Discuss individual episodes and first impressions of this anime here. Full reviews should be posted here. Forum rules and post guidelines can be found here.
It really was underappreciated, I was surprised when I finished the first season recently how much atmosphere it manages to have outside of the fights. Guess most people just glossed over it because CGI robots.
It really was underappreciated, I was surprised when I finished the first season recently how much atmosphere it manages to have outside of the fights. Guess most people just glossed over it because CGI robots.
Not sure if it'll still be transformers references but I can see them making references to other toys from the '80s. That whole '80s marketing trick was absolutely amazing to see on twitter.
A very interesting first episode to say the least. It starts right off with telling us waht SSSS stands for this time: Scarred Souls Shine like Stars.
Considering that in SSSS:Gridman it was
Special Signature to Save a Soul, and that was directly related to the final twist and motivations of Gridman.
So for now the show wants to tell us that the theme is gonna be around Scarred Souls. What immediately comes to mind is of course scars as in trauma.
The main character it seems to apply to is obviously Yume Minami, and probably has to deal with her dead sister. Sister which probably had some sort of secret since she left behind what is a very interesting artefact. It seemed like a metal disentanglement puzzles, but the two pieces were also in the shape of an ankh (Egyptian symbol of life) with one half white and the other black. Very interesting.
Yomogi's mother seems to be in a relationship with someone relatively new who is trying to make him like him. So Yomogi's father is probably either dead or his parents simply divorced. The two NEETs didn't give us much to work with but... hey they are NEETs, so something also probably caused that. (btw the girl implied that they are cousins but she also calls him senpai... let's see if that means anything.)
The badass Dynazenon is apparently a 4 pilot mecha which immediately seems off considering the 5 main characters we got so far, I wonder where they will take that.
The choice to not have music up until the appearance of the Kaiju (16:40 in!!) definitely achieved a very eerie atmosphere.
One final think that I took note off, in Kill la Kill Trigger used the classroom scene of the first ep to immediately set up the theme of fascism as a key feature of the show. In this episode we had an equaly brief scene and Ascetism vs Hedonism got mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up also being key concepts.
And now, some speculation knowing Gridman:
Gauma clearly mentioned "someone" summoning the kaiju. So I can only assume he is an agent sent into a dream world again, in which case the most interesting question is.. whose?
Yume Minami seems the obvious choice... and also her name (Yume) literally means dream lol
A very interesting first episode to say the least. It starts right off with telling us waht SSSS stands for this time: Scarred Souls Shine like Stars.
Considering that in SSSS:Gridman it was
Special Signature to Save a Soul, and that was directly related to the final twist and motivations of Gridman.
So for now the show wants to tell us that the theme is gonna be around Scarred Souls. What immediately comes to mind is of course scars as in trauma.
The main character it seems to apply to is obviously Yume Minami, and probably has to deal with her dead sister. Sister which probably had some sort of secret since she left behind what is a very interesting artefact. It seemed like a metal disentanglement puzzles, but the two pieces were also in the shape of an ankh (Egyptian symbol of life) with one half white and the other black. Very interesting.
Yomogi's mother seems to be in a relationship with someone relatively new who is trying to make him like him. So Yomogi's father is probably either dead or his parents simply divorced. The two NEETs didn't give us much to work with but... hey they are NEETs, so something also probably caused that. (btw the girl implied that they are cousins but she also calls him senpai... let's see if that means anything.)
The badass Dynazenon is apparently a 4 pilot mecha which immediately seems off considering the 5 main characters we got so far, I wonder where they will take that.
The choice to not have music up until the appearance of the Kaiju (16:40 in!!) definitely achieved a very eerie atmosphere.
One final think that I took note off, in Kill la Kill Trigger used the classroom scene of the first ep to immediately set up the theme of fascism as a key feature of the show. In this episode we had an equaly brief scene and Ascetism vs Hedonism got mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up also being key concepts.
And now, some speculation knowing Gridman:
Gauma clearly mentioned "someone" summoning the kaiju. So I can only assume he is an agent sent into a dream world again, in which case the most interesting question is.. whose?
Yume Minami seems the obvious choice... and also her name (Yume) literally means dream lol
Goddamn, Dynazenon (the mech) does a better job of making me want to buy the toy of it than I think any other show like this, which says a lot considering that's what the old school tokusatsu this is emulating were literally made for. That would be a fucking bitchin' toy. Also it was pretty dope to watch on the screen too.
Alright, so far we have a guy who doesn't like his mom's boyfriend; a girl whose sister died, it's tearing her family apart, she has some sort of fascination with breaking promises that I'm gonna guess is a sort of trauma around a promise with her dead sister that was left unfulfilled, and also dead sister left behind a curiously mysterious pair of obviously important ahnks (I guess they could also be stylized female symbols, maybe representing some lesbian themes? I'm leaning toward the ahnks though, that feels more in-line with the show); a hikkikomori and his loli cousin who for some reason insists on calling him senpai instead of his name; and the token weird dude who's basically the non-romantic male equivalent of the manic pixie dream girl here to kick-start the plot and draw the rest of them into this crazy Kaiju battling wackiness.
Alright, you have my attention. In particular, they did some really good show-don't-tell work here, I hope we get more of that. Also, we have crazy kaiju battles with this bitchin' toy design. Take me Trigger, show me what you've got for us.
Wait... okay, those are both really interesting and make sense, but I have no idea where the hell you got either of them and now I'm confused and intrigued :o All I've ever seen for that was Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad (y'know, the usual sort of absurd nonsense)...
Wait... okay, those are both really interesting and make sense, but I have no idea where the hell you got either of them and now I'm confused and intrigued :o All I've ever seen for that was Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad (y'know, the usual sort of absurd nonsense)...
Scarred Souls Shine like Stars. was... literally shown in this episode one lol.
While the Gridman one was towards the end of the show, i don't remember which episode frankly.
Scarred Souls Shine like Stars. was... literally shown in this episode one lol.
While the Gridman one was towards the end of the show, i don't remember which episode frankly.
I may have look again, because admittedly I do watch most of my anime while multi-tasking in the kitchen...
On another note... I kept thinking about the show (which is a good sign), and I think I might have our first crackpot potato theory, that the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to question if it's actually as crazy as it initially sounded...
So... what if this is actually a stealth prequel to Gridman, and our 4 non-Gouma main characters are going to become the 4 people who turned into support parts for Gridman?
Hear me out.
So, this idea started from how both groups have a twin-tail loli. But then as I thought about it more, I could totally see blue-hair boy (idk anyone's names yet besides sort of Gouma) becoming the blue-haired guy who makes the airplane part, and hikkikomori dude could totally evolve into Samurai Caliber.
But also, Dynazenon has all these parts that look like similar types of pieces to the Gridman accessories they turned into, which even detached and rearranged; it would also explain loli's place in this: maybe 3 + Gouma is the minimum to make it work, but it could still take one more, and potentially work with different combinations of which one isn't part of it.
There is one slight problem though: this group has another girl, but the Gridman group had Max, a big buff dude. But what if that discrepancy could be resolved? In my totally unprofessional eye, I feel like they have pretty similar hair styles... and Max always wore a mask and some sort of chest armor, what if there were breasts hidden under that armor plate and a voice changer in the mask? Or what if this thing the girl here thought she might be able to tell blue-hair boy wasn't actually about her dead sister like we're lead to believe but actually coming out as a trans guy? Maybe both of those things could be true, and then somewhere in the intervening time Max just did a lot of working out?
Idk, it's so early there isn't much to work with, this basically all came out of my ass based on character and mech designs, so maybe it's just shit. But it'll be interesting to see if anything comes up to support the idea... an obvious one would be if we get to see specifically what parts of Dynazenon they're each in and they seem to match up well with this theory...
I watched SSSS.Gridman a little over a year ago for...y'know, for once I'll spare the story, but the point is that it's not something I would normally watch, but then I did--and I frikkin' loved it. Big robots fighting monsters bores me to no end, but that show really wasn't about mecha nonsense, no matter how much getting teleported into a computer everyone did. (Which I really appreciated.) It was characters and tone and clever awkwardness and loving awareness of how stupid it was and dedicated homage to its genre. Plus, as has already been pointed out, it was just
which hit me right in the nostalgia gland. (And I'll spare you that story as well. (About SSSS, I mean. Not where you can find your nostalgia gland.))
It was terrific. And I've put it on in the background numerous times and ended up watching it more than doing the other tasks I wanted some background noise for.
So, yeah. Good show.
This isn't that.
This feels like trying to do that again, deliberately invoking its structures to shortcut us into hitching our mind-wagons to this new project. And I'm not super-encouraged by that.
"B-But look: a girl who's kinda mumbly! A boy who's kindhearted! One of them is mysterious! There's a weird dude who looks like he doesn't sleep! And a loli! Y'know, all the things you liked the last time! It's all there, just how you remember it!"
I'll go another episode or two to see if it grabs me, out of love for its predecessor, but...I mean, they're gonna have to really ramp up a romance subplot, to keep me in the game, if this week was the blueprint for what's to come.
I mean, yes, they did, like with asking to go into the sister's room or tossing the gift money into the donation bin. (And, arguably, establishing that the cousins/"cousins" probably aren't, like, a lolicon and his runaway girlfriend.) So I don't mean to say I disagree with you. I just...didn't care?
I just couldn't connect with anything I was watching. So, every time the show tried to do a cool narrative thing, I'd just sigh into my grilled cheese and wonder if I'd rather be watching Gridman. (Answer: yes, I would.)
Well, that would certainly explain the lazy (I'm deeming it lazy) structure-copy I'm getting from the show. I would question the success-to-cleverness ratio of that idea, as it has been implemented so far, but it's not terrible, as far as crazy theories go. And you know I love a crazy theory.
I think Yume being (or wanting to be) a dude is probably (and surprisingly) the least tenuous part of the theory, though, so I don't think it's going to pan out. But I like the cut of your tinfoil jib.
Speaking of theories, though, I'm going to go mundane, for now: I think Yume is tethered to her dead sister. As in, I don't think she was imagining hearing her sister's voice, when she was looking at the calendar.
ep was alright enough but it’s early days. Just hope this Trigger anime is decent like the other stuff they did in previous years. I hadn’t seen the first one and won’t plan to so imma give this sequel a shot.
Just rewatched the first episode and I noticed a couple more things:
(also Gridman spoilers)
At the start we are clearly shown something fall from the sky, something that looks like pearls. The first obvious thing seems to be something that can become kaijus, which would mean that this time the threat came from outside. Maybe best bro Gauma came to this world because of that rather than to specifically save the teens.
The badass Dynazenon is apparently a 4 pilot mecha which immediately seems off considering the 5 main characters we got so far, I wonder where they will take that.
I was already finding it strange that while Yume and Yomogi got clear hints about their trauma Koyomi (the NEET senpai) and Chise did not. But... here me out. Chise is a ghost.
In all the episode we only see her talk with her senpai, which sure is not that weird , but when she asks him to go out he says "The police get nosy when I walk around with you." When I first watched it I was thinking "maybe because they are skipping school? Or maybe was it a joke like "ahah kidnapping a little girl" but given the overall tone of the episode those didn't seem to fit.
All of this is circumstancial evidence but to recap.
1) Dynazenon is for 4 people, so if one of the 5 isa ghost it makes sense.
2) All the conversation between the two NEETs would make more sense and we would have been hinted at the senpai's trauma just like the other characters.
3) All of their traumas might then be related to death. Yume's sister death, Yomogi's dather's death and Chise's death. Which this ties back with the Ankh symbolism.
Looking forward for all of this theory being destroyed next week if Chise speaks to someone, lol.
