[Kurona]

Gridman the Hyper Agent Episode 1




So, uh, first of all; should this... be here? Should I be posting in the Ultraman thread instead? Because despite how similar Ultra series tend to keep their settings and visuals; if you'd told me this was another Ultra show I wouldn't really have thought twice about it. Stylistically it's quite similar between the 'host' and the rise and the Kaiju battles; and I wouldn't be too surprised if this was Tsubaraya's attempt to 'revive' Ultraman for a cool, hip, computer age audience after it's been off the air for a bit. It even seems to get counted officially in toylines and such and of course it's even on the Ultraman channel right now which is how I'm watching it?


But whatever the case is with definitions and all that malarkey, that was fun. Nothing mind-blowing, perhaps, but definitely something I enjoyed! Something that struck me right from the opening that just continues when we got to the Kaiju action (which started slightly earlier than halfway in!) is just how elaborate and different the set design is. It's one of those things that, with the context of this being the 80s and this being a new Toku show rather than a big-name one; just has me impressed thinking of all the work and budget that had to go into this to completely construct a technological city-like location for Kaiju battles the likes of which had never been seen before. That one episode of Kamen Rider Black where he goes inside the computer has nothing on this, I'm seriously impressed right from the get-go! This had to have taken some passion!

Talking of this elaborate cyber world though, boy, is this show's logic from frame 1 completely wrapped up in an extremely 80s perception of how computers work. Just, the entire thing about the computer world is so funny in ways that hit the exact right beats for me. It's wonderfully quaint and a great sign of the times. Something I do really like unironically is how at the end their pieced-together computer literally cannot handle how obviously intensive the Gridman battles are and so can only keep him there for a few minutes (Gee I Wonder Whose Youtube Channel This Is On) and straight up starts exploding! I genuinely don't know how they're gonna piece it together next episode!!

I'm getting quiiiiite a few moments of deja vu since I've previously watched the recent Gridman anime, too. It's very interesting going back and seeing what elements said anime took, which ones they changed around, how characters adapted; all that sort of stuff. I think like with my Kuuga realisations in OOO I'm going to be enjoying spotting these little incidental things as I watch! Honestly, while watching I actually felt like maybe I should do a rewatch of that anime after this series ends!!


Lots of scattered thoughts here, and hardly an overview or anything to piece it together in sight... buuuut that's mostly because I don't want to spoil anything. This is an old show from a completely different culture and continent to most people who use this board, and unlike your Heisei Riders or your New Gen Ultras it's not exactly something you can rely on a lot of people having seen; so I'm worried about saying too much even though at its core this is a goofy showa toku with no serialised plot in sight. But as-is, I'm enjoying it; and I think Fish's assessment earlier of "Not mind-blowingly amazing but still very solid, fun and creative" is very accurate to the experience I had. Go ahead and give it a shot!