[DreamSword]

Episode 3: Defeat

This episode is great because it introduces my favorite character, Anti.

He's a Kaiju meant to serve as a dark counterpart to Gridman, with his human form serving only to be a... "friend" (in a loose sense of the term) to Akane.

Compared to the previous two episodes, this one is alot more simplistic and straight-forward in terms of what it does, but that by no means makes it bad. Here, well, Akane actually defeats Gridman with the help of Anti's' Kaiju form.

It also helps to establish a couple new details about our characters. For example how Rikka seems to have a fondness for outsiders, based on how she looked after Yuta after he went comatose and how she tried to reach out to Anti after seeing how he eats like a dog.

There's also a moment establishing that Sho doesn't really think about what he says, joking that maybe the Kaiju are all humans who have been transformed, which is partly what causes Yuta to lose the initial battle. It's also a small reference to Syber-Squad, as there were a couple episodes where people's' brains got trapped into Virus Beasts temporarily.

We're also introduced to a new set of characters who all seem to work with Calibur. The girl's' name is Bor, a reference to one of the various vehicles that could combine with Servo. And the masked man, Max, becomes a Tank which serves as a reference to both Tracto from SSSS and also Tanker, one of Sam's' friends from the same show. Heck, when said Tank combines with Gridman, it even has Tanker's' football helmet.

Oh, and their team name? The Neon Genesis Junior High Squad. If it wasn't obvious, this is a reference to both Neon Genesis Evangelion as well as Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad rolled into one.

The fight scene between Gridman Max and Anti is of course great, playing like something out of DBZ, but the biggest takeaway for me was how Gridman's' timer seems to work like Servo's', being an indicator of how much energy he has left. Whereas Anti's' timer seems to work more like the OG Gridman's', being an actual time limit ala Ultraman.

Overall, this episode is alot quicker-paced and alot more focused on the action side of things, to the point that unlike the previous two episodes, both fight scenes are done in a much more Standard Anime Battle(tm) sort of way than how the previous two went for emulating action scenes from old Toku. In terms of plot, I suppose you could say it spends its time more on setting things up for future episodes rather than making huge developments in and of itself. And I am perfectly okay with all of that.