Confrontation

We already had our obligatory swimsuit episode, and this week it’s time for the obligatory school festival episode. Maybe by the end of the season we’ll also get the obligatory summer festival episode as well to complete the trifecta.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but school festival episodes are by far the worst part of any high school-centered anime. And, with that in mind I can confidently say that this was the best school festival episode I remember ever seeing, specifically because the school festival is merely the backdrop.

Typically in these episodes we have to suffer through what essentially amounts to a filler episode in which the characters usually take part in a school play of some sort. Occasionally there are other activities involved, but a poorly written play or movie is the norm, which is too realistic.

Yuuta, Utsumi, and Rikka all hate that they have to participate in the school festival, and I’ve never related to high school protagonists more than I did when I learned this. And, Akane hates school festivals so much that she’s willing to destroy the entire school in order to stop it.

This time around, since the Gridman Alliance already knows of her true nature, Akane decides to tell Yuuta, Utsumi, and Rikka about her plan six days in advance, and even shows them the Kaiju she’s created for the occasion. This Kaiju is a mecha version of the first Kaiju Yuuta and Gridman defeated.

But, now that they know when and where the next Kaiju attack will take place, the Gridman Alliance has time to prepare a counter-strategy for stopping the attack. However, the alliance is unable to come to an agreement regarding how they should proceed.

On one side is Utsumi, who believes they need to prepare for the fight against this new Kaiju by figuring out a way to have Gridman and all four of the Neon Genesis Junior High students fight at once. This is the name given to the other members of the Gridman Alliance, and is what I’ll be referring to them as from now on.

On the other side is Rikka, who wants to talk things out with Akane and convince her not to attack the school. It’s not so much that Rikka thinks Akane will actually listen to her, but more so that she doesn’t want to have to fight against someone whom she considers a friend.

Akane Shinjou

Over the next few days, Yuuta and Utsumi decide that confronting Akane about not destroying the school may be a viable option as well, and so they decide to try it out. But, as one would expect, this doesn’t work, and Akane refuses to allow the school to remain the way it is.

Later on, Rikka attempts to do the same thing, by talking with Akane on the bus as the two tend to do. This is the first time Rikka confronts Akane about the deaths of their classmates due to Akane’s Kaiju, and like any good mentally unstable antagonist, Akane admits that she orchestrated the attack.

Since Rikka was indifferent to the other girls, Akane suggests that she should then be indifferent to whether or not they’re alive as well. I think it was at this point that Rikka truly began to realize just how far gone Akane really is. But, even so, she still sees Akane as her friend.

And now, this is where the episode really gets interesting. We’ve already been told by the female Kaiju that Akane has destroyed and rebuilt the city countless times to make it the way she wants, but we now learn from Akane herself that she may have created the city to begin with.

She explains to Rikka that she knows no matter what she does or how many people she ends up killing, Rikka will still be her friend because she was made that way. In fact, the reason everyone seems to like Akane is because she made them that way, or at least she had her Kaiju make them that way.

By the end of the episode, Rikka hasn’t told the rest of the Gridman Alliance about what Akane said regarding the people of the city, but when they do learn of this, it will likely spark a debate about free will. So, let’s take a look at how the idea of free will could come into play, and what precedent there is for it.

If Akane truly is a god and the creator of the city as well as all of its inhabitants, then do those inhabitants truly have free will? To some extent, it seems that they do because they’re capable of doing things which are against Akane’s wishes, which is the argument I’ve used to illustrate that she isn’t really a god.

But, let’s pretend she really is a god.

The citizens have a type of free will, but not when it comes to Akane specifically. They can do things she doesn’t like, but they’re incapable of disliking her. This would imply that Akane doesn’t actually mind the differences people have as long as they’re her friends.

So why did Akane create this city? Simply because she was alone and felt that this was the only way to make friends, much like that one episode of Pokémon in which the gym leader, Sabrina, turns trainers into dolls to keep them as her friends.

If this is the case, then we’ll likely see the Gridman Alliance begin to not only fight to save the city, but to prove that the citizens have free will and are willing to fight to keep it. If you’re familiar with previous Trigger, or even Gainax, anime, this shouldn’t really be much of a surprise.

When working at Gainax, Hiroyuki Imaishi directed a little anime called Gurren Lagann which is about humans rising up against a suppressor because they would rather fight and die as they please than live trapped underground. He then went on to be a founding member of Trigger.

There, he worked on another anime called Kill la Kill, in which humans rise up to fight their clothing overlords in a similar manner. He’s worked on many other series over the years as well, but from these two standout anime in particular, we can see that stories about fighting for free will are something near and dear to him.

So, although he isn’t the director of SSSS.Gridman, the fact that it’s being made by his studio, Trigger, should be enough evidence that the theme of free will is likely to come up at some point.

Full Power Gridman

And now, back to the episode at hand. After talking to Akane doesn’t work in stopping her from releasing her Kaiju, because it was never going to, the Alliance has to come up with an alternate plan of attack.

Utsumi comes up with the idea of shrinking Gridman and the Neon Genesis Junior High students down to half-size so that Junk can handle all of them at once, but this still doesn’t solve the problem of the fight taking place at the school. With so many people there for the festival, there are sure to be fatalities.

Rikka and Yuuta then come up with the idea to strike first. By this, they don’t mean to attack Akane before she has the chance to attack the school, but instead to send Gridman to the school before the Kaiju even appears. Gridman’s appearance would spark an evacuation, and then the school would be an empty place to fight.

Now, this sounds like a good plan in theory, and it does end up working as expected, but I saw a few flaws as the fight between Gridman and the mecha Kaiju played out. The first being that although Gridman and the Neon Genesis Junior High students are smaller than usual, when they combine they’re somehow full-sized.

While that issue doesn’t really matter, this next one does. The fight spills outside the confines of the school grounds into the city, where all the people from the school likely evacuated to. Further, Gridman throws the mecha Kaiju around into streets and buildings like it’s no big deal.

Sure, the school may have been saved, but the rest of the city sure wasn’t. It’s hard to believe there would be zero fatalities after a brawl like that, and this is something I’ve noticed in previous episodes as well. The only reason I’m bringing it up now is because they had a plan in place to lower the number of fatalities this time around.

After the fight, we get a shot of Anti watching Gridman from down at street level, and the fact that he isn’t taking this chance to get in on the action shows a change in his character. I’ve mentioned many times that I believe he’ll switch sides, and every new episode seems to reinforce this idea.

Conclusion

So what do you think is the true nature of Akane Shinjou? Do you think she really is a god who created the city and its inhabitants? At this point I’m still unsure, but I can see how arguments could be made for either side. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

Scheme

At this point in the season I’m surprised that SSSS.Gridman isn’t rated higher than it currently is on MAL. The Japanese audience seems to understand how good this anime is, but for some reason it’s failing in the West as actual bad anime, like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, do well.

To be fair, SSSS.Gridman is rated as a 7.10 and I have it rated as a 7 as of right now, so it would seem that I’m being hypocritical. However, an average of 7.10 on MAL is roughly the equivalent of me rating something a 4. MAL users don’t understand the concept of a 10-point system, so most anime lie between 6 and 9.

Unfortunately, I think that first episode really turned a lot of people off from this series. I know I had the first episode rated as a 4, but it’s been improving with every consecutive episode. If Western viewers stuck past the first episode, I think they would understand how good it is.

While I understand that first impressions are important, and SSSS.Gridman didn’t give a very good one, I don’t think that’s the only reason people aren’t watching it. The fact that it’s a monster-of-the-week super robot series based on super sentai shows probably has more to do with it.

I can understand not watching an anime because it isn’t “your type,” but I still don’t consider mecha anime my type and I enjoy SSSS.Gridman. I’d say that fantasy and drama are my main two genres, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize and enjoy a good mecha series as well.

Although, perhaps my choice in mecha series isn’t to be trusted considering I think Eureka Seven is a 5/10 and everyone else seems to love it. I still need to give that series a rewatch at some point, but there’s just not enough time in the day for that.

Either way, if you never started SSSS.Gridman, or if you dropped it after the first episode or two, I highly recommend giving it a shot to show its worth. It’s also a great way to end the 2018 year for the mecha genre after the disaster that was Darling in the Franxx.

The Melancholy of Akane Shinjo

This week’s episode focused on one of the two rival best-girls, Akane Shinjo. Last week we were told that Akane was actually a god and that she uses the Kaiju she creates to destroy the things she doesn’t like in the city, and then rebuilds it how she wants.

Akane herself verifies this in this most recent episode, but I’m not so sure this is actually the case anymore. The more I think about it, the less likely it seems that Akane is actually a god in the same way that someone like Haruhi Suzumiya is.

Haruhi doesn’t realize that she’s a god, and yet she can drastically alter the universe on a whim. On the other hand, Akane recognizes that she’s a god, and yet has to take roundabout actions to change a single city to her liking.

For example, Akane informs Yuuta that she had the girls from episode 1 killed because they stepped on the food she gave to Yuuta. However, to kill them, she had to create a Kaiju, then have Alexis bring that Kaiju to life, and then hope the Kaiju accomplishes its mission.

If Akane were really a god, wouldn’t she just be able to erase the existence of the other girls without all those steps? I’ll get to talking about him more in the latter portion of this post, but I think Alexis is actually the one manipulating Akane, as I said last week, and that he’s deceiving her into believing she’s a god.

God or not, Akane is still the antagonist of the series for now.

None of the other members of the Gridman Alliance, aside from Max, believe Yuuta’s story about the Kaiju child who told him of Akane’s true nature. Because of this, Yuuta attempts to confront Akane about it personally, but chickens out at the last second.

Interestingly, it’s Akane who then later confronts Yuuta at his house and affirms all of his suspicions about her. During this interaction, we see a slightly different side of Akane, one which seems to be in love with Yuuta, possibly to the point of obsession.

Akane has always shown interest in Yuuta, though up until this point it mainly felt that she was interested in him because he was teaming up with Gridman. Now it seems that she’s actually been interested in him this whole time in spite of him teaming up with Gridman.

Her goal ever since Gridman first appeared was to destroy him, but in this episode she actually asks Yuuta to join her. This could be due to her recognizing that Gridman is too powerful for her Kaiju to defeat, or it could be due to her feelings for him.

I know, she told Anti to go kill Yuuta in an earlier episode, but pink-haired yandere girls are nothing new. From conversations between Akane and Rikka, it’s implied that these two were once friends, and they may have drifted apart after Akane realized Yuuta liked Rikka instead of her.

Let’s also not forget that Akane broke into Yuuta’s house and room, then laid on his bed while inhaling his scent off his pillow. If this doesn’t tell you that she’s obsessed with Yuuta, then I don’t know what will.

Alexis Kerib

The primary antagonist has finally been formally introduced to our hero. Alexis Kerib is the supposed alien who’s working alongside Akane to create the Kaiju. His motive is still unknown, but in this episode we see him act on his own for the first time, hinting at the fact he isn’t merely subservient to Akane.

While Akane was out with Yuuta, Alexis let Anti into Akane’s room and allowed him to create a Kaiju to be brought to life. Since Anti is a Kaiju himself, he’s unable to go against his “mission,” which is to destroy Gridman. However, if Gridman doesn’t appear, he can’t change into his Kaiju form to defeat him.

Instead of waiting for Akane to create another Kaiju so that Gridman would appear, Anti took matters into his own hands and created a Kaiju to draw out Gridman. Since Alexis allowed him to do this, it hints towards his true goal having something to do with Gridman’s defeat.

I find it likely that it was originally Alexis who gave Akane the idea of defeating Gridman, and Alexis is probably Gridman’s original enemy from before he lost his memories. The giant city in the sky also probably where Alexis is from, and perhaps may be the origin of Gridman as well.

What does this mean for the relationship between Akane and Alexis going forward? I’ve been a constant proponent for the theory that Akane will eventually change sides and become a member of the Gridman Alliance, and this betrayal by Alexis may be the first step towards that.

I’ve also expressed my prediction that Anti will join the Gridman Alliance in the end as well, and I believe we’ve also seen the first step towards this happen as well. At the end of the episode, Alexis attacks Anti for failing to defeat Gridman once again, and this may show Anti that Alexis is his true enemy, not Gridman.

As a final remark on Alexis, it’s interesting that he meets with Yuuta at Akane’s request. Considering he appears to be the driving force behind the destruction of Gridman, it’s strange that he would meet Yuuta in such a way and not attempt to do anything to him.

There’s definitely more going on behind the scenes that’s yet to be uncovered about Alexis Kerib.

Conclusion

What did you think of this recent episode of SSSS.Gridman? Are you even watching Gridman? Let me know the answers to these questions in the comments as well as your predictions for the series going forward.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

Introduction

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been enjoying SSSS.Gridman more and more, and this week’s episode only served to reinforce that trend. However, at the same time I’m a bit worried about how exactly the series is going to play out in the end.

Mecha anime are typically at least two cours in length because they tend to go into some pretty substantial world building. Even Darling in the Franxx was two cours and that series threw all of its world building out the window. But, SSSS.Gridman is only one cour.

This single cour would be fine if the series stays solely as a super robot anime, but with this latest episode we’ve begun to learn more about the surrounding world, and this new information has raised more questions than it answered. This also may have been the first episode to not follow the monster-of-the-week format.

So, will there be enough time in the remaining six episodes to answer all of the new questions which have arisen? While this is something I’m worried about, I also trust that Trigger knows what they’re doing. Sure, FranXX was a mess, but that wasn’t a true Trigger original anime.

Contact

In this episode each of our three protagonists have unforeseen interactions with others. Utsumi is approached by Akane, Rikka takes care of Anti, and Yuuta is helped by a Kaiju. Let’s go through each of these interactions in that respective order.

We know that Utsumi has had a crush on Akane since the beginning, but Akane never really seemed to pay him much attention, as he expected. However, this week Akane surprises him in a bookstore by showing interest in the same Kaiju manga as Utsumi.

The two then continue to talk for the rest of the day until Akane asks Utsumi about Yuuta. Specifically she asks if anything has changed about Yuuta ever since he lost his memory, and at this point Utsumi all but ends the conversation.

I had mentioned last week that Utsumi would probably allow Akane to join the Gridman Alliance if she asked, and I still stand by that assertion. The reason Utsumi refused to give Akane information in this situation, however, was due to her explicitly asking about Yuuta.

If she had told him that she remembers all of the Kaiju attacks as well, and then said that she once heard him and Yuuta mention the Gridman Alliance, he probably wouldn’t have gotten suspicious. But, luckily for the Alliance, Utsumi isn’t about to sell out his friends for the girl he likes.

Next up, we have Rikka who meets Anti once again in a park, this time as he’s digging through a trashcan to find food. While Utsumi is suspicious of Akane, Rikka doesn’t really seem to be suspicious of Anti whatsoever, even though she saw him after the previous Kaiju attack.

I’m fairly sure that she just thinks he’s homeless. She buys him food, then takes him back to her house to give him a bath because he’s never had one before. Getting washed by Rikka, that kid doesn’t know how lucky he is.

Luckily for Rikka, Anti doesn’t know about her connection to Yuuta and Gridman. Obviously her connection to Gridman would be a problem, but Anti also just learned that Yuuta “is” Gridman, and so has vowed to kill him as well.

This revelation that Yuuta and Gridman are one and the same, flawed as it is, was one of the more interesting parts of the end of the episode. When Anti attacks Yuuta, only to be stopped by Max and Calibur, they tell him that Yuuta can’t be Gridman because he’s clearly a human.

The important takeaway here is that by using this logic on Anti, the Gridman Alliance have cast doubt on his beliefs. He was born to defeat Gridman, and was told that Yuuta is Gridman, but he’s now realizing that Yuuta can’t actually be Gridman. So what else is he wrong about?

I’m still predicting that Anti is going to end up helping the Gridman Alliance in some way, and this episode may have started that process. Rikka took care of him when Akane wouldn’t, and the Alliance has called into question what he thought he knew about Gridman.

Attack on Kaiju

And now we get to the most interesting part of the episode, Yuuta’s confrontation with a humanoid Kaiju. If you couldn’t tell from my subheading for this section, this part of the episode gave me some serious Attack on Titan vibes.

The child who appears behind Yuuta in an alley introduces herself as a Kaiju who Yuuta is supposed to recognize, but due to his amnesia he has no idea who she is. He also doesn’t believe her when she tells him she’s a Kaiju, but his disbelief is quickly dissolved after she changes her appearance before his eyes.

From this Kaiju we learn a lot about the world, but as I mentioned in the introduction, even more questions arise. For starters, we find out that although this girl is a Kaiju, she wasn’t created by Akane, the creator of the Kaiju which have recently been attacking the city.

It’s also revealed that Yuuta saved the predecessor of this female Kaiju, and that’s why she believed Yuuta would recognize her. But, it doesn’t seem like this Kaiju is really on Yuuta’s side. Instead, she’s merely passing helpful information on to Yuuta as thanks for saving her predecessor, whoever that may be.

Could Yuuta’s saving of this predecessor be the reason he lost his memories? We know that after Kaiju attacks people’s memories of the incident are erased, so perhaps something similar is at work in the case of Yuuta’s amnesia.

Next we learn that although Akane is destroying the city with the Kaiju she creates, she’s also the one who rebuilds the city again each time, also by using Kaiju. It seems like the massive Kaiju we always see in the distance are the ones used to rebuild the city after its destruction.

The way these Kaiju rebuild is by spraying some sort of gas over everything, which seems to also reset the memories of all the civilians. Akane is continuously destroying and rebuilding the city to her liking, because, as we learn, she’s basically a god. Haruhi Suzumiya, anyone?

But, although she’s a god, she isn’t an evil one as we might believe based on her actions. Alexis, the anti-Gridman being who lives in Akane’s computer, is apparently some sort of alien who has been using her to fulfill some unknown goal. At the end of the episode we see he can also manifest himself outside her computer.

In one of my previous posts I predicted that Akane would also join the Gridman Alliance at some point in the series after the protagonists accept her for who she is, and the fact that she’s just being used by Alexis seems to reinforce that. Further, I made a prediction that Akane actually wants Gridman to beat her Kaiju.

From her interaction with Utsumi, we learn that Akane is interested in super sentai vs Kaiju manga, which makes sense considering her creation of real Kaiju. But, what if the reason she wanted to create Kaiju in the first place was so that someone like Gridman would appear to fight them?

If this is the case, then I assume Alexis appeared before her to grant her this wish by making her Kaiju come to life. But, he did so knowing that he would be able to manipulate her once he gains her trust, because he needs her power to fulfill whatever diabolical plan he has.

Now you don’t even need to watch the rest of SSSS.Gridman, you know what the whole plot is going to be.

But, there are a few more questions I don’t have the answers to, so I guess you can keep watching for those. One such question is what happened to the world outside the city? The female Kaiju takes Yuuta on the train to see the outside world, and what’s there, or what’s not, is fascinating.

Outside the city is a vast expanse of nothingness. It’s unclear if this extends on forever, or if at some point it’s possible to cross through it into the outside world. What I can assume though, is that the world outside the city wasn’t always like this, and I’ll explain why shortly.

First, let me explain for anyone who hasn’t seen the episode that there’s a vast cloud of gas emitted by Kaiju surrounding the city. This gas puts everyone who ventures into it asleep unless they’re listening to music, because music fairies or something. I don’t really know.

So, this could be an explanation for why Yuuta, Utsumi, and the Gridman Alliance all fell asleep on the train in the last episode. If this was the reason for that, then that means their final destination was somewhere beyond the gas, which is why they woke up there.

However, them falling asleep on the train could also have simply been a kind of foreshadowing. Either way, Akane is the cause of this gas it would seem.

I wasn’t sure what exactly we were seeing at the end of last episode, so I didn’t mention it, but after the fight with the mountain Kaiju the ground was still being destroyed as our heroes were leaving on the train. I think what we were seeing was the destruction of the world outside the city.

There are two possible causes as far as I’m concerned. The first is that Akane is unaware that the outside world is being destroyed by her Kaiju and that the gas is slowly spreading outwards to envelop the whole world. If this is the case, it’s likely part of Alexis’ evil plan.

The second possible option is that Akane chose for the outside world to be destroyed because she didn’t like it for one reason or another. In the case of the rafting site from last week, Akane didn’t have fun on the trip, and this could have caused her to destroy that area.

And, finally let’s get to the reasons for my comparison of SSSS.Gridman to Attack on Titan. First of all, we have our second Kaiju-shifter, but this time she’s not an enemy. Will we learn that Yuuta is actually a Kaiju-shifter as well?

Second, the Kaiju are creating the gas which essentially keeps the humans of the city in, much like how titans make up the walls in Attack on Titan. Is the Kaiju gas actually protecting the city from an even greater threat? Will Yuuta have to seal a hole in the gas by using his Kaiju form?

Conclusion

What do you think is going to happen in the next six episodes of SSSS.Gridman? Do you think my predictions about Akane, Anti, and Alexis are correct? Or do you think something else is going on behind the scenes? Also, who do you think this Kaiju predecessor is/was?

If you enjoyed this post, let me know by clicking the like button ❤ down below. Also, follow me on Twitter @DoubleSama to keep up to date with all my latest content.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

Introduction

This week we get SSSS.Gridman’s equivalent of an obligatory beach episode. That’s right, the gang heads to the mountains for some rafting, which means it’s officially the swimsuit episode. After the post, let me know in the comments whether you’re on Team Akane or Team Rikka.

I think I have to go with Team Rikka, although Akane certainly is good in her own right. I prefer Rikka’s character design, and I think the fact that we don’t really know much about Akane yet is holding her back.

Provocation

The first half of the episode doesn’t really have much substance for me to discuss. Basically, we see Yuuta, Utsumi, Rikka, Akane, and the rest of their class on their field trip, with nothing out of the ordinary. Each of these characters continue to act in the same ways we’ve seen them act up until this point.

Yuuta is enjoying himself, but still can’t shake the feeling that something’s not quite right. However, this likely has more to do with his amnesia than him actually suspecting a Kaiju is going to appear.

Utsumi, on the other hand, is more carefree. He’s able to completely ignore the fact that a Kaiju could appear at any moment, and is just happy he has the chance to be near Akane while she’s in a swimsuit.

Rikka is staying close to her girl friends rather than hanging out with Yuuta or Utsumi, which is expected. Although she undoubtedly sees these two as friends at this point, she needs to keep up appearances when with the rest of her classmates.

Finally, Akane simply doesn’t want to be on the field trip and generally wants nothing to do with anyone there. However, she does take this time to try to get closer to Yuuta, Utsumi, and Rikka so as to learn the secret of Gridman.

We constantly see her trying to befriend Rikka and Yuuta in order to gather this information, but I think she would have a much easier time if she tried to get Utsumi to talk instead. It’s unlikely that Utsumi would say no if Akane asked to join the Gridman Alliance.

When the class stop to take a break, Akane walks off into the forest by herself and calls her best friend, Alexis (the anti-Gridman guy in her computer). She tells him to unleash her latest Kaiju, which is her largest one yet.

But before we get into the part of the episode that actually involves this new Kaiju, I want to briefly discuss the Kaiju as a whole. As of the end of this episode, it’s still unclear to our protagonists and ourselves where exactly the Kaiju “come from.”

We know that Akane molds them out of clay and then Alexis gives them life, but we don’t yet know exactly how or why he does this. But, for now let’s pretend that the how and why don’t matter. If we do that, then we might be fooled into thinking we do know where the Kaiju come from.

As I mentioned, we see that Akane creates them and Alexis brings them to life, so what more is there? Well, there’s the fact that there are giant Kaiju towering over the surrounding area which seemingly have nothing to do with those created by Akane.

So far, all of the Kaiju Akane has created have appeared separately from those which are constantly shown as silhouettes in the background. Does this mean those Kaiju are different from the ones she’s created? Or, are these simply the ones she’s created, but then put on her shelves?

The answer to this question may have been hinted at in this most recent episode. We saw Akane’s new Kaiju sculpture at the beginning of the episode, but it wasn’t brought to life until later on. However, even before it was brought to life, it was “out in the world” disguised as a mountain.

From this we can assume that as soon as Akane creates a Kaiju, it exists in the world in an inanimate form, much like those we see towering in the background. They then are only activated when Akane gives Alexis the command. If this is the case, all those background Kaiju probably are Akane’s.

The Mountain Kaiju

So now that Akane’s mountain Kaiju has been awakened, it’s up to the Gridman Alliance to take it down. The only problem is that in order to combine with Gridman, Yuuta needs to be in close proximity to the computer known as Junk.

Akane is almost 100% certain that Yuuta is the one combining with Gridman, but she doesn’t know how he does it. Remember, Akane can simply call Alexis and thereby have him bring one of her previously crafted Kaiju to life, so it’s not unreasonable for her to think Yuuta can do something similar.

She’s then disappointed when Gridman doesn’t immediately appear, and becomes more distraught and agitated the longer it takes. This begs the question, does Akane really want to defeat Gridman, or does she like seeing Gridman defeat her Kaiju?

This may not seem evident at first, but not only was Akane annoyed with the time it was taking Gridman to appear, but she was also annoyed with the destruction caused by her own Kaiju getting in her way. What would happen if her Kaiju defeated Gridman?

If Gridman were defeated by the Kaiju, would the Kaiju cease to exist or would it continue its rampage forever? If the latter is true, that would severely inconvenience Akane, but if the former is true, what would be the point of the Kaiju in the first place? This is the Kaiju dilemma.

While the fact that Yuuta isn’t near Junk is indeed part of the reason it’s taking Gridman so long to appear, the main reason it’s taking so long is because he has no way of contacting the Gridman Alliance. Yuuta, Utsumi, and Rikka all left their phones back in the lockers, which are in the direction of the Kaiju.

These lockers are also 5km uphill from their location when the Kaiju appears. Luckily, they find a payphone on the way there, but it takes all three of our protagonists to make full use of it.

Yuuta is needed to combine with Gridman once Junk arrives, Utsumi is needed to pay for the call, and Rikka is needed for the number of her family’s store. I was glad Rikka was actually needed for once, even if all she did was provide a phone number.

But, remember, all of this effort went in to just calling the Gridman Alliance. They then need to pack up Junk, transport it into the mountains via train, and meet up with Yuuta so he can combine with Gridman. A few hours probably passed between the arrival of the Kaiju and the arrival of Gridman.

When Gridman does manage to arrive, we see another new form. Last week we saw Max Gridman, and this week we’re introduced to Buster Gridman which is the combination of Gridman and Borr’s armored vehicle with rockets and drills.

Before combining, Gridman and Borr attempt to fight the Kaiju while separated. Gridman fails to stop the Kaiju’s attacks, and Borr uses her rockets, which are filled with water at this time, to put out the many fires caused by the Kaiju.

Then, the humanoid Kaiju makes his appearance. This time around, he noticeably didn’t engage the mountain Kaiju in battle and start a free-for-all, but instead worked with it to push Gridman and Borr back. Borr then uses rockets filled with some sort of hardening adhesive to restrict the humanoid Kaiju’s movements.

At this point, Gridman and Borr combine to take down the mountain Kaiju while the humanoid Kaiju is stuck. However, since this is a mecha anime and also an anime created by Trigger, the humanoid Kaiju develops a new ability which allows it to fire rockets just like Buster Gridman.

In the end, Buster Gridman uses some giant lasers to destroy the mountain Kaiju, because why not, and pieces of the massive Kaiju land on the humanoid Kaiju, defeating him again for now. With the day saved, everyone can go back home worry-free.

The Gridman Alliance also learns that Akane made it out of the forest safely and was seen leaving on the previous train to go back home. Also, Rikka sees the humanoid Kaiju in his human form off near the forest’s edge. While she doesn’t yet know his true identity, she’ll likely be the one to figure it out.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on this week’s obligatory swimsuit episode of SSSS.Gridman? Are you on Team Akane or Team Rikka? What do you think is the true nature of the Kaiju? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

Introduction

Last week there was a Twitter poll to decide which of four anime would be receiving the weekly, episodic review treatment, and in the end there was a tie between My Sister, My Writer, and SSSS.Gridman. To resolve this tie, I used the good, old-fashioned method of flipping a coin, and SSSS.Gridman won!

So, since we’re starting from episode 4, let’s go through a quick recap of the series so far before getting into this week’s episode.

High school student, Yuuta Hibiki, lost all of his memories (as one does) and then meets a super-powered robot, Gridman, living inside of an old computer. By being transported into the computer, Yuuta can then combine with Gridman and together they fight the Kaiju terrorizing the city.

The Kaiju are giant monsters (think Godzilla), and their true purpose as well as where they come from is unknown. What we do know is that one of Yuuta’s classmates, Akane Shinjou, is the designer of these Kaiju, and she has an anti-Gridman-like ally.

Two of Yuuta’s other classmates, Rikka Takarada and Shou Utsumi, along with four older people whose names I won’t get into right now, Yuuta, and Gridman, make up the Gridman Alliance. They’re goal is to rid the city of the Kaiju which have been devastating it.

Each of the four older people I mentioned have the ability to be transported into the computer like Yuuta, but instead of fusing with Gridman, they become powerful weapons for Gridman to use. For instance, Samurai Calibur turns into a giant sword.

Finally, anyone who gets killed by a Kaiju is erased from recent history, and appears as if they have been dead for years. After each Kaiju attack, the city is magically fixed, and most of the civilians are none the wiser; only the Gridman Alliance and their foes remember the battle.

Suspicion

Now that you’ve had a crash course in SSSS.Gridman, it’s time to get into episode 4, titled “Suspicion.” As the title implies, this episode primarily focused on suspicion, but from two different angles.

On one hand we have Akane who’s trying to figure out Yuuta’s relation to Gridman, and on the other hand we have Yuuta who’s trying to figure out whether or not Rikka is interested in someone else. In the middle, we also have Rikka who seems to be getting caught up in everything.

The episode starts off with Akane attempting to get closer to Rikka so that she can learn Yuuta’s secrets through her. From this initial interaction, we learn that Akane and Rikka used to be friends, or at least friendlier with each other. This may have something to do with Akane’s backstory later on.

But, while Akane is successful in getting Rikka to talk to her, she’s unsuccessful in getting any information about Yuuta from her. Later on, Rikka’s friends invite her to go on a group date with some college students, and Akane tags along as well in hopes of asking Rikka more about Yuuta.

However, every time Akane attempts to ask Rikka about Yuuta, she’s interrupted by one or another of the college boys attempting to talk to her or Rikka. Frustrated that nobody will leave the two of them alone, Akane leaves the group date early.

Meanwhile, Yuuta, Shou, and the rest of the Gridman Alliance have been stalking the girls on their group date because Yuuta is interested in Rikka and Shou is interested in Akane. Once Akane leaves, however, Shou and the Gridman Alliance add-ons abandon the mission, and leave Yuuta alone.

After the date concludes, we see Akane back in her room, crafting a new type of Kaiju with the specific goal of killing the four college boys who kept getting in her way during the date. The next day, Rikka notices that her friends only remember one of the four boys, and she realizes a Kaiju must have attacked the other three.

A New Kaiju Appears

Everything up until this point in the episode was fairly standard, but here’s where we begin to get new and potentially interesting developments. Normally, Gridman and his allies are able to sense the appearance of Kaiju, but that’s not the case this time around.

Instead, only Calibur realizes a new Kaiju may be nearby, and it’s not exactly clear why this is. I think that rather than sensing this new Kaiju, Calibur was simply following Rikka (for what reason I couldn’t say), and just happened to be nearby when she and the college boy were attacked.

So, we already know that Akane can create Kaiju with any appearance she wants, and she can give them specific instructions such as to kill a certain person or people. However, the ability for this new Kaiju to not be sensed by the Gridman Alliance implies that Akane can do even more.

Perhaps Akane can give the Kaiju specific abilities such as this one, or perhaps this is simply a plot hole. Either way, we’ll have to see a bit more of the series before we can come to a definitive conclusion about this, if a conclusion is even possible to come to.

After rescuing Rikka and the college boy from the Kaiju, Calibur calls the rest of the Gridman Alliance and informs them of their new adversary. Upon hearing that Rikka’s okay, Yuuto suits up with Gridman to take on the monster.

But, Gridman’s fight against this new form of Kaiju is interrupted when the previous Kaiju, which hides in plain sight, posing as a student, suddenly appears and joins the brawl. Unexpectedly, however, the two Kaiju don’t seem to be working together, and instead a three-way fight ensues.

The Kaiju which has a human form is fighting against the new Kaiju because it believes that defeating Gridman is the reason it was born. Because of this belief, it refuses to kill anyone else that isn’t Gridman, which is why the new Kaiju was made in the first place.

At this point in the series I’m predicting this humanoid Kaiju is going to become the Viral of this series. For those who don’t know, Viral is a character from Gurren Lagann who was originally an antagonist, but allies with the humans once a greater threat appears.

Back to the battle at hand, despite it technically being a free-for-all, Gridman requires help if he’s to defeat two Kaiju at once. Instead of Calibur going to help him alone, all four of the older Gridman Alliance members jump into the computer together.

At this point, I was really expecting some super combining action, but instead the computer freezes because since it’s old, its processors can’t handle all of them at once. After Rikka resets the computer by unplugging it, only one of the Gridman Alliance members joins the fight, Max.

While Calibur takes the form of a giant sword when transported through the computer, Max takes the form of an armored vehicle with canons. When combined with Gridman, he becomes a pair of super-powerful arms, and creates Max Gridman!

Through the power of Max Gridman, and probably friendship, Yuuta is able to defeat the two Kaiju, although the humanoid one reverts back to its human form instead of being destroyed. The fact that it lives to fight another day (yet again) reinforces my earlier prediction.

The falling out between the humanoid Kaiju and its creator, Akane, also doesn’t seem to have been resolved at the end of this episode, which further strengthens my prediction that it will later become an ally of Gridman. But will Akane eventually turn to the side of justice as well?

It wouldn’t be a DoubleSama post if I didn’t mention Monogatari, so let me do just that. Akane’s character reminds me a lot of Nadeko. Just as Nadeko hated that everyone thought she was cute, Akane seems to despise that everyone views her as the most beautiful girl around.

Because of this, I’m more inclined to believe that Akane is more misunderstood than purely evil. It’s possible that if the Gridman Alliance accepts her for who she is, that she’ll actually join their side, and her mentor will become the main antagonist.

However, this brings up the issue of all the countless people who died due to the Kaiju she created. Would our protagonists forget those deaths ever occurred, or will we perhaps learn that Akane was being manipulated? Only time will tell.

At the end of the episode, Yuuta attempts to ask Rikka on a date, only to be misunderstood by Rikka thinking he meant that he wanted to go out to eat with the entire Gridman Alliance. Better luck next time, Yuuta.

Speaking of Yuuta and Rikka’s relationship, I think it should have been obvious from episode 1 that they’re going to end up together in some capacity. We may never be told explicitly that they’re dating in the end, but I doubt even Trigger would throw in a plot twist to mess up their relationship.

Conclusion

So what did you think of this episode of SSSS.Gridman? Also, what did you think of this first episodic review of SSSS.Gridman? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, as well as your predictions for the future of this series.

Also, while this is going live on a Thursday, my future weekly reviews of SSSS.Gridman will typically go live on Wednesdays unless otherwise stated. Where would this be stated? Well, I’m glad you asked. Follow me on Twitter @DoubleSama to keep up to date with new posts and other notifications.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to click the like button down below. There’s also a website Discord server which is open to everyone, so come join if you’d like to be a more active member of the community. Finally, there’s a Patreon page as well for those who want to go a step further.

My review of the next episode is available here.