I really want to like SSSS.Gridman.

I want to see what everyone else is seeing for them to confidently claim it as anime of the season and strongly underrated.

I want to like and share all the Akane and Rikka art floating on social media, not just because of their design, but because I truly believe they’re competently sculpted characters.

I want to be thrilled like others by Gridman’s storytelling, consistently finding it interesting and well articulated.

I want to fully buy in.

But SSSS.Gridman just makes that so damn hard.

 

Yes, the work is technically accomplished; You can point to everything from its beautiful shot framing and intricate layouts all the way down to Amemiya’s sheer amount of tonal control imparted purely through sharp directorial sensibilities. The show’s craft is truly something to praise as it’s certainly a visual powerhouse, especially upon deeper dissection.

 

 

But what else?

What happens past that aesthetic prowess? What happens when attention is turned textually?

The flow and wit of the dialogue, the base build and release of tension, polished script rifts with a strong sense of voice and purpose etc. When raw, text-based storytelling fundamentals are observed, Gridman fails considerably in my eyes.

The biggest offense of this isn’t even Gridman’s poor approach to progression, keeping Yuta, Rikka, and Shou way too reactive to their predicaments instead of proactively solving what’s at hand. Sure it’s frustrating to see them carry on with their daily school lives only to break every now and then to stop a Kaiju – as if the Gridman Alliance is just some little hobby, and you know, not a vital defense unit against large-scale monsters.

And sure, the lack of hard concern or exploration into these matters on their end results in some narrative slow patches and plausibility issues for the first third of the series, but as hard as it is to believe, that’s not Gridamn’s biggest offense.

The biggest offense isn’t even SSSS.Gridman’s unimaginative and underwhelming problem solving during the first third of the show, dissipating Rikka’s drama along with the issue of a missing and possibly dead Yuta all through the innovative power of…wait for it…a simple phone call in episode 3, and following that act up by addressing episode 4’s biggest pain point with an even more flaccid solution by unplugging and plugging back in Gridman’s computer.

The biggest offense is quite easily our core four characters at their root and what they offer textually – as a unit or individually – which feels like the bare minimum at best thus far to carry this show. To very briefly unpack this: Rikka is extremely limited at the moment, being serviceable as a love interest and teasing a past relationship with Yuta and Akane that’s hardly compelling.

Akane herself is quirky at a glance, but in practice how she shapes up and executes as a villain is much more flat and one note. Shou has stayed in the exact same cramped box since episode one, and Yuta is an understatedly bland protagonist that would feel perfectly at home in a cookie cutter light novel adaptation.

 

If that’s not bad enough there’s hardly any substance presented between their relationships so when they do share screentime they struggle to land more intimate beats with proper weight.

Building off of that and even worse, our leads’ full relationship and context on the Gridman side is inherently paywalled behind Yuta’s amnesia, priced with a deep trek into this low powered narrative to unlock it, and only incentivized to cough up that payment with the shaky assumption that following them until that point will be worthwhile.

If you do choose to follow, you get the treat of everything from highly manufactured character acting, poorly observed conversational breaks and outright awful dialogue choices with even sketchier timing. Our leads bring it all during this wait for more texture and clarity.

 

So without too much elaboration, those are some of the more immediate touchpoints that makes SSSS.Gridman so lackluster at the moment, and tough to fully buy into.

When the smoke clears a great deal of Gridman’s relative strength still comes down to how well composed it is visually. Unfortunately, that’s not supported by a bedrock of fundamentally strong writing and fine chemistry between the leads.

Be that as it may, there’s still plenty of time in the series to solve that – perhaps this weakness can become a strength by its end. But until it makes waves in that direction, SSSS.Gridman just feels like an applaudable production carrying an underwhelming narrative and cast, one that certainly could use refinement and tighter storytelling.