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EP. REVIEW: SSSS.Gridman


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Cabron



Joined: 02 Feb 2013
Posts: 48
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 9:45 pm Reply with quote
Are folks just now realizing who voices Rikka's mom and her earring?
I thought it was obvious since the first ep.
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sniper_samurai



Joined: 28 Feb 2010
Posts: 77
PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:11 pm Reply with quote
Cab329 wrote:
Now the evidence ain’t great for this but Rikka and Akane are shown holding hands in the opening (it can’t be Yuta’s hand as it’s a left hand: we’d see his wrist band), and there are two separate shots in the opening which are separate but visually parallel where if you put them together the two are looking at each other (or Akane is looking slightly away while Rikka is looking at her). The ending also is showing them be pretty chummy in different uniforms (maybe middle school). Admittedly, endings usually aren’t meant to reveal much (otherwise Hyouka would be a Yuri-show about constellation makers), but it could show how they were before the series. Additionally, in the opening we see the wallet Rikka got (she was thinking of Akane at the time) and Akane’s razor blade perpendicular to each other.

So Akane and Rikka were close and then something happened that made Akane withdraw into her room. Akane created a virtual copy of her city but needed help, which is when she met Alexis. Alexis offered to help, but didn’t say how it benefited him, he just supported her and cheered her on, especially her creation of Kaiju.


Not surprising how Rikka and Akanes relationship has gone considering their designs are based on Shattered Glass Megatron(Rikka) and Optimus Prime(Akane).

Also the clasp on the wallet Rikka bought is the Autobot Matrix of Leadership.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3629
PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 12:49 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Of course, since this is SSSS.Gridman, it might be best to start by talking about references. I could waste tons of space highlighting the myriad Ultra-series monster callouts and various visual Transformers references that have powered this show since the first episode, as well as a host of insanely deep cuts to even more obscure toku shows like Starbows.


Sounds like that would make from some enjoyable features after the show is done =)
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Zeino



Joined: 19 May 2017
Posts: 1098
PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:07 am Reply with quote
So if this really is a sequel to the original 90s Gridman tokusatsu and not an alternative retelling, I wonder if that means that Alexis is the possible son of Khan Digifier, the original Gridman villain who was played by Tim Curry in the localization?

Also this series now needs the subtitle of "The Melancholy of Akane Shinjo." It's becoming clearer and clearer that she is the real center point here. It wouldn't surprise me at all if once Yuta and friends break Alexis' hold on her, she is the one who merges with Gridman for the final battle. (Yeah, it is most likely she is going to get redeemed here now)


Last edited by Zeino on Mon Nov 12, 2018 6:58 am; edited 2 times in total
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5296
PostPosted: Mon Nov 12, 2018 5:11 am Reply with quote
I really liked the 5th gen video game look of the animation in the info video. But I feel like it was all a bit unneeded, Yuta was close to finding out that she is the one making the Kaju, and the rest he could learn over time. I wonder if the only reason miss exposition was included was because of the shows low episode count.
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Kendra Kirai



Joined: 18 Jan 2015
Posts: 187
PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 6:10 pm Reply with quote
MarshalBanana wrote:
I really liked the 5th gen video game look of the animation in the info video. But I feel like it was all a bit unneeded, Yuta was close to finding out that she is the one making the Kaju, and the rest he could learn over time. I wonder if the only reason miss exposition was included was because of the shows low episode count.


The reveal isn't that Akane was making the monsters, or that the place they're in is a simulation.

The reveal was that *Akane is the one with admin privileges*.
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pharmboy23



Joined: 05 Oct 2018
Posts: 196
PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 6:20 pm Reply with quote
Oh man, am I the only person who took this long to realize that Anti probably stands for Antivirus?

Great episode as usual. Actually better than usual! The most awkward dinner ever and some great banter and Yuta gets a little more oomph as the hero. Really liked how Akane just showed up out of nowhere and the chaos that ensued.
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Thaumana



Joined: 08 Jul 2017
Posts: 120
PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2018 10:08 pm Reply with quote
Cab329 wrote:

I also really enjoyed Anti and Rikka and I think it also supports a Rikka and Akane connection. The way I see it, Anti as he is now is probably like Akane in the real world. He smells bad, isn’t going to school, and is obsessed with a tokusatsu character...like Akane. Akane also really seems to empathize with Kaiju which Anti is one.

Oh I like that one. He also resembles her a bit and it would fit her character to hate her past/real self regarding the manner she treat him like he is just a nuisance. Like it makes her sick to remember her weaker side. Maybe she got bullied and was called a kaiju herself by classmates just because of her kaiju faible.
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Cab329



Joined: 01 Apr 2017
Posts: 132
PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 1:34 am Reply with quote
pharmboy23 wrote:
Oh man, am I the only person who took this long to realize that Anti probably stands for Antivirus?

Great episode as usual. Actually better than usual! The most awkward dinner ever and some great banter and Yuta gets a little more oomph as the hero. Really liked how Akane just showed up out of nowhere and the chaos that ensued.


He might, though I think it might be he’s anti for “Anti-Gridman”

The dinner scene was great for so many reasons. I love how cold Akane was, intentionally taking Yuta to the restaurant where the first classmate she murdered lived. Alexis just sitting down and chewing the fat was great too.

But yeah, this was a fantastic episode and gave me a lot to speculate on as well as giving a really kick ass fight at the end.

I really dig that the outside cyber world had the same blue green color scheme from the original Gridman (look up “Gridman OP “yume no hero” and you’ll see it)

One thing that really makes me speculate is that it revealed that even Akane’s room is inside the virtual city, so we’ve never actually seen the outside world (I was wrong last week as well: the bits of destroyed City was the remnants of the resort town Akane made for episode 5).

...which means we don’t actually know what Akane looks like (unless the ED is set in the real world). I watched all of the episodes today and I had some observations:

1. The first face we see is Akane center frame. She sees Gridman and his crew arrive and then the next character is Yuta, center frame. In fact, throughout the episodes, it’s very common for them to show up in similar positions on camera either with Yuta being on the same side of the screen as Akane was prior to him or being in a similar position when interacting with Rikka (with the exception of episode 5 anytime Rikka interacts with Akane, Akane’s on her left (this also happens in the OP) and Yuta is mostly on Rikka’s left as well when they interact. Also, in the OP, the class pic has Yuta but not Akane (and then it shatters a second later to reveal a depressed looking Akane), and in the ED (where Akane seems genuinely happy) Yuta’s desk isn’t there.

Totally insane theory coming here but is it possible that Akane’s real world body is Yuta? In the first episode it’s revealed Yuta only moved there in April but that might not be accurate to the real world (after all, everyone also worships Akane who real world or virtual is a Hikkikomori who rolls around in her trash, and Rikka remembers knowing Akane as a child but can’t remember too much about that time or why they stopped hanging out)

So what if Akane, frustrated with the real world, went into the virtual world, made a new body for herself, and made everyone worship her. However, she didn’t somehow didn’t feel right keeping up contact with Rikka or Utsumi and left them to their own devices but created an NPC copy of her old body to hang out with them.

There’s not much really proving it (the transitions and similar shots could just be standard parallels between hero and villain) but there are a couple of odd things:

It’s around summer time and Yuta arrived in April. But before he got a chunk of Gridman in him or whatever is going on, he was in Rikka’s house. Rikka wasn’t nervous around him and let him in willingly. He did something that Rikka would be ticked off about if he was pretending to forget but it wasn’t bad enough for her to be hostile towards him. What happened: I think Yuta made a love confession, despite not knowing Rikka for that long (I’m assuming Rikka is telling the truth when she says the two of them had barely talked before that day). Sure making an impulsive love confession isn’t out of the norm, but what it’s odd Rikka would walk with him all the way to her home. So what if Akane set it in his program that Rikka would be comfortable around him or programmed in her behaviors which made him and Rikka see nothing odd about him coming by to her home.

Also, Akane knew how to get into Yuta’s apartment (while she is god she seems to only be able to change things on a massive scale, nothing minute).

Additionally, we haven’t had many hints as to why Yuta and Utsumi would be friends...but if Akane was friends with him in the real world it would make sense as they bonded over tokusatsu shows. It’s possible their friendship started in a similar way to the scene they had last episode.

2. The glas marble. I actually forgot about that but it’s become increasingly important (thematically). Akane is the marble. To get the drink you plunge it down into the soft drink but once it’s there, the only way to get it out is to break the bottle. Right now Akane won’t or can’t leave on her own so by the end, Gridman will need to shatter the virtual city to get her out. Throughout the show Yuta is seen looking at the marble (including the OP, which ends with him and Gridman shattering the window Akane is sitting by).

3. The food: this was a cool little hint but the food we’ve seen is stuff that Akane probably eats in the real world. The special dogs show up in most episodes and even the bentos are simple or bought from a convenience store. The restaurant she went to not only was a move to show how little she cared about her misdeeds but also simple fare that was budget priced, great for someone living on their own.

In any case, I can’t wait for next week! I imagine things are going to get way darker as Akane will likely start focusing on her hate (it’s possible a part of her didn’t want to win or she was just doing it for fun, so her Kaiju haven’t been too bad while Anti’s was doing rather well) and everyone is likely going to have an existential crisis (plus Rikka is going to have to deliver that wallet at some point). I wonder if Alexis let Anti make a Kaiju so Akane would feel threatened in her position so she’d go back to making Kaiju, which she had been taking a break from.
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pharmboy23



Joined: 05 Oct 2018
Posts: 196
PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 6:17 am Reply with quote
Cab329 wrote:
He might, though I think it might be he’s anti for “Anti-Gridman”


Oh, I agree, but my point is that they’re the same thing. Gridman is frequently referred to as a visitor or guest and an unwanted guest in a computer system is basically the definition of a virus.

Anti’s single purpose is to get rid of Gridman, who for some reason is busting up the virtual world that Akane is inhabiting. He’s straight up protective software. Or acts like it, at least. It explains his focus on it above all else.
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Zof





PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:05 pm Reply with quote
When they copy the completely nonsensical ending in an homage to Evangelion, like Big-O did, I just hope they see the comedy of it and make it funny.

Yanno, where they pretend it's a French arthouse movie at the end, and suddenly it's techni-color clowns juggling pencil sharpeners made out of jello while riding fish, but a bunch of um, smart people pretend they understand the ending for a decade anyway. Until Gintama literally picks on those fans specifically by making the fake arthouse ending a joke forever.
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pharmboy23



Joined: 05 Oct 2018
Posts: 196
PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:13 pm Reply with quote
I wonder if Akane is trapped in that world and the team is actually there to get her out? (Whether they realize that or not.) She has no desire to spend time in the real world, apparently, so she might not even notice if she was trapped and being used by Alexis. Contrast to the glass ball in the bottle, which you can’t get free without breaking the shell around it and the scene of Gridman looming up before her in the OP over the line about being there to “rescue you” from boredom.

I’m not familiar with the original Gridman so that’s probably way off base, but an easy way to a redemption arc is to make her the ultimate victim of everything. Since this is all digital that she keeps reforming it’s not like she’s even killed anybody, despite Yuta’s calling her out in the restaurant.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4352
Location: New York
PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:20 pm Reply with quote
Yuta meeting Alexis felt like the most awkward meeting of your friend’s dad ever. Like “hi, I’ve heard a lot about you, meat thing. How are you?”
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Cab329



Joined: 01 Apr 2017
Posts: 132
PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 1:30 pm Reply with quote
The final episode will probably be Akane leaving and being in the real world (likely the final battle with Alexis will happen in the Cyberspace world (the blue green city not the virtual city) as a throwback to the original series.

One thing I noticed upon rewatch is that Akane is the first character we meet and she sees Gridman and the weapons arrive, then we go to Yuta, so I’m guessing Akane will be the character we go out on and maybe we’ll see her reconnecting with the leads’ real world equivalents.
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Mon Nov 19, 2018 3:10 pm Reply with quote
Stop hurting Anti! He only wants to eat nice food and kill Gridman... Sad
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