SSSS.DYNAZENON

unpopular opinion incoming. (spoilers obviously.)

S.S.S.S. Dynazenon is the sequel to Trigger's 2018 remake of Gridman that really succeeded in originality, foreshadowing, mystery, hints, and a great villain. Dynazenon pretty much takes the animation from S.S.S.S. Gridman and leaves everything that was really good about Gridman.

I don't even know if you can call Dynazenon a sequel though, because it's not apparent if it really is because nothing in the story makes any sense whatsoever. I would say the writing started going south in episode 9 when they just threw in an extra support mecha from absolutely no where, with no information on it or even knowing where it came from. In one of the following episodes the entire team encounters a Kaiju that takes things and people back in time to a random point in time, leaving just a weird shadow behind in the current. Although this is a cool ability at first and it looks cool, its sole purpose is to give each of the main cast shitty half assed rushed character development. That's it, after that convenience they all get together and beat it up.

One of the biggest problems in Dynazenon is actually made really apparent in the time Kaiju's arc, being the writing in general. Gauma gets sent back in time 5,000 years ago to when he and the Kaiju eugenicists were allies. The problem is it doesn't make any fucking sense, he goes back in time, beats them up, justifies it with they were gonna betray the "country", and leaves. Oh and the country he's talking about is apparently this random land controlled by this singular princess with no name or face, who's using mecha in the year 3,000 B.C.. This event is made out to be a big development for Gauma and all the other characters by confronting their past, which is supposed to be the main theme of Dynazenon, trying to be a Gridman that focuses on the main cast rather than the antagonists. But it doesn't do this right, it rushes the character development so blatantly, making the world literally revolve around the few characters getting a little development. And the development isn't even that good, for most of the cast, like with Gauma and Koyomi. Koyomi's "confrontal of the past" is just him choosing to run away with a girl he knew with a bunch of fake money. What? That's it? Is the message for him supposed to be "money can't buy happiness, it only makes it a lot easier."? Koyomi isn't a lonely rich person who is lost in life and his only friend is his wealth, he struggles with not fitting in and being unmotivated. Unless him being an outcast and unmotivation was caused by him not going with that girl to the beach, which doesn't make any fucking sense. Yume's time in the time Kaiju arc takes her back to when her sister was alive, so she can talk it out with her sister and understand her better. But it's not even revealed or hinted at how she dies, it was assumed suicide early in the story but then it became obvious it was something else, and it's never shown, at most it's referred to as an "accident". Did her boyfriend murder her? That was my biggest guess but apparently not because it's not made clear in any way. Anyways that's how Dynazenon fails with trying to develop it's main cast and be better in that regard than Gridman. Also Anti from Gridman shows up with the train girl, except now they're grown up and help out the Dynazenon team to defeat Kaiju. They leave in the final episode through a sudden dimensional portal. This I can excuse for them being hyper agents, but it's still a stretch to assume and is really poorly written.

The main theme in Gridman was the antagonist, Akane, creating her own world to escape from real life and how she slowly began to accept she needs to do something instead of escaping into her fantasy world and blowing up everything she doesn't like. Gridman has a honestly pretty good antagonist/villain, it's one if it's biggest strengths. Dynazenon on the other hand, has some of the worst antagonists I've seen in a bit. They show up constantly as if they are going to be a main theme of Dynazenon, and even start to develop semi-relationships with some of the main cast. But none of the villains have any motivation or goals or insight into them as people or anything at all, they just control Kaiju to wreck the city, say "Kaiju will never die out!" and leave, every time. It's like a villain of the week if it was the same villain everytime, it does Gridman did in a unique and interesting way and turns that upside down. In Gridman each Kaiju showed no emotion, and just appeared to be killing machines, only bowing down to the mastermind behind them. They're monsters afterall, that's what I expect. But in Dynazenon there's this scene in either episode 7 or 8 where a Kaiju is acting all weird and suddenly flips its eye and stares at Yomogi. This was an extremely interesting twist in the series, and got me hyped for the future episodes, but they didn't expand on this idea of Kaiju having feelings at all, after this abnormal Kaiju they went back to being normal emotionless killing machine Kaijus. There was so much potential there, and nothing was done with it.

The visuals in Dynazenon for the most part look great, with exception of the buildings being thrown around and not collapsing. The CGI is done really well, it's by Trigger afterall, with some really smooth moments. Honestly there was this really cool frame in this show on the second to final episode, here I'll show it:

Spoiler, click to viewclick to hide

Dynazenon doesn't make any new original premises or design that Gridman didn't have, they change minor things in some Kaijus and slap them in there. I really loved in Gridman a lot of the originality, like the night Kaijus who would repair everything Akane wrecks in the day, so she can remove people she doesn't like and then have the city normal again. Also the Kaiju design in Gridman is absolutely phenomenal, with them having crazy different abilities and design, like the one that flips around like a maniac using martial arts, and the giant turtle type one that was like a giant forest. Beautiful. Criticizing Dynazenon honestly makes me appreciate what Gridman did so right, so I guess that's the only benefit of this mess of a show. Dynazenon really only has, or at least only uses the same three songs, gets annoying.

Final verdict is Dynazenon tries to be a better Gridman and fails in every way, from forcing the main cast to be pseudo-complex characters, having terrible writing, terrible antagonists, and almost no originality whatsoever. Everything that Gridman does simple, Dynazenon tries to do complex and fails, and everything Gridman does that's original, Dynazenon doesn't even try in.