[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

Amp Laser Circus

If I may add to this, it also, aside from Amp from Syber-Squad like you shared, appears to be a reference to the "Itano Circus" technique originated and perfected by animator Ichiro Itano and emulated by his successors since. Here's more info on that:

https://macross.fandom.com/wiki/Itano_Circus

And here's an example of it.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

And we get our final Gridman combination, in the form of Sky Gridman. His attacks, the Amp Laser Circus and Lucky Smoke Screen homage the original Vitor?s two pilots, Amp Pierre and his replacement when the show got unexpectedly renewed and the actor couldn?t commit to the new episodes, Lucky London. To sum up the differences, both in the words of TV Tropes and my own.

As for my words, Amp got the funniest lines (Holy Mel Gibson! That?ll make him one lethal weapon), while Lucky was on the receiving end (You couldn?t perform magic if Merlin himself was helping you).

And a last bit of trivia, this week?s monster, being made by Anti instead of Akane, not only has a totally different aesthetic, but has his voice distorted for the cry (though he doesn?t seem to be saying anything legible)

Neat! Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

This episode's monster fight was always a favorite of mine?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

If I may add to this, it also, aside from Amp from Syber-Squad like you shared, appears to be a reference to the "Itano Circus" technique originated and perfected by animator Ichiro Itano and emulated by his successors since.

Ha ha, this is what I was coming here to talk about! I am not a well-versed anime viewer, but I love a high-altitude dogfight where a target has to barrel roll endlessly to avoid infinite streaking missiles/lasers. That sequence was breath-taking. A very fun fight scene!

[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It is sadly lost on me!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

Zeong?

Nah, see:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Androzani84

And a last bit of trivia, this week?s monster, being made by Anti instead of Akane, not only has a totally different aesthetic, but has his voice distorted for the cry (though he doesn?t seem to be saying anything legible)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

and the especially clever concept for a monster, there are a lot of layers all going on at once that make it particularly interesting and fun.

All I'll say is that all of the previous Kaiju were peaks into Akane's' heart.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

All I'll say is that all of the previous Kaiju were peaks into Akane's' heart.

I'll be sure to keep that in mind!

[Sunred]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Ha ha, this is what I was coming here to talk about! I am not a well-versed anime viewer, but I love a high-altitude dogfight where a target has to barrel roll endlessly to avoid infinite streaking missiles/lasers. That sequence was breath-taking. A very fun fight scene!

The crazy part of it looking at the wiki article? A moment of his childhood where he tried to imitate Kikaider, a toku hero show, was what inspired it.

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunred

The crazy part of it looking at the wiki article? A moment of his childhood where he tried to imitate Kikaider, a toku hero show, was what inspired it.

Wow, I'd've never thought he was young enough to have grown up watching Gaim!

[Kamen Rider Die]

SSSS.GRIDMAN EPISODE 8 - “CONFRONTATION”



I think Rikka and I would watch toku the same way.

(Rikka, of course, very much does not watch toku, as established in Episode 7 as a hilarious rebuttal to the gender equality shown in the Akane/Utsumi scene of Episode 6. Rikka is not looking to understand the intricacies and tropes of tokusatsu!)

In an episode that foregrounds a ticking clock threat from Akane – a powered-up version of an old foe, just get things kicking off in the correct motif – Rikka is the one who doesn’t want to treat the situation by boring, staid genre convention. Where Akane says We’re Gonna Fight, and Utsumi immediately comes back with We’re Gonna Fight, Rikka instead looks outside that incurious adherence to conflict and both opts out of it and interrogates it. It’s a clever subversion of the story’s inherent tension, pushing off the clear threat in favor of something that treats things as – appropriately – smaller, and more in need of connection.

The reveal that Rikka is as much a construct as everyone and everything in the city is a good one, mostly for how it instantly unmoors Rikka’s belief in conflict as an avoidable consequence of overexcited toku fans, Utsumi and Akane both. Akane flat out tells Rikka that her own sense of hope in Akane is a byproduct of Akane’s need for the world to love her. (Super telling that Akane created a friend who completely ignores her; Akane wants to be loved, but not be noticed or bothered by that love.) Where Rika once had a certainty that the Gridman Alliance wasn’t something she was a part of, and therefore wasn’t bound to their particular sense of Giant Robot Justice, an inability to trust her own feelings towards Akane means that she can’t go it alone when it comes to solving this problem. She’s going to have to work with the group.

(I actually like how Rikka doesn’t, like, do anything in the days leading up to the school festival. While Utsumi is like WE GOTTA FIGHT, even Yuta tries to appeal to Akane’s purely theoretical humanity first, and then eventually devise a strategy to prevent Akane’s attack from harming any of their friends. Rikka just sort of… hopes Akane won’t do it? I guess? For some reason? She briefly tries to talk to Akane on the bus, but it's not like she goes out of her way to do it. Rikka’s strategy is sort of nowhere this episode, but in a way that speaks to her innate belief in all of her friends, even the ones that just said they wanted to destroy the school and everyone in it. It’s an abdication of defense because of a rejection of the necessity of conflict. Still, I think her even bringing up the possibility of deescalation gets Yuta and Utsumi to talk to Akane, which I will count as Rikka’s positive influence on the story!)

Teamwork! It’s very much what this episode is about, and a good team allows for everyone’s viewpoint to have equal validity. Utsumi’s embrace of action needs to be tempered by Rikka’s reluctance to fight; Calibur needs to consider how Yuta would treat Anti; Yuta needs to think smaller, while addressing Utsumi’s plan to think bigger – the whole episode is a collaboration between what everyone thinks is right, and that’s as good a way as any to introduce Full Powered Gridman.

Hey, it’s Episode Goddamn Eight, lemme take a minute to talk about some of the hero forms. I love how toyetic they are? Everything that attaches to Gridman is in the style of an action figure accessory, for better or worse. (I think I remember hearing that some of the Gridman toys were janky garbage, due to their gimmicks?) Beyond the usual toku delights of something becoming more powered – full powered, even! – I like how a giant robot combination gets more elaborate and consequential as the power levels rise. We have to get three different transformations (Calibur’s just, like, a sword) and then the combination sequence, with all of its bells and whistles. The length of that sequence is like the roller coaster going up the hill at the beginning of the ride, and then it takes off like a rocket as the full (powered) form kicks tons of ass and then even turns gold for its finisher. It’s gaudy, in the best way, and it speaks to how well this show has integrated its teen drama with its giant robot action that I wanted this thing to happen as a reward for Rikka fighting for her independent view while still hearing other people out. It’s teamwork as a way of bringing out the best in everyone, rather than subsuming everything into one set of default actions. And, yeah, that’s golden.

[DreamSword]

This moment set the anime sphere on fire for awhile.

[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Hey, it’s Episode Goddamn Eight, lemme take a minute to talk about some of the hero forms. I love how toyetic they are? Everything that attaches to Gridman is in the style of an action figure accessory, for better or worse. (I think I remember hearing that some of the Gridman toys were janky garbage, due to their gimmicks?)

In particular, the original DX Full Power Gridman from back when the show was new was, as I understand from secondhand accounts, a pretty unpolished release, owing largely to being made by a company who I don't think had much experience making that sort of toy to begin with, and to the design itself not actually being created with the intent of easily translating to toy form. (The crux of the challenge being that you have to make a very tiny Gridman support a *lot* of weight somehow.) That second thing being despite the design *also* being one deliberately and consciously designed to look like a DX toy, to the extent that things like clips that would hold the various bits together in different configurations are explicitly baked right into the design.

Really, just this one topic is kind of a lot to get into? Full Power Gridman is really emblematic of the whole show's ethos in a lot of ways, and a big part of that is how director Akira Amemiya went out of his way to get Tsuyoshi Nonaka to do the designs for the Assist Weapons. Nonaka being a designer and artist who -- aside from doing some Transformers artwork back in the day as part of Studio OX, which maybe means something to Die -- was *also* someone with a long career at Bandai, where his credits include, among other things, designing DaiZyuJin for Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, which kind of became one of the most widely identifiable and well-loved combining robot designs ever. You could say it was thanks to Power Rangers, but I would personally argue Power Rangers should be thanking DaiZyuJin at least as much in return. Anyways, I also vaguely understand Nonaka himself grew up during the original Chogokin boom of the 70's too, and is thus kind of part of the first generation of guys making cool robot toys who also grew up with cool robot toys, and that probably gels pretty well with what SSSS Gridman is about too. At any rate, the dude is a true legend, for sure.

I'm kind of rambling most of this off the top of my head, so apologies if it's all a little hard to parse, but the whole like, ecosystem of Full Power Gridman and all its various components and forms is one of my favorite things to come out of this series, and I find the history behind it pretty exciting too. So exciting I'm not even talking about the episode it debuts in!

[Kamen Rider Die]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamSword

This moment set the anime sphere on fire for awhile.

I definitely don't get the context, if they're supposed to be dressed as specific characters, but this seems pretty innocuous to me? Unless it's how smart Rikka looks in that uniform!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

I'm kind of rambling most of this off the top of my head, so apologies if it's all a little hard to parse, but the whole like, ecosystem of Full Power Gridman and all its various components and forms is one of my favorite things to come out of this series, and I find the history behind it pretty exciting too. So exciting I'm not even talking about the episode it debuts in!

It's a very cool design! That I absolutely will not be buying as a toy!