[DreamSword]

Giganto-post incoming. You have been warned.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON SSSS.DYNAZENON

It's funny how these things tend to line up for me. Earlier in the year, when I was reviewing Blassreiter, I was also at the same time watching Kamen Rider Wizard, two shows that had quite the strong opinions on life, tragedy, and Optimism vs Nihilism. Two shows made years apart from one another, and yet handled alot of the same subject matter in very different ways.

Now, I've just finished three different shows, all of which had a very similar(but to differing degrees) effect on me: Kamen Rider Decade, Kamen Rider Ghost, and the subject of the recent posts of this thread, SSSS.Dynazenon. What's the common link between all of these?

That link being that I am a simpleton, and I do not "get" any of these shows.

And it's not for a lack of trying either! I did some reading to try and figure why people love Ghost, Decade, and Dynazenon, and kept all this reading I'd done in mind as I sat back and let my thoughts try to sort everything out as I reflected back on all three of these shows that left me more cold and/or confused than anything.

Looking back, I think I can sum up why many people seem to jive with these sorts of shows alot more than what I ever could, and it has do with how I go about absorbing stories seemingly being different from the "norm."

I've always felt that getting enjoyment out of a story by diving deep, reading between the lines, and looking for symbolism, metaphor, allegory, what have you... it should be a bonus, not a requirement.

I believe I've said before that whenever I experience a tale for the first time, I try to take everything at face value while keeping in mind characters, plot, etc in a greater context. If I end up liking it, then it's upon a revisit that I put in more effort to find various extra aspects I might've missed, or find meaning in things that maybe the author didn't even intend, or put in research into behind-the-scenes elements that give greater context to things.

Not only was SSSS.Dynazenon a show that I ultimately feel is alot smarter than I am, but it also has to contend with being a sequel, a second season(and make no mistake it was advertised as the second season to SSSS.Gridman) of a show that I liked alot despite its short comings. This really hurt the "greater context" of my line of thinking, as it'd be more accurate to say that the show is more akin to what Captain Earth is to Star Driver: A show set in the same universe that is otherwise unconnected.

I'm not exactly sure if this preamble is making any sort of point, but I hope it helps to frame the sort of angle I'm coming from when I reflect back on Dynazenon and why it's a show that, ultimately, was not one made for me. As such, just like I did with Gridman before, I'm gonna highlight what I feel are Dynazenon's' biggest aspects and how they left me. Here we go.

Action Scenes

I imagine this is one of the biggest highlights for many, and I will admit, most of the action sequences in this show are rather good. While the animation was jank at times(chopping explosions in half), there was definitely a great sense of fluidity and choreography to nearly every fight scene, with the final battle in particular really standing out, just as Gridman before it did.

Have I seen better? Sure. But these were by no means bad.

Plot

I'll just cut straight to the point here. It became incredibly obvious that Gridman x Dynazenon was planned right from the outset, and as such the team behind SSSS.Dynazenon knew that didn't need to dedicate their time following through on or fleshing out much of anything in regards to the overall lore, world, or over-arching plot of the season. This leaves a bunch of dangling plot threads that, while interesting, go absolutely nowhere and likely never will. Lots of questions, almost zero answers.

Questions such as: "What even is Dynazenon?" "Who revived Gauma and the Kaiju Eugenicists?" "What constitutes a 'real' Kaiju Eugenicist and why don't they need to sleep?" "What's up with the scars that everyone gets during the final battle?" "Why does Yume look and sound like Rikka?" There's alot.

My personal philosophy is that stories should do what they can to wrap up as clean as they can. You can't always bank on a sequel, or a spin-off, or whatever sort of bonus material to help cover up the holes and hooks you left. Like, yeah, sure, the next entry in the franchise has already been announced, but what if, say, it gets cancelled last minute? That just leaves the story unfulfilled and incomplete, and makes alot of aspects feel like a waste of time.

This ties into an aspect of the show that I have a big problem with.

Pacing

SSSS.Dynazenon is twelve episodes, and it's very rare that I get to say that I felt that a twelve episode show has bad pacing, but, I feel that Dynazenon really does. So much time is wasted on the mundane, or on a romance that I personally didn't get anything out of, or bringing up more plot threads that go nowhere, rather than staying focused on any one thing or atleast balancing screen time between characters. About half of the episodes in this show could've easily been cut in half and nothing of value would be lost. I made the claim that S4 Gridman was designed to be binged, and I feel that for S4 Dynazenon, that's even more true.

Granted, there is a sort of counter-argument to be made for these claims, but let me address that now.

Emotional Attachment To Characters

Dynazenon really, really banks on you forming an near instant attachment to these characters, and, unfortunately, I did not. Yomogi's' arc went into a much different and(in my opinion) far less interesting direction than what I initially thought it would. I felt that Yume's' arc with Kano became wasted with the reveal that Kano didn't actually kill herself, as I felt the "suicide due to online bullying" was a really strong way to follow up on themes and commentary present in the previous season. The Kaiju Eugenicists have basically no backstory, and as much as I liked Gauma, Chise, and Koyomi in terms of personality, their screen time suffers in favor of the romance between Yume and Yomogi. Dynazenon was never once interested in focusing in on the aspects of its storytelling that interested me.

And while the show certainly is all about bridging gaps and making connections, I felt that, especially compared to what came before, there really wasn't much of a distance to close? The characters hit it off, they stay friends, they talk to the villains, it's all simple. Whereas in the first season I actually felt a journey. I felt all of the effort that went into the characters creating the bonds that they did. Akane's' whole deal was a major fumble, sure, but the journey had an overall bigger impact on me than what Dynazenon's' did.

In the end, I had no one but Knight and Second to really attach to, and even then they're just cameos, not main characters. And not once did anything really emotionally grab me like how the previous season did. Infact...

The Missing Piece

I've read many comments, both on these boards and off them, that people managed to find an emotional connection to Dynazenon that they didn't manage to find in Gridman. And I very much have the exact opposite opinion. And let me make this clear here and now, I am by no means trying to say that I'm "above" having a strong connection to a story, or a character, or what have you. Heck, you guys wanna know the exact moment I knew that SSSS.Gridman was a story that was special to me? Right here:

It's a moment that I just kinda glossed over in my initial write ups on S4 Gridman, as I just sort of assumed most would know where I was coming from when highlighting it. But now, after some more life experience and talking about this sort of thing with others, I see that I was wrong to make that assumption. So, what makes this moment, where Yuta and Sho appear to be doing nothing other than just sitting next to eachother on a train, so special? Afterall, they're not even interacting, so what could possibly be the big deal?

It's the mere fact that they're choosing to spend time with one another despite not having anything super "fun" or "interesting" or whatever to bring to the table. They're there to enjoy each other's' presence, and that's all. Infact, that is everything, and it's the type of friendship moment that many don't comprehend.

For many people, extroverts especially, this might seem super boring or awkward, but something that is super undervalued in friendship, as weird as it is to say, is the people involved in them, specifically. For people like me, it doesn't matter if you're not the life of the party. It doesn't matter if you don't have a super eventful life that you can babble for hours on end about. It doesn't matter if you even have any sort of plans for an activity that takes us all day. The only things that matter are you, me, the bond we share, and the mere fact that we desire to be around eachother. To me, the fact that SSSS.Gridman chose to highlight this aspect between Yuta and Sho's' friendship was huge, and I will always appreciate it.

SSSS.Dynazenon, unfortunately, did not have anything like that for me, and as such, I could not create nearly as strong of a connection.

Overall

If it seems like up to now that I've been doing nothing but saying that Dynazenon is a bad show, that's actually not my goal at all. What it essentially comes down to is that Dynazenon is a show that was not made with my tastes in mind specifically. I don't think the show is horrible, or that it's a disgrace to the franchise, or anything of the sort. It's just that, unfortunately, despite what positives I found in it, it overall just didn't do anything particularly well in appealing to me, specifically, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you found value in this story, then that's all that matters.

In the end, I give SSSS.Dynazenon a 3/6. Not a bad show, and I am still looking forward to Gridman x Dynazenon, whenever the time comes.