[DreamSword]

Episode 7: Scheme

Yuta is bad at explaining things.

No really, half this episode could've been skipped had he simply said "Kaiju Girl took me to the edge of the city and showed me that there's nothing there except fog."

That aside, I did still overall like this episode. Not just because it features more Anti, but it has some fantastic comedic timing too, ontop of what we've come to expect in terms of character interaction.

Like, seriously, just check this frame.

Seriously, that image alone is comedy gold to me. Other highlights include the awkward silence before Sky Vitter gets deployed, and Anti running away from Yuta... only to run back to grab the Special Dogs that Yuta dropped. It's all simplistic sure, but that's all it really needs to be.

So as you might've guessed from that still, this episode is mainly about Yuta getting to bottom of just about everything in terms of the bigger plot at hand. All while his friends display some interesting skepticism and Akane continues to be the creepy demon she's always been. Her finding nothing wrong in outright murdering people over petty nonsense says it all.

Speaking of demons, Anti is back, and this time he managed to convince Alexis to let him create his own Kaiju.

I found the Kaiju he came up with says alot about Anti. Not only is its method of attack incredibly swift and direct(much like Anti himself), but it's also a puppeteer. I feel this is Anti expressing how he feels like nothing more than a puppet to Akane and Alexis, which is incredibly justified, given how he's treated constantly. Heck, going with him being controlled by others, he apparently can't even transform into his Kaiju form unless Akane gives the order or Gridman is around. He's not even allowed to be himself.

The fight at the end is also pretty cool!

Sky Gridman is the combination done this time, and while it's not exact, Sky Gridman's' helmet resembles the pilot helmets that Team Samurai would wear whenever they'd pilot their various vehicles. Sky Gridman's' attacks are also references to Amp and Lucky, the two pilots of Vitter in Syber-Squad. The Amp Lazer Circus also doubles as a reference to Eureka Seven and its signature Homing Lazers.

Topping everything off, the Gridman Alliance makes an interesting discovery once Sky Gridman flys so high that he hits the skybox.

No, seriously.

Fans will immediately recognize this as the Digital World, the exact city that Servo/Gridman would always fight in in the old shows. And with this another aspect of the plot becomes incredibly clear, and lemme tell ya, as someone who only saw SSSS before this, I found this show's' overlaying question of "What if people actually lived in those digital cities?" incredibly fascinating.

Will it actually fully delve into and deliver interesting responses to that question? Well, we'll see in future episodes.