On the Grid – This Week in Anime

Chris and Coop can’t contain their excitement about Gridman Universe—even as they wonder why it took so long to get an official release.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Gridman Universe is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Full Disclosure: While Discotek Media‘s Blu-ray release of Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer pre-dates Coop’s involvement with company, he has provided copy for their later releases of the Urusei Yatsura TV series. His opinions given here are purely his own and do not reflect those of his employers.

Coop

That’s right, Chris! If you haven’t already, get your giga-butt to the polls and help ensure that democracy makes the cut! And instead of drowning in a flood of election night updates, why don’t we talk about the latest in Mega Virus Monster technology?

Yes, speaking of the will of the people, it seems Crunchyroll finally heard our desperate cries and deigned to at last put Gridman Universe up for streaming the other week.



Maybe the reason it took so long is because they were actually uploading it via 90s dial-up internet.

So for anyone who hasn’t been on this Tokusatsu-and-Transformers-flavored hype train since 2018: Gridman Universe, the film follow-up to the outstanding SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon anime, originally came out in early 2023. The movie’s rights were naturally picked up by Crunchyroll, who had inherited the franchise from their acquisition of Funimation. Most people presumed the movie would show up for streaming (and maybe even a US theatrical run) once it was done in theaters over in Japan, only for Crunchy to simply…not release it.




I mean, they didn’t do nothing with it. Crunchyroll screened the movie at Anime Expo 2023. It was made available to watch with English subs on…airlines, for some bizarre reason. But a proper streaming release? Crunchyroll didn’t know her.

Oddly enough, I think it might’ve been a company other than Crunchyroll responsible for the film’s airline debut. For example, I’d seen a bit of Maquia – When the Promised Flower Blooms on a plane a few months before it had any sort of North American release. So I’d bet it’s not an uncommon occurrence for new anime films to fly the friendly skies before landing over here. However, I think a key element of the current streaming release (and perhaps the version shown at AX 2023) allegedly has its roots in this inflight version—the subtitles.



Some folks definitely think these subs are junk. I can understand this to a degree, because as Chris and I both know, Tokusatsu fans are some of the most passionate folks around…and they’ve been waiting for this film for a good while now. However, as someone who occasionally edits translated text and has seen their fair share of mid-2000s Hong Kong subtitles, I find Gridman Universe‘s subtitles to be functional. How about you, Chris?

I mean, they’re quantifiably not the worst subs officially associated with a Gridman entry, that’s for sure. “Functional” is absolutely the order of the day, though they can be clunky in places. Clunktional, if you will.



I’d wager the main issue with the subs was that they served as a smoking gun about how little Crunchyroll had done for the film before finally releasing it. Very “we waited a year and a half for this?” It thoroughly begged the question of what the hell they were doing all that time.

I’m inclined to agree with your smoking gun theory. With that much time on their hands (especially following the AX screening), I believe they could’ve fit in the time to do another pass over the subs. And it wouldn’t be a heavy pass either. You’d have to adjust a few things like replacing some instances of “alright” with “all right,” reworking some of the more clunky lines, and switching out a double hyphen or two with em dashes.



You can tell that I edit a line or two every so often.

Of course that then brings us back around to the question of what the holdup even was. As far as Trigger projects go, the Gridman shows aren’t exactly Kill la Kill or even Delicious in Dungeon in terms of cultural capital, but they’re not nothing either. Rikka’s thighs were all over my social feed in 2018, and the studio’s last theatrical film, 2019’s Promare kinda killed it over here.



In a world where stuff like the Revue Starlight movie or the Monogatari films have gotten Western theatrical distribution, it’s easy to argue that Crunchyroll absolutely could have done that for Gridman Universe.

Yeah, one of the more credible-sounding theories I’d heard about Crunchyroll dragging their giga-feet on Gridman Universe was that parent company Sony wasn’t into the idea of prioritizing a release from a rival distribution company. Makes sense if true, and makes just one more case for why one streaming company handling 90% of anime releases might not necessarily be a good thing.



The TOHO logo itself at the beginning was also its own jumpscare, coming so soon after the news of the company announcing its acquisition of GKIDS, which had distributed the aforementioned Promare.

Putting myself in the shoes of TOHO (and Trigger especially), I’d be frustrated if my business partner just sat on my product and seemingly did the bare minimum. It’s really no wonder that they ended up saying, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

Shout out to my puppet freaks out there.



But with this week’s installment of “This Week in Crunchyroll Grousing” out of the way, I gotta say… Gridman Universe is a damn solid film, Chris. It brings the casts of SSSS.Gridman and SSSS.Dynazenon together in a satisfying way that allows them to bounce off each other while picking up where their shows left off.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t help but feel like someone had put a little End of Eva creamer in my cup of Beautiful Dreamer sometimes.

Oh yeah, I don’t understand why there had to be a wait in the first place, but this movie was nevertheless worth that wait.



I was so pleased with how effortlessly Gridman Universe slipped right back into the distinctive vibes of the anime series. The grounded, languid daily lives of these characters flow naturally, irregularly getting upended by kaiju attacks. The tone is, appropriately, so 90s toku.

Speaking of those distinct tokusatsu vibes, did you also notice how often Gridman Universe takes pages from the Super Sentai VS movie playbook?

The movie wasn’t originally titled GRIDMAN X DYNAZENON for nothing!

No kidding! I was honestly floored when I realized it. The initial meeting of the two teams, three key battles, new conclusions to old plot threads, and a super special awesome power-up you’ll have to watch for yourself to see? That’s as Super Sentai VS movie as you can get, but then again… Ultraman has tapped into this formula more than a few times as well.

It’s cool because even as it’s liberally borrowing from this summer side-story smash-up format, Gridman Universe doesn’t feel like a disposable bonus the way so many of those (still fun) tokusatsu tie-ins do. This is very much a sequel to both of the previous anime—though a a bit more so to SSSS.Gridman than SSSS.Dynazenon.

Absolutely. And even if they’re not in the direct spotlight, I feel that the SSSS.Dynazenon cast works exceedingly well as a set of supporting figures to the Gridman Alliance. Yomogi and the gang went through some heavy stuff throughout their series, so I love that they’re using those experiences to act as something of a grounding force for others.

I enjoyed the ambiguity of their situation at the end of SSSS.Dynazenon, but it is neat to have confirmation here that Yomogi and Yume started dating. It especially works as a framing for the situation between Rikka and Yuta, the latter of which makes sense for getting the lion’s share of new character development, given that he’s effectively a new character.



The wonders of adapting plot twists straight from the original Ultraman.

Don’t you just love it when someone takes a little shattered glass (be it a character’s sense of reality and/or the Transformers storyline) and just runs with it?

Oh man, you talk about reality shattering—don’t think I didn’t pump my fists and cheer when Kai Ikarashi‘s distinctive style showed up during this especially trippy part of the movie.







This movie really does pack in everything great about the shows.

Oh boy! That scene is exactly what reminded me of Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer. It’s so reminiscent of a similarly trippy bit in which Ataru is trapped inside an infinitely looping version of his school.



The many scenes of Yuta and his classmates working on things for the school festival made me think of that film as well. They’re both brimming with that festival energy.

It’s a summer party the likes of which we can only get next October, apparently.



Of course, now that the movie’s out and I’ve actually gotten to see it, I do want to touch on an aspect of its release that annoyed me that wasn’t down to Crunchyroll‘s handling. That is, the way official outlets and accounts for the movie went gung-ho spoiling some of its biggest twists after it had only been in Japanese theaters for a couple of weeks.




Namely, the return of everyone’s favorite Kaiju-lovin’ trash goddess.

Yeah, and even though I wasn’t actively searching for spoilers, Good Smile sure wanted me to know that they were selling a new Akane figure.

I get it, I love Akane too, and her reveal as the center of SSSS.Gridman‘s narrative and heartfelt send-off at the end of the series is a lot of what makes the show. It would have been surprising if she hadn’t shown up in this movie somehow, but just trotting her new look out for all to see, absent any context or hype-worthy in-story moments, felt pretty gauche.







At least they kept on with the live-action deal, so that was pretty cool to see.

As was another cameo in a pivotal part of the movie. Now, that had me screaming at the friend I was watching it with.



But I think that’s best left for you to discover in your own adventure into the Gridman Universe, right Chris?

Oh yeah, we certainly could go over absolutely everything Gridman Universe has to offer. The movie’s been around for a year and a half and there’s a spoiler warning up top, after all. But the delayed nature of the release drumming up news now, plus the brisk nature of seasonal anime rotation means this might be the first time some readers are learning about all this Griddy goodness.



So hey, if you’ve never been on Trigger and Akira Amemiya‘s wild ride, there’s never been a better time to log in.

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