[Kamen Rider Die]

Hi there. I’m Kamen Rider Die, and this is “Kamen Rider Die watches SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon”.

I definitely don’t think of myself as an Anime Guy, despite being old enough to have devoured formative series as they were first making their ways to America’s various physical media storefronts (Suncoast Video!) and as bootlegs on the tables of comic conventions. (Imagine if the cat site was some random dude’s folding table, and you had to pay $20 for a batch of episodes.) I came up on the AD Vision and Pioneer and Manga Video releases of Evangelion, Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, Blue Sub No 6, Tenchi Muyo, and a dozen more. But I’m old, and that was a million years ago, and I don’t really have the chemicals in my brain that hunger for season-length animation; I’d say I grew out of it, but *gestures to seven years of immersion in a tokusatsu franchise designed to sell toys to Japanese children*. So, I don’t know. Fell off of it, I guess? Seems like that’s something I could maybe push myself back into.

Which brings us to this thread! A couple years ago, as I was planning out a road map to rewatch and write about the Phase 2 Heisei Rider shows I’d gotten into before joining the boards on TokuNation, I wanted to sprinkle in some non-Rider stuff, so it could be new to me. (I like discovering new things!) One of the projects was watching a toku anime, and the first thing that came to mind – despite honestly not knowing a ton about it, including if it was actually any good – was SSSS.Gridman. I’m originally a Transformers guy, and I recall the initial designs of the characters from Gridman trickling out into the TF fan community, because they’re references to the Shattered Glass TF designs, which is fascinating and bonkers. Just basing these kids on Transformers is weird, but basing their designs on fan club repaints is the sort of thing that sticks in the brain of even those indifferent to anime. So, yeah: Gridman! That’s the one I wanted to check out, and hopefully find some of that old anime excitement that used to chew up my paycheck as a younger cubist monstrosity.

While there are for sure more knowledgeable and dedicated fans of toku anime on the boards, that is probably not the manner in which I’ll be approaching Gridman and its follow-up (?) Dynazenon. I don’t inherently care about anime, or the intentions of its creators. I’m going to watch a show, and tell you how I felt about it, and the parts of it that said something to me as a piece of art. I don’t know if that’s going to work for folks! (I definitely didn’t feel like my engagement with Fuuto P.I. was fostering a healthy discourse?) But it’s what I’ve got, and it’s how I process these things, and I hope some of you feel like going along for the ride.

After briefly feeling like I 100% did not want to do these threads anymore, I am going to approach this (potential) return in a slightly different way than in the past. Namely, I don’t know what the schedule’s going to be. I am going to look at each day, and see if I’ve got the time and interest to do another episode. If I don’t, we’ll try again the next day. I promise you that this thread will finish, but I couldn’t tell you how long it’s going to take. That said… I really like a steady cadence to these things? So expect something along the lines of 4-5 episodes per week. Just, like, set a subscription to this thread, and you’ll get a post when I feel like I can engage with it.

Beyond that, we’ve got our boilerplate disclaimers:
-PLEASE DON’T POST ANY SPOILERS ABOUT UPCOMING EPISODES. This is my first time watching these shows, and I prefer to go in as cold as possible. If we can keep the discussion to just the episodes I’ve covered, I’d appreciate it.
-DISCUSSION IS WELCOME. I like getting to talk about these shows, but I love getting to talk about them with other people. You are not obligated to chime in if you’d rather lurk, but I definitely enjoy these threads more when people share their own experiences with the art. (Facts and trivia are fine, too, but I way more want to talk about what you took away from the show!)
-KEEP BEING GOOD PEOPLE. I like when everyone is respectful of each other’s views on art, so let’s keep that in the front of our minds as we talk about these shows, okay?

I think that’s it! (It’s probably not, but I can’t recall what else to mention.) Let’s watch a toku anime!