Gridman Universe Anime Movie Review

Characters from two worlds collide…

Generally, I try to keep up with every theatrically-released anime each year, though certain elements outwith my control can conspire against me. In the UK, theatrical anime distribution is spotty, to say the least. Since my local independent cinema closed during the pandemic, the number of non-blockbuster movies available to see locally has plummeted. Whereas my local (single) Vue and (two) Cineworld branches used to show most anime during their release windows, at least for a single evening, for some reason they’ve stopped doing this for all but the most prominent properties. Miyazaki, Shinkai, or Hosoda? No problem. Likely to have multiple showings. Mega-popular franchises like Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia? Usually ok, if Crunchyroll is the distributor.

However, if the film in question is distributed by UK boutique label Anime Limited, as many of them are, then Cineworld seems to have stopped taking their calls, and Vue limits the number of branches that show their films. Sometimes even Crunchyroll’s films don’t open here either. This means that the most recent releases, like last weekend’s preview of the first three episodes of DAN DA DAN Season 2, haven’t shown anywhere within a three hour drive of my home. I’m not travelling all the way to Edinburgh or Glasgow purely to watch a single film.

SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon. Both streaming on Crunchyroll, both essential to watch before Gridman Universe.

Sometimes, anime films don’t even garner a wide theatrical release in the West, at all. Occasionally I’ll be lucky to see these at Scotland Loves Anime, a once-yearly film festival. In the strange case of Gridman Universe, Studio Trigger’s highly anticipated movie sequel to their 2018 SSSS.Gridman and 2021 SSSS.Dynazenon anime series, it’s bizarre that it never received a theatrical release even in the US. Over a year and a half after Japanese release, it finally limped onto international Crunchyroll streaming last October with minimal fanfare, and without a dub, unlike its associated TV shows. What happened here? Studio Trigger made Promare, Kill la Kill, and Little Witch Academia, along with tons of other well-loved properties. Surely Gridman Universe deserved better treatment?

I wonder if this is a symptom of the rumoured falling-out between Japanese distributor Toho and Crunchyroll? With a relative monopoly in anime streaming in the West, I’ve heard Crunchyroll’s executives have been a little too arrogant in their treatment of famously sensitive and grudge-holding Japanese license-holders. Lately, Toho purchased US movie distributor GKIDS outright, presumably to lessen their reliance on Sony’s Crunchyroll for their theatrical releases. It’s not only Toho who’s trying to extricate themselves from Sony’s ecosystem. Notice how every new Shonen Jump property now streams on Netflix, and only sometimes does Crunchyroll get to share the license?

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that Gridman Universe’s suboptimal distribution is likely a casualty of behind-the-scenes business shenanigans. It’s a wonder we got it at all, I suppose. There’s still no sign of a US or UK blu-ray release (though we never did get a UK physical for SSSS.Dynazenon). A Hong Kong blu-ray is still available to buy online, and it comes with English subs, so there is a physical ownership option for those desperate enough to import.

Gridman himself.

So just what is Gridman Universe anyway, and who is it for? Perhaps there’s a reason it’s not been more widely publicised or distributed? 2018’s SSSS.Gridman was Studio Trigger’s take on the 1993–1994 live action tokusatsu series Denkou Choujin Gridman, that was localised in the US as Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad (SSSS for short) in 1994–1995 as a rival to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Tokusatsu are those cheap-looking kids’ shows where masked giant heroes suit up to battle towering kaiju, who are essentially men in rubber suits. They’re very silly, but generations of Japanese kids have adored them for decades, and they finally made their way West in the 1990s. I was probably too old to appreciate Power Rangers when it blasted its way into pop culture, so I have zero attachment or nostalgia for this entertainment genre. I don’t think the localised tokusatsu shows were ever quite as popular in the UK as they were in the US, though I remember my youngest son being into the toys (but not the TV show) back in the mid-2000s.

That’s a really cool-looking mech.

Despite my lack of interest in tokusatsu, as a Studio Trigger fan, I religiously watched both SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon as they streamed, and for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed them. As animated shows they lacked the plasticky, rubbery silliness of their source material, and silly overacting in anime is far more tolerable than in live action. Both shows were more complex than their giant-robot-fighting-giant-monsters premise would suggest, with nuanced characters whose relationships changed and evolved throughout. Both shows dealt with themes of social alienation, grief, and unresolved trauma. While I was initially excited for the movie follow-up, I admit the lengthy delay in localisation caused my enthusiasm to evaporate. That’s why it’s taken me almost eight months to find the time to get around to it. Was it worth it? That’s a little hard to answer.

Yuta doesn’t remember anything that happened during the show we watched him in.

Gridman Universe takes place primarily in the original SSSS.Gridman show’s reality, following up a few months after that show’s conclusion. Protagonist Yuta, who previously combined with digital avatar of justice Gridman to defeat the kaiju threatening his city, is amnesic. This isn’t a surprise, as it was revealed at the end of the show (SPOILERS FOR SSSS.GRIDMAN, I GUESS) that during the entire span of the story, Yuta’s consciousness had been displaced by Gridman’s, and that the current version of Yuta has no memories of any of the show’s events, nor of his interactions with any other characters. I’m not sure this was the best narrative tactic, as Yuta spends most of the film trying to rebuild his romantic relationship with main female character Rikka, while everyone repeatly comments on how he wasn’t actually the person whose actions we followed last time. That makes him hard to root for. I feel sorry for him, but that’s not enough of a hook.

Rikka’s still a very distinctive character design, I love the multicolored eyes everyone has.

Yuta’s sort of bumbling through life, obsessing over his attraction to Rikka, but constantly self-sabotaging his efforts to get to know her better. Apart from Yuta, the two other members of the Gridman Alliance, Rikka and friend Sho, engage themselves in producing a school festival play that tells Gridman’s story. (No-one else remembers the city’s repeated destruction, or the kaiju attacks, for plot-related reasons). Yuta wants to help, but none of them can get the story quite right.

The original Gridman Alliance.

Much of the film’s very slow first hour is dedicated to low-stakes slice-of-life material like this, punctuated by a few short creepy scenes where Yuta seems to witness shadowy ghosts, and there’s a single kaiju battle after which the protagonists of sister show SSSS.Dynazenon randomly show up in SSSS.Gridman’s reality, along with Gridknight/Anti, who appears in both shows as primary crossover character. Something’s going on with the multiverse (is it just me, or does everything seem to have a multiverse at the moment?), and both casts need to team up to prevent the unraveling of reality. That’s a pretty major threat, but it takes the film forever for anything to actually happen.

The gang’s all here!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see all of these characters again. SSSS.Dynazenon protagonists Yomogi and Yume don’t get a whole lot more development, their main job is to maintain their cute romantic relationship and inspire Yuta and Rikka to pursue the same. Gauma is resurrected — again — and this time finally manages to find his all-important princess from 5000 years previously. He’s also now a member of the Neon Genesis Junior High Students, a group of supporting characters from SSSS.Gridman who transform into components of Gridman’s weaponry, or can combine into their own robotic kaiju-fighting entity. SSSS.Dynazenon’s supporting characters Koyomi and Chise also make an appearance, but they don’t get to do a whole lot.

Yume and Yomogi are still very cute together.

While the first half is slow to the point of boredom-inducing, the second half is absolutely packed with the kind of insane technicolor-splattered robot-on-kaiju battle action we want to see. I fail to understand how one could watch these primary-coloured transformer toy-esque giant robots fighting enormous daft monsters, toppling skyscrapers in their wake, and not grin at the sheer nuttiness of it all. Each battle escalates with yet more complicated and and extreme transforming combinations, and of course every form and every attack must be announced in highly dramatic fashion. Tokusatsu fans probably enter some kind of heavenly nirvana during these sequences, I merely giggle at how silly the whole thing is. That doesn’t mean I’m not entertained, though it is the animated equivalent of two kids bashing their plastic action figures together excitedly.

That new magical-girl-esque costume is certainly a new look for Akane.

The best part of the film for me is the long-awaited return of erstwhile creator goddess Akane Shinjo, one of SSSS.Gridman’s most important, and interesting characters. She’s grown both as a person, and, apparently, in terms of cleavage. Her new battle uniform is… quite something. I love the resolution of her relationship with her now autonomous creation Anti/Gridknight, her former schoolfriends, and former main antagonist Alexis Kerib, who achieves something of a redemption here.

Akane and Anti reconcile, after she was so horrible to him. Awww, this is so sweet, especially when she musses up his hair.

Gridman Universe’s new big bad, the multiverse-threatening Mad Origin (his name is meant to be an anagram of Gridman), is more of a plot device than a character. We don’t get much explanation for his desire to destroy everything, other than that he is an amalgamation of multiple kaiju, creatures born from negative human emotion. There’s never any doubt that our heroes will eventually, somehow, defeat him. It’s only a matter of combining everyone together into one enormous mecha and unleashing another ultra-powerful magic beam attack of one kind or another. The extended final battle is greatly enhanced by reprising the iconic opening songs from both SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon, before segueing into Gridman Universe’s new, impossibly bombastic and upbeat theme. I know it’s practically a Pavlovian response, but I know I felt emotional!

I have no idea what is going on here, but it’s very shiny.

You can’t go into Gridman Universe expecting the same depth of storytelling and characterisation as found in its predecessors. It’s just not that kind of film. If anything, the constant escalation in its second half reminds me most of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s final twists and turns into unbelievable cosmic spectacle. This feeling of superficiality, even with some of the welcome character arc resolutions, means for me, Gridman Universe is the weakest part of the Gridman franchise. SSSS.Dynazenon is far and above the best, with some excellent character writing far better than I expected for this genre of show.

Gridman doesn’t believe in wearing muted tones.

Gridman Universe perhaps isn’t essential viewing for fans of the prior shows, but I certainly don’t regret watching it. It offers important closure for some dangling plot threads, and though it doesn’t tie both shows together quite as neatly, or as cleverly, as I would have liked, I think it’s still absolutely worthwhile. It doesn’t work very well as a standalone film, and newbies are highly likely to be lost. Was this what limited its chances of theatrical release and an English dub? Who knows? Perhaps one day I’ll go back and watch the whole franchise from the beginning again, I suspect that Gridman Universe may function better as a capstone when there hasn’t been such a lengthy gap between installments.

Gridman Universe Director: Akira Amemiya Screenplay: Keiichi Hasegawa Character design: Masaru Sakamoto Based on: SSSS.Gridman and *SSSS.Dynazenon *Music: Shirō Sagisu Animation production: Studio Trigger JP distributor: Toho Animation JP theatrical release: 24th March, 2023 International distributor: Crunchyroll International streaming release: 24th October, 2024 Hong Kong blu-ray release: 5th April, 2024 Runtime: 118 minutes Language: Japanese audio with English subtitles

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