[Frontier]

I love Gridman!

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Dang it, I missed it.
But yeah loved seeing SG Soundwave.

A shame they couldn't work in the headband!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Even as a toku fan, your interest has always been pretty specifically with Rider, so you're sort of *double* lost going into this one? Which is maybe kind of perfect, actually?

Yeah, I loved how nothing in this first episode felt like it was punishing me for not understanding (or even identifying) the tropes, let alone catching the references, because these kids aren't aware of any of that? The things they're doing all make sense in that frenzied teen logic space -- batshit crazy shenanigans and peer pressure and discovery and background attraction and Let's Be Legends and and and -- so that we don't need an adult telling us how this all works together or what it meant to a previous generation; toku magical realism.

To quote Roast Beef from The Great Outdoor Fight, "Our every move is the new tradition."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Yume Miyamoto (Rikka) was later Magine/ZenkaiMagine in Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger.

Glad to know I'm watching Sabela's favorite toku anime!

[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 2 - “RESTORATION”



I don’t… like, I don’t want to do that Kamen Rider Die cliched thing where I sort of handwave the actual toku action stuff in favor of really drilling into a metaphorical read of the iconography of the episode. The Gridman combat in this episode was awesome, and I loved Gridman Calibur as a new addition to the hero’s arsenal.

But.

All I really want to talk about is Rikka, and Akane, and the alternate hope and terror of adulthood when you’re on the cusp of it.

For Rikka, the kaiju are the terror of adulthood, of things changing, and of her friends vanishing. Tonkawa and Toiko don’t die – there’re no bodies, and whatever mourning took place for them was years earlier. They’re just, like, gone. They left. Rikka has to live on with her friends being gone, and nowhere to put that grief, because no one else in school remembers them. That’s a loss she’ll have to suffer in greater and greater amounts in the years to come, because that’s what growing up inevitably means – saying goodbye to childhood friends as your lives pull you in different directions. The kaiju that attacked the school last episode might as well have been Tonkawa’s parents getting a job in another town, or Toiko getting into a different college, or or or. Rikka will have to watch her friends vanish over time, and it’s as heartbreaking as it is unavoidable. It’ll happen, and she’ll never know when… like the immobilized kaiju in the skyline.

For Akane, the kaiju are the hope of adulthood – specifically, the dream of control. Akane as she is is a high school student, subject to the whims of adults and authorities and power. But if she were an adult, she’d have that power for herself. The kaiju are her way to exert influence on the world, and make it into what she wants, which is a child’s conception of adulthood. It’s power and control, rather than responsibility and service. The kaiju are a thing she can use to stop feeling powerless, the inversion to the unknowable fear of the future that Rikka has of them.

But then, in the end, the hope and terror of adulthood flatten out into days just like the ones before it. Rikka’s fear is alleviated by the new friends she makes as she mourns the loss of old ones – spending a day with Yuta, Utsumi, and Samurai Calibur (!!!), no different or worse than the ones she’d spent with Tonkawa or Toiko – and Akane’s dream of power is negated by a new teacher that still bumps into students because he isn’t paying attention, but at least says Sorry now in an unfulfilling way. The kaiju aren’t as apocalyptic as we’d fear, or as powerful as we’d hope; pretty much like being an adult.

[DreamSword]

Since you're not watching the dub, and I highly doubt you've seen Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, I just wanna point out a neat thing that the dub of Gridman did for this show specifically.



In the old SSSS show, the main villain Kilokhan was voiced by Tim Curry. So the directors had Alexis Kerib's' VA, Barry Yandell, do a Tim Curry impression when voicing Alexis.

I just thought that was a really nice touch for us here in the west.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

I just thought that was a really nice touch for us here in the west.

Oh, that's very cool! Thanks!

[Androzani84]

So this episode brings in a new character, in the form of Samurai Caliber, who can turn into… a samurai caliber. He’s a homage to the Gridman Sword from the original live action show, a shield that could combine with the sword hidden within it to become a larger sword (it was modelled after a hot dog. No, really), while the name is a reference to its counterpart in the American version Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad, released as the Samurai Sword, and that show’s protagonist, Sam Collins.

And for the casting thing, Caliber is played by Ryosuke Takahashi, who you can also hear as Hudram in Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga. But he’s mostly a live action actor, in which capacity he played F1 racer Ando Takuto/Lio-Sazer in Chousei Kantai Sazer-X (a show that features the guy who went on to play Ankh as the kid-appeal comic relief) and the bad guy from Revice’s Live/Evil and Demons V-Cinema (I forgot his name and can’t be bothered to look it up now). He’s doing voice work here a) because he was inspired to by the VAs for the alien characters back during Sazer-X and b) he was supposed to reprise the role for a stage play that never happened (as to why, the show was scheduled for 2020).

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

So this episode brings in a new character, in the form of Samurai Caliber, who can turn into? a samurai caliber.

Neat! Thanks!

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

I don?t? like, I don?t want to do that Kamen Rider Die cliched thing where I sort of handwave the actual toku action stuff in favor of really drilling into a metaphorical read of the iconography of the episode.

Oh, by all means, go ahead! This show is fully supportive of being watched that way.

It's funny you mention the "toku" action stuff, though, since that's one of the interesting things about the way the fights are put together. It's not simply an animated version of the old Gridman, but rather this constant push and pull between shots and movements styled after giant monster tokusatsu, and those that instead take after the traditions of mecha anime. One of the more obvious tributes on the latter front, for example, being the specific pose Gridman strikes at the end of the "combination sequence" with the Gridman Calibur, with it thrusting towards the camera in that really exaggerated manner. That very particular framing is commonly associated with famed animator/mecha designer Masami Oobari, although the reality of its history is apparently a little more complicated than that. (Which is to say, more complicated than I'm actually educated about, but again, part of the beauty is that understanding the references isn't mandatory.)

[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Oh, by all means, go ahead! This show is fully supportive of being watched that way.

It's funny you mention the "toku" action stuff, though, since that's one of the interesting things about the way the fights are put together. It's not simply an animated version of the old Gridman, but rather this constant push and pull between shots and movements styled after giant monster tokusatsu, and those that instead take after the traditions of mecha anime. One of the more obvious tributes on the latter front, for example, being the specific pose Gridman strikes at the end of the "combination sequence" with the Gridman Calibur, with it thrusting towards the camera in that really exaggerated manner. That very particular framing is commonly associated with famed animator/mecha designer Masami Oobari, although the reality of its history is apparently a little more complicated than that. (Which is to say, more complicated than I'm actually educated about, but again, part of the beauty is that understanding the references isn't mandatory.)

Congrats on your 4000th post!

[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 3 - “DEFEAT”



I haven’t really talked about it beyond noting it in passing, but: these Shattered Glass character designs really started to do my head in with this episode.

It’s Anti’s SG Hot Rod design that made it too distracting to not bring up. I love that design – the purple flame motif on black!!! –and it works great as a signifier of bottled-up rage. The rest of the designs… like, I honestly don’t know how intentional their specific applications are, so beyond saying Hey Utsumi Is SG Ratchet, I kind of don’t feel like reading a ton into it. (Like, I think you could 100% read into Yuta being Cliffjumper, who I want to say was from an alternate/regular reality in the initial SG Fan Club stories? That seems relevant!) The good guys don’t all line up as the good guys here – again, SG Ratchet, pretty much just a sadist – and the bad guys here are kind of just SG Optimus and SG Hot Rod, which… I guess could maybe map out? I don’t know. I feel like it’s a design decision that started from a place of Why Not, and then worked backwards to give it a thematic resonance.

And that vibe, the Anything Goes (sooorry) thing, it’s kind of the whole feel of this very good, very moody, very funny episode? It’s that got that teen ambivalence to it, where the imminent destruction of the city at the hands of a talking kaiju is given equal weight to Rikka feeling bad about not taking Yuta’s call when she had the chance. It’s to this show’s breathless and assured credit that neither level of this story feels diminished in association with the other, where a scene of Calibur anime leaping around town to then fling the teens at the Gridman computer, sits comfortably alongside a nuanced exploration of Rikka’s need to strengthen her connections with people before her default Cool Girl persona leaves her isolated and alone. This is an episode that doesn’t see the difference in stakes between giant battle and tiny terror, and it’s all the better for it.

More than anything, though, this is an episode that lets consequences feel both ridiculous and obvious, so you can just assume that cell phones work in formless interdimensional voids because I don’t know why *wouldn’t* they work in formless interdimensional voids. It’s got that toku magical realism, that teen heedlessness, where no rules exist if they don’t serve the emotions of the cast. We’re in a story that takes nothing for granted, and questions every assumption, which: teenagers. Whole story is built like a teen brain, and I love how that gear matches the toku genre so perfectly. Rikka needs to talk to Yuta on the phone because she couldn’t when it didn’t matter, so now she can. I love it. I love this whole dumb, weird, goofy, sad, earnest episode of monster battles and teen drama.