Star Crossed Anime

GRIDMAN closes off its story on a grand spectacular finale and as far as spectacular goes, it does its job nicely. Personally I’m more impressed with this show in its quiet moments so I enjoyed it more in its last 6,7 minutes. I don’t know how much relevant GRIDMAN the anime is in regard to its original live-action. I mean, what’s the deal with the kaiju girl Anoshiras II and what’s the true role of GridKnight, but taken as an individual piece this ending is both straight-forward and confusing in the same manners. The straight-forward part is how the climax goes all out with its action: we have Gridman in full form versus Alexis in full form, and we do have all these cheesy lines that I’m sure serve as a homage to its original “Here comes my special moves – Fixer Beam” “Nanii? How can you have such godsent power?” “The power of MORALITY to destroy the immorality”. It’s fun to hear these campy dialogues out loud, and it’s even more entertaining when they’re boasted by the stellar animation. While I admit that the battle never wowed me, I can sense the love from the staffs to every single details of this battles.

What slightly bugs me, however, is the narrative led up to the final showdown between Gridman and Alexis. First, the way Alexis “uses” Akane is pretty inconsistent and abrupted. Here, in a span of 10 minutes, Akane turns into a kaiju (her scream is awesome, though), gets rescued by Anti, and immediately gets swallowed again by Alexis. In terms of narrative progression, you can easily cut down the “Akane becoming kaiju” part and nothing (except for the kaiju design) is lost. The same goes for Anti where he desperately tries to save Akane (which I thought was wierd to begin with because it’s not Yuuta or Rikka, but the least of all people Anti who saves the princess) just so that moments later he gets stabbed by the villain and was thrown aside for the rest of the battle. Don’t get me wrong, I love Anti. He’s, after all, the only character who grows the most in this show, signified by his blue eye color at the end, but I can’t shake the feeling that his own narrative arc is a bit shaky and not totally well planned-out.

But then, it comes to the “afterneath” section and while most of normal shows would retreat back to the new status quo, GRIDMAN manages to do something interesting here. We have a few-minute but feel like half-an-hour long sequence (hey, I’m not complaining) of only Rikka and Akane in a room together, further showcase how GRIDMAN is at its most comfortable when it strives for minimalism. Here, in a near-empty room, Akane has her redemption and Rikka has one of the best moments of the whole episode, as she gives the card holder gift to Akane, and wish that they could always be together, at the same time tells Akane not to let that wish come true. After all, Akane needs to move on from this cyber world, and the characters created by her will stay behind and have lives of their own. It’s a neat ending, but the decision to only let Rikka says goodbye to Akane sure leaves a lot of ambiguity here, which I will get to it later.

In a surprising move (which for me is a touch of “genius”, until I learn that it’s inspired by EVA’s ending), we have a live-action closure, a girl that looks awfully like Rikka that literally wakes up after the long sleep. The searing score was the one that played softly back from the beginning of the first episode. The ending will leave a lot of speculation of what is real and what not for sure, but ultimately I don’t think it matters that much. The main narrative is clear: Akane has her redemption arc and moves on, while Gridman and the Squads return to their hyper world and Rikka, real Yuuta and Shou stay back and live on.

As a whole, while I was a bit letdown to its final stretch, I’m still impressed with how much love and attention this show has for their world-building (it has a Wes-Anderson level of details here – the kind where it relies on the rich range of surrounding objects to defy the characters) and how it translates its themes by its visual craft – it’s one of the best visual directed show, along with Revue Starlight, that I’ve seen this year. Plot-wise, looking back I’m rather curious on how this show has many faux-protagonists to the point where you can’t really say whose narrative we are supposed to follow (it’s not necessary a bad thing), we start with Yuuta as we see the world through his eyes and his amnesia, but then in the middle Rikka demands us with her emotional tones and manage to sell them successfully as a normal girl trying to go through her life, then in the final arc it’s Akane takes the central stage. Not all of these transitions work, but it never fails to be anything less than intriguing, and that is a big compliment come from me.

P/s: pure speculation: it’s no fun to not give my own take on what happened at the end, right? Here’s my own two cents: the girl who wakes up at the end is Akane (we have her *real life* uniform, the card holder and the broken Iphone, and the name Akane in the picture). But why does she look awfully like Rikka? Is Rikka the part of herself she doesn’t wish to acknowledge? That might be the case but then again, the ED hints to the fact that Rikka might be real after all. Visually, the silhouettes has Akane’s mannerism, but is there anything more than meets the eyes?

I have a sense that GRIDMAN regresses considerably since its magnificent episode 9. Well, major events are still happening. Last week, Anti transformed into GridKinight and this week, it’s revealed that Yuuta is indeed Gridman, hence the reason the boy doesn’t remember anything before waking up is simply because he has no memory to speak of. But here where I see GRIDMAN falters. It brings up a lot more questions and I’m not so sure if they can address them all in just one final episode. Moreover, the main narrative core, which is about Akane, is stalled for the last two episodes. As a result, we ended up seeing her wandering aimlessly in her own makeshift town, stabbing someone and then wandering aimlessly again. Maybe it’s just me who expected more than this but we still haven’t gotten into Akane’s backstory, if there was one, at all. Nor do we have a good idea of what Alexis wants behind all this or exactly what Anti were in related to Akane. For Akane, we only have a vague sense that she had some trouble in her real life that she escapes to this world and makes it any conceivable way she wants. For Alexis, if his objective was to destroy Gridman, then it makes little sense to summon all those kaiju monsters again. I have to note that the reason for Anti assuming the GridKnight role is because of those kaijus. Without them, he has no reason to fight. Lastly, it’s unclear why Anti was so dependent on Akane. From my point, we (and Anti himself) know that he isn’t the kaiju created by Akane, and I feel that Anti becoming GridKnight is incredibly forced. He can become anything. A kaiju with heart. Anything. So why GridKnight in particular?

We can’t pass this episode without mentioning the big event of this week: the reveal that Yuuta is indeed Gridman. That’s the whole reason why he can’t wake up until the Neon Genesis Squad figures out that they need to fix the old junk. It makes a whole lot sense regarding how Yuuta doesn’t have any prior memory and how they need to fuse in order for Gridman to work, but it also opens up for more questions I’m not sure if the show’s equipped enough to deal with. First, what about Yuuta and Rikka’s previous encounter? GRIDMAN has been hinted bit by bit that the meeting is kinda important for both him and Rikka, but now I don’t know what to make of it. Second, what about Yuuta’s real body now? I guess this doesn’t matter much, he’s a NPC anyway. Finally, what to make of this revealing? Is the fact that Yuuta is indeed Gridman change anything on this chessboard? I have no clue to be honest but I suppose the show will tackle that question in the final episode.

This week’s audio drama we have a mundane but much-needed conversations between Shou and Rikka. The reason I said “much-needed” is because on screen, I’m more strucked on how they can’t communicate their own thoughts to each other. Back in episode 3 we had a brilliant segment (which is still one of my favorite moments of the show) of them sucked into their own personal space. We have a glimpse of that again when these two are in hospital beds, waiting for Yuuta to wake up, as each of them is lost to their own thoughts. Rikka has a lot on her minds, mostly regarding Akane, but I rather enjoy how Shou addressing his own crisis of a best-friend trope: that he doesn’t really contribute to any of the fights. He succeeds on performing a role of a character who has no more role except sitting there helplessly.

Finally, my hope for Akane’s flashback might not turn out to be true, regarding how Alexis, in his ultimate decision, turns Akane into a kaiju too. While there are much more kaiju battles in the last two weeks compared to what we previously got, I don’t really see the weight of these battles. The reason for that is because Akane’s pretty much absent-minded, so even more than before we know how the results are gonna turn out. I must say, I’m a bit disappointed that GRIDMAN didn’t deliver in this final stretch, but there are still plenty of reasons to get excited about the final showdown next week.