sincere expression of gratitude, and it makes me grateful right back, even if I can't express it anywhere near as well as they can.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

I remember watching it and thinking this is just like a really satisfying Kamen Rider Movie Taisen flick.

It really is, even if they sort of invert the normal Rider crossover thing of having the newer cast get stranded in the older cast's setting, and the wraparound plot is all about the older show. But it definitely scratched that itch of seeing weird combinations play off of each other, and it helped highlight how unique each show's cast was. (Like, Yomogi is not just New Yuta! And Yume is not just New Rikka!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

basically mandatory viewing

I just watched an entire two-hour movie last night because you guys twisted my arm! Stop giving me more work to do!!!

But, yeah, that was a pretty neat video! (Song's not my fave, but that's just a stylistic thing.)

To your point about the callbacks and whatnot... like, I never saw those old shows, but there's a framing in this movie where I felt like I could always tell that something was a reference, even if I couldn't tell what that reference was. For example, I didn't know who the guy on the bike was for sure, but he's so prominent at that point in the story that I just assumed he was a guy from the original show or something. Same thing with background details that the director spends a little too long on: I assume the chalkboard reference of "Escape From The Killer Vacuum Cleaner!" is from somewhere? It all felt like a nod to hardcore fans, but it never usurped the narrative or anything, so I just appreciated it as a nice thing for someone else. I'm glad it meant so much to people!

[DreamSword]

This franchise is way too smart for me.