Of all the disarming and disorienting ways this episode approaches its narrative, I think my favorite is how it speedruns the first episode's plot between Rikka and Yuta, mostly for how unnatural and forced Akane's attempts at warmth and caring are. She just... like, she can only ever fake it, in the hopes that it'll turn into something; it's like the kaiju models that she wants to be real, but this little world of dreams and lies instead. Really, really fun use of our attachment to these character relationships.

During this thread’s two days off, I rediscovered that they put out a repaint of the Assist Weapons to match the blue, black and silver form Gridman has in the first episode (dubbed “Primal Fighter” by the toys, while his regular form is “Initial Fighter”) https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ruddnmw1...f_kzFMXT534xmF

Neat! Thanks!

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 10 - “COLLAPSE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman10a.png

Fittingly for a series that so expertly balances its teen melodrama heart with its tokusatsu aesthetics, this episode about explosive personal growth and nightmarish self-immolation is more about the way your life only really improves through the steady accrual of small moments; an atomized henshin sequence as reflected through the prism of your daily life.

That’s sort of it, the lesson: just show up, let yourself be open to the world, and you’re more likely than not to turn into the best version of yourself. It’s not a key to unlocking your dreams or anything – things’ll be hard, you won’t necessarily be the You that you thought you’d be – but it’s how you live impossible goals and existential quests for meaning: You meet people; you get to know people; you go to school; you study for tests; you take a shower and eat and all the million little things that make up a day that isn’t about fighting a giant monster that may or may not be the yonic manifestation of a teenage girl’s suicidal ideation. You do the invisible hard work until it becomes the visible upgrade.

On the other hand, the surest way to close out the ability to change and grow is to cut yourself off from the world, to lose yourself in depression and self-loathing. (There’s an entire sequence where Akane’s talking to Anti about kaiju, and she’s basically just talking about herself.) If every other character on this show has been building up scar tissue and memories and bonds, Akane’s been decluttering herself of everything but building kaiju – which is now so rote as to not even require her to acknowledge their existence verbally, turned in like they’re a bit of grudging homework – and sitting in the dark. It’s as blatant a visualization of her tortured and miserable mental state as you could imagine, and it leads to an episode of her giving up on her hobbies, destroying the ability to start anew, and languishing in a shattered dream world.

It’s bleak! It’s a bleak episode, despite the mounting positivity through the Gridman Alliance’s heads-down Do The Work mentality and Anti’s eventual shining upgrade into Gridknight. I guess… maybe melancholy is the better way to put it? I’ve harped on about how much this show reads like a metaphor for the transition of children into adults through the universal crucible of high school, and this episode is replete with examples of how the process becomes the result, while opting out of that process only makes the future seem hopeless. The other kids and Anti don’t know what the future holds for them, but they’re going to face it, and that makes them more prepared to mold their future into what they want it to be. Meanwhile, Akane literally molds the present into a weapon stave off the future, and it’s gotten her nowhere but crushed by her own fear and isolation.

All of that makes for a fight sequence that’s one of the show’s best, where the monster feels appropriately menacing and nihilistic, and the hero feels overmatched, until a former adversary learns enough from our heroes to stop seeing himself as a monster, and start seeing himself as his own kind of hero. It’s a power-up transformation that gives us the briefest hint of sunlight, before the clouds roll back with a broken Akane stabbing Yuta in the chest. It’s a shocking ending, but still with that Gridman mixture of grounded consequences amid the world of gods and monsters. Horrifying, but maybe hopeful? God knows there’s precedent for a monster to recognize that they want to be more than what someone else talked them into…

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman10b.png

So before I translate the kaiju’s cry and tell you its name, I should mention that this anime has some elements that were originally devised for the live action version. Specifically, Yuta, Akane and Alexis Kerib hail from Gridman F, an unproduced sequel idea for the original show, with the role Utsumi played being filled by Ippei Baba, his equivalent from said original show. Anti is similarly based on an old concept that never got used. Specifically, before the new mosnter suit budget ran out prematurely, OG Gridman would've introduced an evil counterpart to Gridman named Khan Knight (Khan because the antagonist was “Khan Digifer”), who would’ve copied Gridman’s abilities to become stronger, before eventually making a face turn and becoming Gridknight. The major difference Anti has is that he’s a pure monster, whereas Khan Knight would’ve been the resident misanthropic kaiju making teen transforming in the same manner as the hero. If the concept had gone through, Syber Squad would’ve adapted the character as “Black Servo”.

Also, my comment from two episodes ago was mistaken. We do get an explanation for the name “Full Powered Gridman” - he’s Gridman operating at his full power, with strong implications that the Assist Programs are fragments of his conscience (which would explain why they’re sentient and can take on human form this time around). And while not in the episode proper, the tie in audio drama for this (which I’m sure can be found somewhere) has Yuta mention he’s never heard of Doujinshi (basically the equivalent of a kid from a major town in America having no idea what fan fiction is).

And for the usual stuff, for once, this mosnter has no name. The Japanese credits call it “Nanashi” (literally “nameless”), while English language material referred to it as “Anonymous”. As for the cry, neither of them is dialogue this time around. The first form’s cry is Akane crying, while the second form has her laughing.

And last but not least… what a cliffhanger.

A cliffjumper cliffhanger, even!

https://i.imgur.com/5baExup.png

Hate to be that guy, but all I could think of when it came to that final sequence was how incredibly contrived the entire scenario was.

Cool episode otherwise though.

Sorry it didn't work for you!

...Which is definitely the beauty/tragedy of the narrative structure here and all -- that Akane so strongly identifies herself with kaiju, that the kaiju she creates herself are such direct reflections of herself, and that she still can't see/doesn't want to see the real significance of how Anti has changed -- but even putting aside some of the deeper storytelling type reasons why it happens... the Gridknight hype is *unreal*???

I've mentioned a few times how I wasn't that into this show at first (to put it mildly), but now would probably be a great time to note Anti in particular was always an exception to that? The OG Gridman monster he's based on was a favorite of mine in that show, I always love Kenichi Suzumura in basically anything, the idea of a rival monster character with bootleg versions of the hero's powers is always a great time, and the sheer childlike innocence with which he diligently pursues his goal of murdering the protagonist was very charming. He already had so much going for him that I simply couldn't hate, but to see that copycat shtick taken to the logical extreme in this specific way? I mean, come on, dude's basically a Kamen Rider at this point, on top of everything else. Was *insanely* gratifying to see, even with the episode surrounding all this being so (compellingly) dour.

It's a real blast, that whole sequence. Any antagonist who goes through the I Want To Defeat You So Badly That I Accidentally Became You arc is always going to pop, and Anti's path to get there is as baffling and ridiculous as it is relatable and memorable. Real high point for this series.

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 11 - “DECISIVE BATTLE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman11a.png

Not just our first two-word title, but maybe our first ironic title, in that this one is very much a Part 2 Of 3 episode – where everything is about the consequences of past choices, and the consequences of future options.

It’s a solid episode, but largely in an “individual character moment” way, rather than a locked-down single episode story. While it’s compelling dramatically to have everything hung together by the cast's karmic balance – or a need to pay their debts, as Anti succinctly put it – it leaves the episode feeling like it’s carrying over the shocking events of Episode 10, while setting up the finale of Episode 12; it’s an episode that can’t really be talked about too much on its own, because it lives in the shadow of more important events.

But the way these characters grapple with, internalize, and move on from things is as fascinating a part of the series to me as any of the very cool kaiju battles (Gridknight really earns his place in this one!), so I still found plenty to appreciate in its middle-child status. I like the little beats, of Utsumi coming to grips with both the real-world trauma of the previous consequence-free kaiju battles, and his inability to be more than The Guy In The Chair for his friends because of that fandom; of Anti refusing to live by someone else’s morality or expectations, and determining his value for himself; and of Rikka opting out of a cycle of violence, and looking instead to friendship as something that’s always there if you want it to be.

The Rikka scene with Akane… sort of the best? (The Utsumi stuff was also really good; maybe the best scene in the series for that guy, not counting Episode 9.) Rikka just fundamentally refuses to see the world in the same way, or at the same register, as the rest of the cast. Where characters like Utsumi talk about retribution, or Akane views her actions through the Protagonist/Antagonist lens, Rikka just sees a sad, lonely friend who did a horrible thing, but not a permanent thing, and maybe needs someone to reach out to her before it becomes a permanent thing after all. It’s Rikka looking less at what Akane deserves, and more at what Akane needs, and I like a show that’s willing to put its dramatic chips on a scene like that. It’s asking a lot of the audience to care what Akane needs, but relevant to the entire story being told that it confronts the audience with it anyway. This show is so deeply about how connection is an innate thing that we have to remember, rather than construct, so a scene in the penultimate episode of Rikka reminding Akane that they’ve always been friends, and that it isn’t something Akane can discard when its inconvenient to her conception of herself as worthy only of isolation and vitriol… you’ve gotta have that scene there. You gotta let Akane try and wriggle out of her friendship by painting it as narrative contrivance, and then let Rikka argue that making it a story doesn’t make it any less emotionally valuable.

The Gridman/Yuta stuff… I feel like I want to leave that for next episode. Let’s see how that goes.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman11b.png

It's translated that way, but like every episode title in this show, it's a single Japanese word consisting of two kanji. It's actually the next episode that does something a little special with the formula, even though in contrast, the difference won't be apparent from the translation.

But hey, now *I'm* jumping right over actually talking about this middle chapter! It is admittedly difficult to think of anything to add to what you already said just off the top of my head. The thoroughness of how it tries to give so many characters at least some little moment or another (down to Rikka's non-Akane friends, even) is definitely appreciated for how it helps the overall sense of closure, but it's like, do I really need to explain to anyone who knows this show why it's cool to see stuff like Calibur becoming a sword for Gridknight?

So without discussing the elephant in the room that is Yuta (honestly, next episode is a much better time to talk about it, I’ll have more free reign to discuss things), all I’ll say here is two things.

1. I made a bit of a boo-boo for episode 8. The combination in Syber Squad I was confused about the name of was a different one. The one being homaged here was “Synchro Samurai”, which I kind of get (It’s the synchronisation of Team Samurai).

2. This is where it became clear the kaiju’s cries were edited dialogue, with one of the ones in the final boss rush says “Nikui”, (though the subs and the dub don’t notice it) which from my understanding of Japanese, was the one from episode 4.

https://i.imgur.com/4o2waL4.png

The knife turning bloody in the opening is a neat detail if nothing else.

I wanted to bring them up, but since I can never remember their names, I opted to avoid it. That scene is crucial for nailing down the bonds that a Defeat The Bad Guy plot normally eschews, which is exactly why it's Rikka who thinks to leverage them. Thank you, SG Rosencrantz and SG Guildenstern!

Neat! Thanks!

Gridknight makes it to the opening, as well! An evolved opening, right before the end.

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 12 - “AWAKENING -FIN-”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman12a.png

I don’t want to talk about Yuta. I want to talk about Rikka, and about Akane.

Rikka’s the hero of this series, even if she’s a villain for making me cry in the middle of this episode. That Rikka/Akane scene… beautiful. Top 3 toku moment of all time, for how it expresses the themes of accepting every part of yourself without judgment – your cowardice, your cruelty, your shame, your jealousy, your hope, your strength, your love, your potential – and letting yourself be accepted for it. As much as the heroic henshin of the totality of Gridman’s identity is the literalization of that theme, I will always, always prefer the smaller moment of vulnerability, where a character sees another character, doesn’t blink, and tells them that they’re still their friend.

This whole show is about how connected everyone is, even when they don’t know it, so the button on this show for me was never going to be the defeat of Alexis Kerib, or the Truth of Gridman, or any of the niggling details about how/why/when the series shifted into toku dimensions. It only works as a story if you let it be messy, and off-putting, and conflicted. It only works when you let it be a story, and discover its meaning for yourself.

Having the victory condition be that a sad girl who hid herself away from the world in a fandom that eventually became a prison ended up liberating herself from that, so she could look back on that story as a way of processing her loneliness and self-loathing, and here was the show where that story existed for twelve episodes… boy, that’s the show for me. It’s a show equally about the thrills of toku as it is how we use toku to understand ourselves and each other better; Akane is us, the ones who need toku to see things from a different perspective, or to see ourselves a little more honestly. It’s for children who need a path to be an adult, yeah – but it’s also for adults who need to think more about the path they’ve taken.

Waking up to a real world, one where Gridman is the story that helped Akane overcome her trauma, is more hopeful and beautiful to me than all of the little (very sweet) epilogues for our full cast. It’s a perfect message, that we are allowed to put ourselves into these stories to work through things, and then pull ourselves back out a little kinder, a little wiser, a little more willing to connect with each other in the world. Gridman’s a vessel for Rikka’s empathy, Yuta’s bravery, Utsumi’s dedication, and, yes, even Akane’s despair. Gridman is a way of rebuilding a dark world into something more reflective of the light that exists in everyone, if we can see it in ourselves, and help each other see it within themselves.

That’s the story of Gridman, sure. But it’s also the story of Akane, and of Rikka.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/ssss/gridman12b.png

The story of Akane continues in the music video for the show’s OP.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b4CIYS1B...UJOLJ1iLBNWToJ

Honestly, for me the highlight of the episode was OG Gridman making his triumphant return by bringing together all his aspects (and Anti) by having them use the original Accepter. And he proceeds to prove even more impressive in animation, with even the Fixer Beam, which in the live action was just a hand wave as to why there were no lasting effects once the monster was slain, becomes a full on finishing move. Presumably, the cost of creating a new animation model was saved because Trigger had done an animated Gridman short a few years prior.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ETpejXR_...V0jcXbU1GkML49

And now, some small details.

The Kaiju created from Akane’s cry is her saying “No!”, which the dub picked up on and actually translated… by which I mean, they overlaid her dub VA Lindsey Seidel screaming no over the Japanese cry.

Look closely as the Access Code: Gridman is input, the computer reads the definition of SSSS when the original meaning is split in ownership between WildBrain and Hasbro: Special Signal to Save a Soul.

While the alert from Junk has been in every episode, here it regains its original purpose as Gridman returns to his true(ish) form: it starts speaking to indicate that Gridman’s transformation and merger with a human is imperfect, and if he doesn’t finish the fight in 3 minutes, then Gridman and Yuta will disappear from the Computer World. (Similar to Ultraman’s colour timer giving him 3 minutes until he dies/transforms back, depending on the show)

While the subtitles have Alexis Kerib call Rikka a “replica” and the dub changes this to “a fake meat-thing” (I’ll let DreamSword explain that particular insult), the actual dialogue has him call her a “repli-Compoid”, with Compoids being humanoid life forms that exist within a digital world (the term is mentioned all of once in OG Gridman proper and the subs for that removed it, which probably indicates why it was removed here).

And finally, with OG Gridman’s return, comes the return of the original version of Yume no Hero.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nybqhMbWTOI

Gridman
BABY DON DON　BABY DON DON
Dream on

Gridman
BABY DAN DAN　BABY DAN DAN
Shine on

CRY! Your dreams clamour to be heard
FLY! Soar wherever you wish
If ever your spirits be wounded, do not fear
You're alone no more

Gridman
Anybody can become a hero
Gridman
Dance on the STAGE of tomorrow

Always by your side
Electronic Superman

Gridman
BABY DON DON　BABY DON DON
Dream on

Gridman
BABY DAN DAN　BABY DAN DAN

And as he says goodbye, we get an instrumental of his original ED.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=nL8XepSl8mU

It was an incredibly cool choice to have Gridman's acceptance of every part of himself as the key to unlocking not just his full potential, but also the ability to fully heal the world. Great use of toku metaphors!

"Meat-Thing" was what the big bad of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, Kilokhan, would often call humans. Typically in an insulting manner. Once again, I gotta give it to whoever wrote the dub script for atleast doing some cursory research into the source material when localizing this anime.

As for what I personally plan to bring to this discussion about the episode itself, well...

https://i.imgur.com/Vo2Hh93.png

One moment that I feel goes rather underrated in discussion about this show(even by past me, arguably!), is this one right here, wherein I always felt it was purposefully framed to be ambiguous as to whether or not Anti got to do the Access Flash with everyone or not. I could see it being argued either way about which angle is more fitting, but me personally, I always liked to think that he didn't, as it helps to emphasize Anti's' arc about needing to find his own path in life.

I'm sure most of you disagree on that front, but hey, I'm sticking to it.

Honestly, I'm okay with either viewpoint, but I fully support the idea that Anti doesn't need to be validated by a group. He's got his own way of helping!

This final episode is particularly special to me. I could talk about it in great detail (and I kinda hope to some day), but rather than try and explain how profoundly moved I was by the way in which a story I hadn't previously been all that invested in tied everything together with such purpose and grace that it pretty much singlehandedly made sense of the entire series for me, I'll instead choose to focus in on impressing one particular point, which was how happy I was to see Gridman using the Fixer Beam.

Back in the original show, to me at least, that ability was the crux of the entire fantasy that is Gridman. Imaging this hero that would go into your everyday electronic devices when they start acting up (a universal frustration for all humanity) and have some epic battle with a giant monster, all so you can get AOL working again, or whatever. For drama's sake, the actual episode plots would obviously involve greater consequences to those malfunctioning devices than just missing out on downloading the latest Doom WADs (or whatever), but that was the brilliant, immediately relatable undercurrent to the whole concept.

This new and different Gridman handled the way the fantastic and the mundane mix very differently, and the way the kaiju fights now seemingly played out in a straightforward Ultraman style was a particular sticking point for me. That slick new design for Gridman didn't even have the panels on the chest that would shoot out the Fixer Beam! It's like they didn't even think that was important!

There are a *ton* of reasons beyond this that I loved and love this finale, and I'm not sure this is even necessarily the unequivocal biggest one, but that reveal that the Fixer Beam, even in the anime version, was actually secretly still the most important thing the whole time -- that the entire 12 episodes was essentially one big episode of the original show -- was just about the best Christmas present I could've asked for back in 2018.

And here I didn't even know what I was missing! I'm glad that the climactic reveal of the Fixer Beam could mean so much to fans both new and old.

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 1 - “WHAT’S A KAIJU USER?”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon01a.png

I thought this was okay? Not great, but okay?

A lot of the tools that made Gridman’s premiere work are naturally going to be unavailable to the producers for a direct followup series, because using them again would make for a relentlessly disappointing echo of a seminal series; like, we gotta have a new amnesia kid get stuck in a parallel dimension while we all act like we don’t know where this is going? That’d be annoying, and dull.

What we get instead – robbed of the mystifying immersion and magical realism of Gridman’s instantly engaging debut – is something smaller in scale, and more uncomfortable for its refusal to let you in, which naturally suits a cast headlined by a very different kind of cool teenage girl: Yume.

(I will allow that Yomogi is our nominal lead for this diverse ensemble of negligibly intersecting protagonists, since he’s A Boy and that’s just how a lot of this genre of action storytelling works, but Yume’s the way more interesting character to me.)

Yume’s not like the cast of Gridman, that – excepting Rikka’s genre-lacadasical mother – exist outside a continuum of family and parents; sort of explicitly so, as it read to me as a show about pushing through the trauma of adolescence into the unknown of adulthood. Gridman barely allowed for things like the connection of history, because the show was about the isolation of Akane, so we didn’t really have to learn about anyone’s parents or home life. Gridman wasn’t that show.

Dynazenon very much is that show, and it’s most arresting and captivating when it allows for the scope of family to inform its cast. Yume’s parents are sniping at each other, the dishes aren't done, their interest in Yume is minimal and mildly disappointed. There’s been a death in the family, presumably – Yume’s sister’s room has been packed up, but enshrined. Yume continuously asks guys out, and stands them up, which on the surface is easy to interpret as teenage cruelty and acting out, but feels more like her trying to connect with her lost sister. (My headcanon right now is that the tower she goes to, and the one where she asks Yomogi to meet her, is where her sister died. I think Yume was supposed to meet her there, and she didn’t, and her sister died. Seeing someone else there makes her feel a bit like her sister’s still alive, and waiting for her, and she likes to watch that, while also punishing herself by disappointing another person who’s waiting for her.) The innate connection that Yume’s feeling her way through the absence of is so much weirder and sadder than a lot of the connections within Gridman’s cast, and it is refreshing in its personal-scale tragedy.

(Similarly, I really liked the scene with Yomogi having dinner with his mom and what’s probably her boyfriend? It’s just sort of awkward, and he doesn’t care about this guy, and he definitely doesn’t want his attempt at connection. I promise I will not always put Yomogi thoughts in parentheticals!)

All of that, the first half, I liked. I didn’t love it, because it’s paced too slowly and teenage depression is kind of not as engaging and Fog Kaiju and Alexis Kerib, but I respected its swing at doing exactly the stories that Gridman was not built to: parents, families, and history.

And then the giant robot showed up, and I sort of entirely checked out.

I don’t want to be that guy! I hate being the guy who doesn’t give a shit about the core action-adventure components of a toku show! But, man, the second Gauma’s doing his Big Hero Schtick, I just didn’t care. Nothing about the fight really worked for me, either aesthetically (it’s a bunch WHAAAA?!?! stuff from the other three, and it instantly made me miss the relative zen-like mindfulness of Gridman’s combat) or narratively (Dynazenon just sort of shows up, and it’s propulsive but lacked any sense of work or effort for what the heroes achieved). The fight just ended up being the thing that happened at the end of the episode, and it took me right out of an otherwise pleasant/depressing look at forging connections when the weight of the past is dragging you away from people.

So, yeah. I thought this one was okay.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon01b.png

I'd say that, in hindsight, the first episode gives the viewer a good look at what they can expect from the average episode of Dynazenon.

So yeah, Dynazenon. I remember that the majority of Tokunation watching at the time preferred it to Gridman, but I definitely preferred the latter since it didn’t leave me consistently confused (hilariously enough, history repeated itself months later with mainline Ultra instalments, but that’s another story).

For this show the director and production crew set themselves three rules.

1. They could only use an adaptation of Dyna Dragon and its components Dyna Fighter and King Jet (or as they were known in Syber Squad the one time they were shown as separate components, Jamb and Torb).

2. They weren’t allowed to reuse any of Gridman’s cast.

3. They had to go with an entirely original plot and jokes. The only thing this show has connecting it to Gridman right now are some recycled storyboards (which in this episode, consists of a shot of the classroom’s name).

And in terms of casting, there’s two actors with a major Toku role in this episode.

Daiki Hamano (Gauma) was later the voice of the Donbrothers equipment (except for Don Dragoku’s equipment).

Gakuto Kajiwara (one of Yomogi’s friends) was later the voice of Ultraman Decker’s equipment (except for the bad guy’s one toy)

There’s also a bit of a mini MCU reunion, since Hamano voices Sam Wilson in the Disney+ shows, while Jun’ya Enoki (Yomogi) is the voice of Peter Parker.

And in this season, there are three notable things.

1. The monsters are all named for terms related to psychology, fitting with the theme of trauma and the Scarred Souls Shine like Stars motto. In this case, Shalbandes is named for Augustine Charpentier, a French physicist who studied the size-weight illusion.

2. There are only two pieces on the entire sound track. The orchestral choir as Dynazenon combines and this song, played at different pitches and with different instrumentals based on the pacing of the fight.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0fpZMDoW...Vr_i06ezosO82i

And 3…

I'm not at all the best person to explain this, but I've read that apparently, "no parents/adults in general" is actually a sort of unspoken rule of popular late night anime, that the staff of Dynazenon were consciously and deliberately going against -- a rebellious spirit that helps explain why I ended up being a big fan of Dynazenon. Although even after learning to see so much in its predecessor, I wasn't immediately gripped by this premiere at first either. Pretty sure that's more my fault than the show's, though. Gauma is immediately pretty great here, though. I do remember liking him right away, as this weird but clearly warm big personality who draws the rest of the cast into the heroic adventure in a very different way from Gridman's stoic righteousness.

I will say, the broadest decision the show made that I'm happiest about, even now, is that it treats its relation to SSSS.Gridman the same way SSSS.Gridman treated its relation to the tokusatsu version. It's telling a new story about new characters in a new way, so that it can appeal to new viewers and make new fans even without them needing any prior knowledge, and given how much more recent and how actively popular the previous series was this time around, I maybe respect that even more here.

Good to know!

Interesting! I don't know that I find the toku mysteries in Dynazenon nearly as perplexing as the Akane/Yuta explanations that eventually arrived in Gridman, but that's mostly because I will never find toku mysteries as interesting to think about as character development. I'm the wrong person to talk about toku shows!

I'm split on Gauma? I liked him in the first half, like I liked the entire cast: he's weird and broad and tonally dissonant and plays great against first Yomogi, whose reluctant protagonism pairs hilariously with Gauma's WE ARE ON A MISSION-style nonsense, and then against Yume's traumatized indifference, which he just starts yelling at so we can move the plot forward. It's a great use of a character like that!

...and then we got to the robot fight, and every positive -- Gauma's boisterous energy, Yume's withdrawn mystery, Yomogi's skeptical normality -- all flipped into huge drags on the storytelling for me. I very much did not like them getting in the robot! I'm the wrong person to talk about giant robot shows!

Having watched Gridman: The Hyper-Agent long after watching the anime's, it was surreal seeing God Zenon and Dyna Dragon and realizing "wow, so they really combined these two into one Mecha!"

Of course I also remember seeing the God Zenon suit and thinking "wow, this would make a solid tokusatsu Optimus Prime suit."

Also Masayoshi Ooishi delivers another banger OP.

SSSS Gridman was great because it was such a fun easter egg hunt but SSSS Dynazenon I felt was the one where I was drawn more to the story. This doesn't mean that Gridman's story sucked for me, but I found myself doing a lot less easter egg hunting and was more invested in what was going on. And the ending theme is still in my anime theme song playlist.

It's a fun song!

Yeah, I definitely am not trying to figure out references this time. Just enjoying the story!

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 2 - “WHAT’S YOUR REASON FOR FIGHTING?”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon02a.png

Much improved second episode for me, where the tricky act of opening yourself up to someone and the tricky act of learning to pilot a variably-combining giant robot interweave in delightful, exciting ways.

Like, I’m into a whole episode where Yomogi forces himself into the background, and mostly leaves people hanging – it’s a less showy version of what Yume does, but equally as frustrating and sabotaging. It’s theoretically in service to Yomogi’s ill-defined afterschool job, but that feels less like a burning motivation and more like a convenient cover to skip out on his friends, and avoid the possibility of new connections with the Dynazenon Alliance. It’s almost a reflex for him, and it’s most apparent when Yume finally opens up to him on their little afternoon excursion.

It’s hugely consequential, in ways both personal and heroic. The heroic part is Yume trying to make clear to Yomogi that what they’re doing as Dynazenon isn’t some burden or goofy accident, it’s saving lives, and Yomogi needs to understand the stakes. Showing him both the damage they caused during their fight and the people they protected as a result is her attempt to get him to see that this isn’t some other part of his life he can fade away from, it’s massively important. But the personal part is more interesting to me, because while the heroic part is Yume trying to make the scale bigger for Yomogi, the personal part is her trying to make their new group of robot pilots into less of an abstraction, and more of a group of damaged people trying to do something with their darkness.

And Yomogi biffs it? Yume tells Yomogi that her older sister died a few years ago, and it was at the tower we’ve frequently seen her at. And Yomogi just lets this information wash over him, not disturbing it with a response or support or anything that’d normally speak to a human connection. Yomogi just sort of lets it pass by him, rather than get caught up in it.

But life isn’t just something you can let happen around you, no matter how nice it might be to disengage and concentrate on your internal self. (The previous series is basically all about that!) The world will eventually involve you in it, and you will need to connect with people. You might not even get to choose them! But it’ll happen, and you need to figure out how to be present for it.

All of that was great, but my favorite part of this episode is how it takes all of that, and argues for the value of play in engaging with the world. While Gridman spent a lot of time talking about the value of narrative and world-building, this show is immediately differentiating itself by handing four people action figures and toy vehicles and asking them to play with them. Just the visual of them holding their Zord Parts or whatever, it’s magical. This show has spent a lot of time already on the anchors of our past, and that needs to be counterbalanced by showing how fun it can be to see the world like a kid does, even if it’s just for a little while. It’s arguing for toys, and play, and it’s doing it while talking about how we find it easier as we grow up to find less value in the world around us. It’s making things tactile, and I love that.

This thing is winning me over!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon02b.png

I liked Yomogi in episode 1, and then episode 2 decided that I shouldn't like him anymore.

https://i.imgur.com/HcDTItD.png

Gauma remains a hoot though.

Wow, exact opposite reaction from me. (I didn't hate him in Episode 1, but I found him to be less compelling. Turns out that was by design!) Sorry this one didn't work for you.

So a bit of an Easter egg is that the radio in Koyomi’s house is playing the theme song to Ultraman R/B, which was sung by the same guy who sang the OP to both SSSS shows.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vMCJSIEQ...qh7znAmkn49WtV

And in addition to seeing we won’t be just copying the individual component combinations from Gridman wholesale with DynaWing form a backpack instead of a chest plate, we also meet our bad guys for the season, with the Kaiju Eugenicists. Only two of them talk here, but both have been in other Toku.

Juuga (no, not George Karizaki. The smart dressed man in a white coat and glasses) is voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya, who was also the Ghost Imagin/Kamen Roder Yuuki Skull Form in Farewell Den-O, Shou Ronpo/Ryu Commander in Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger, Baridelo in the Geats/Revice movie and Charge Team Captain MadRex/MadRex Fury in Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger.

And Yuma Uchida, the voice of Onija was previously half of the Bujin Riders in the Wizard/Gaim movie and Ultraman Tregear in several Ultra Series instalments, but most notably Ultraman Taiga. He’s also the younger brother of Maya Uchida, who sings the ED songs for the SSSS shows.

And as for our monster, his design continues the toku theme of the franchise’s monsters by looking like he was cannibalised from Anti and his name Greyjhom continues the psychology theme by being a reference to the grey zone concept.

I like how Dyna Soldier gets a Rise Sequence.

Also the female Kaiju Eugenicist here because there's a contractual obligation for at least one character in a Gridman anime to have killer thighs.

This episode is probably at least as special to me as that Gridman finale, which means I also wouldn't really know how to properly articulate why right now. Suffice it to say the emotional intimacy of it really pulled me into the characters, which allowed me to appreciate the smart construction, and I was totally sold on the show from that point on.

As for *something* a little more specific, I'll choose to note here how much fun it is how the start of this one immediately recontextualizes the fight from the premiere in a way that's not only humorous on the face of it, but also serves a dramatic purpose in how it frames Yomogi's (lack of) proper involvement with the story, setting up the whole rest of the episode. Again, the construction is pretty smart!

Oh, and there's also this that I liked:

I'm sure there's been at least one (and probably several dozen) other animated mecha shows that hit upon similar ideas, but I really adore how live action it feels to literally sell the fantasy of Dynazenon by having its components shrink down to fit in the characters hands, as though the DX toy is being used as props, like Super Sentai has found excuses to do on occasion. I love the way it sparks the imagination to have a scale figure that's also a role-play item at the same time, and it's a very this staff making this show idea to do that in a series aimed at an older audience.

(Plus, I mean, there *was* merchandise aimed at that audience they were already hyping up while these early episodes were airing. Good Smile's DX Dynazenon was actually a huge redemption arc sorta deal after the lukewarm reception to their Full Power Gridman, being of a much higher quality, and based on a design that was actually consciously designed by Tsuyoshi Nonaka to *be* a toy this time, rather than just looking toyetic. Kinda getting into a whole other anecdote now, though!)

Neat! Thanks!

It is a heck of a character design. Nice to see it's warm out in Dynazenon City!

I just love how much this episode is Yume pulling Yomogi into the group, which is a) the opposite way a lot of other shows would've gone with it, and b) such a nice way of leveling Yomogi and Yume out after Episode 1. People are complicated, and they don't always meet you halfway, but it doesn't mean that trying to bridge that distance is a waste of time. Sometimes trying to connect with someone makes you more of a person worth connecting with?

SSSS.DYNAZENON EPISODE 3 - “WHAT IS A TRAITOR?”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon03a.png

A nicely goofy, mostly ridiculous episode, one that foregrounds the same tricky new relationships of the previous team-building episode, but flips things around by interrogating Gauma’s weird reluctance to talk about his former friends, the Kaiju Eugenicists.

That’s my favorite part, throughout this episode: it’s just New Friends vs Old Friends. Whatever cataclysmic terror the Kaiju Eugenicists (and the kaiju themselves) have represented in the past is largely subsumed into this episode’s sunny idiocy, where Juuga’s just like Hey Man Why Are We Fighting When You Don’t Even Know Me to one of the giant robot pilots who’ve thwarted his immaculately-dressed team’s plans, and Gauma’s big secret can incorrectly-but-hysterically be boiled to down He’s Got To See About A Girl. It’s a bright and sort of dumb episode, in the way that the Gridman Universe’s mixture of underreaction and overreaction excels at.

There’s a whole scene of Koyomi running into Yomogi’s boss! It’s just a meet-cute (or reunion-cute, since they went to school together) and it may or my not portend anything major for the plot (Gauma’s mystery woman?!?!), but it’s warm and sweet and just letting you know what kind of guy Koyomi is. (He did not realize he was the "responsible adult” of the group! And he’s so crestfallen when he learns that even Gauma has a job!) This episode does its main job – great big fight against a kaiju – while still providing a mountain of cute moments to fill out its world.

Getting back to the main plot, though, I really love how heated and goofy it was. Gridman played the Akane/Alexis stuff first for terror in its indifferent sadism, and then for terror in its brutal self-negation. Dynazenon latches onto Gauma as the focal point for an antagonist group, which means the Kaiju Eugenicists are a nearly unintelligible collection of puffed-up bullies, laconic beauties, and well-mannered conversationalists. (Also, one of them has a hat!) Getting to know them both personalizes the struggle, by giving them history with Gauma, and heightens it into metaphor, because they’re pissed with each other in such a childish, chaotic way. This is not a bold stratagem pursued with precision, they just hate this guy for burning them, and he hates them right back. It’s the friend group thing of trying to figure out if the guy in your group is toxic, or if his old friends are toxic and he just escaped them. I think that’s sort of a universal adolescent thing? People moving between groups, and needing to figure out how to frame their history in a way that explains their actions? It’s easy to want to just reinvent yourself, but as Dynazenon is fond of reminding us, even 5000 years can’t let us escape the consequences of our past.

It all leads to a rousing combination sequence, a space battle, a rousing transformation sequence, and the possibility that that the Kaiju Eugenicists could resurrect Yume’s late sister. Because what could go wrong with letting the past catch up to us?

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...nazenon03b.png

The Kaiju Eugenicists have been actively blowing things up and likely killing people en mass.

"But are they REALLY the bad guys, though?"

This episode annoyed me.

I don't know if that's how I'd characterize it? The Dynazenon Alliance (sans a crab-obsessed Gauma) pretty clearly doesn't trust the K.E., but they also can't trust a Gauma who refuses to talk about why he abandoned them, and especially one who won't fight for the same reasons the three of them do. The three other pilots aren't letting the K.E. off of the hook -- they drop what they're doing to stop their kaiju rampage, even if "ditching gym" is not the hardest sell to high school students -- they just need more honesty from a guy they're letting lead them into battle.

(Even the chatting scene between Yomogi and Juuga... like, he's not joining Juuga's team or nothing, he's just trying to understand exactly what he's in the middle of.)