It’s amazing to see what Gridman has become. Thanks to Studio Trigger’s SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon, we’ve had a franchise revival that’s a love letter to its origins as a 90s tokusatsu series (Gridman the Hyper Agent) while telling new and interesting stories. As someone who loved Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad as a kid (and always feels a little giddy at the inclusion of “SSSS” in Trigger’s anime titles), it feels great. So of course I’d want to see the latest movie, Gridman Universe, which promised from the start to bring together the characters of both SSSS series.

I had to wonder about one issue, however: While SSSS.Dynazeon is a “sequel,” it was never clear how exactly the two series connect. In fact, the finale of SSSS.Gridman makes fully reconciling it with other works seem impossible. Well, the movie does address this discrepancy, and the solution is both obvious in hindsight while still being fairly elegant, but it’s ultimately a less important factor. 

Gridman Universe is a compelling work whose success has little to do with considerations for “canon” and “lore.” In fact, it almost entirely eschews those elements. Rather than focus on them, it foregrounds three aspects in particular that have become the soul of the franchise in more recent times. First, there’s the characters, whose stories of healing are bolstered by how natural they feel, to the point that they sometimes don’t sound like anime characters. Second, there’s the sense of play that comes from its tokusatsu roots: endless transformations and awesome fight scenes, but also being vehicles for imagination and wonder. Third, there’s the Gridman name itself as a concept, brand, and source of nostalgia.

The movie begins with two of the characters trying to write a play for their school festival about Gridman. Takarada Rikka and Utsumi Sho are the the only ones left who remember the events of SSSS.Gridman—namely that monsters kept attacking the city, only to be defeated by the giant hero Gridman, and that series antagonist Shinjo Akane was actually an IRL human who created their very world as a way to deal with personal trauma. Rikka wants more than anything to tell everyone about Akane, while Sho is a tokusatsu fanboy who prioritizes monster fighting and cool action. In that contrast alone, the first two aspects of Gridman are evident. The problem is that their classmates keep rejecting their scripts because they think it’s too unrealistic and far-fetched, particularly the story of Akane as the forgotten “god” of their world. 

The third element comes into the spotlight through the character Hibiki Yuta, the very guy who merges with the entity known as Gridman to fight. Despite being the “hero,” he has no memories of what transpired, and only knows because Rikka and Sho have told him. This movie is actually the first time we really see Yuta’s true personality, because the ending of SSSS.Gridman reveals that Gridman had actually taken over Yuta’s body during that time. His own story involves not only trying to confess his feelings for Akane that were delayed due to that amnesia, but trying to see if his importance was reduced to just being a vessel for Gridman.

When the monsters start attacking again, Gridman returns, followed by Dynazenon characters and more as worlds collide. These events all contribute to the push-and-pull that exists between the characters’ goals for their play and in Gridman Universe as a whole. Not only does having everyone together mean more opportunities to see cool crossover moments, but paths open up to address unresolved emotions of all kinds, see how the cast of one show responds to the character dynamics in the other, and even bring in unexpected figures and reveals whose presences take the film even further into the territory of meta-commentary about what’s important to the thing we call Gridman. 

There’s a moment in the film that I think speaks to the core of Studio Trigger’s Gridman works, where a villain talks about knowing everything that the heroes are capable of, and can thus predict everything they do with ease. The heroes respond by basically just devising random new ideas on the spot, trying out every different combination sequence they can think of, as if they’re the toys of kids who are playing pretend and just making stuff up as they go along. While this scene most obviously connects to the tokusatsu side, it also carries the drama and the brand by being the culmination of Rikka’s hopes and Yuta’s self-reflection.

I actually had a chance to watch Gridman Universe a few years ago, but I wasn’t able to. While I wish the wait hadn’t been quite so long, I’m glad that it’s available to watch now. Gridman Universe is a brilliant movie that merges many seemingly disparate parts into a harmonious whole that really encourages viewers to think about how they engage with their favorite works, all while celebrating the simple fun and creativity that comes from the franchise itself, the creators who help bring it to life, and the fans who elevate it.