Many people(I should say men), as they claim to be, are here for a particular character's thighs or another character's boobs. Or for that big black tall shadowy villain who is intriguing if you'll pay attention to him.
But do read my review before you judge this animation for all that it is lacking. For I wish you all to see what this anime is actually all about.
SSSS.Gridman is a tokusatsu love letter for the 90's live-action TV series of the same name. Tokusatsu is the Japanese name for the special effects. The most famous tokusatsu series will be Ultraman. That should give you an idea. Or you should check out Ultraman or a show with tokusatsu before diving into this series, if you wanna understand its true value.
To be honest, the people who have watched a lot of tokusatsu in their life, they are the best ones fit to give this review. And boy my childhood was filled with power rangers tokusatsu, which now makes me blush about it. A lot.
Now this series has tried to replicate tokusatsu effects through its animation, and damn, they did that pretty successfully. Not only the effects, but they also tried to replicate the general tropes, the archetype characters and the lifeless villains who are being bad for sake of being bad.
But just copying isn't enough. They needed to own these stereotypes and boy did they perform an excellent job with that. I was genuinely shocked when they took some archetype filler episode stories and integrated them into the main arc, rather than the main character pointlessly keep on fighting for another 40 episodes like they do in the actual live-action series. And man, they were some sweet plot twists, which left me craving for more.
Yuuta, Hibiki and Rikka are three stereotypical main characters, which many claim are bland, dull and boring. To me, they weren't typical anime characters but typical characteristic human beings. To me, they were characters that were deep, grounded in reality and genuine. That instantly made me fall in love with this series.
The Gridman fights were stereotypical and they were good replicas of the live-action tokusatsu fights. Some might complain that the CGI stands out, but I think that was done on purpose. Cause tokusatsu fights are generally bad looking, if we look back to that time and review those shows with the present standards. And yep, these CGI fights look much better than those special effects.
This isn't just a love letter to tokusatsu, but a clever, recasted series to fit the generic anime we all love watching. Best elements of an Anime and tokusatsu were combined to create this masterpiece and considering the plot twists towards the end of the season, it leaves one on the edge of the seat, wanting for more. And it makes me wanna write a review on MAL, which I would typically never do.
Finally, I would like to tell you that everything you dislike about this anime, there is actually a reasoning behind it. Just watch the whole series before you badmouth it. It will steal your heart, I promise you.
