SSSS.Dynazenon – 05 [What’s Lover-Like Mean?]

Though SSSS.Dynazenon has lifted a number of elements from Gridman thus far, it wasn’t content to recreate that show’s fifth episode this week. Where its parent series put a spin on the stalwart ‘beach episode’ with a river rafting field trip, Dynazenon sent its characters to Tokyo Beach Land, a water park with an underground hot spring. With the power of both pool and onsen tropes at its disposal, you’d think this episode would be a massive hit, but it was my least favorite of the month. Let’s see if I can put into words why that was, exactly.

First, I’ve got to expose myself as a stinky pleb and take issue with Dynazenon’s affected direction. I know its quirks are intentional (and I even like a fair few of them), but there were a couple that bothered me this week. One was the string of long pauses during Yomogi and Yume’s churro-themed conversation at the water park. The idea here was to emphasize the awkwardness between them, since one has a crush on the other, but in my experience, romantic anxiety doesn’t lead to stillness, either in terms of dialogue or posture. Yet the camera held still on the two unmoving characters for 30 seconds, as though Yomogi were disinterested rather than nervous. The episode’s final seconds weren’t to my liking, either, despite my confidence in understanding the director’s thought process. Cutting off the final word midway through (“suici-”) was likely meant to represent a mental barrier that Yume had erected at the thought of her sister’s suicide. My issue is that Yomogi was the POV character in the scene, as he usually is when tagging along for similar conversations. Why give us a look into Yume’s mind there when we were listening through Yomogi’s ears?

I’m sure these issues seem trivial to some, especially when compared to the show’s towering mecha fights, but Dynazenon isn’t your ordinary robot brawler. It typically pays a lot of attention to the timing of human actions, and creates appropriate scenes to compliment them whenever they run long. The tracking shots that I praised two weeks ago are good examples of that practice – glazing your audience’s brain with a still image of flat water park décor is not. To be honest, my complaints about visual interest extend to this week’s gattai scene, as well. Not only did we have to watch an aborted version before the real thing played in full, but a long pan over Dynazenon’s separate parts interrupted the sequence both times. (That panning shot appeared last week, as well, but at least there we only had to sit through it once.) It’s a shame that “Lover-Like” had this issue, because its blobby kaiju of the week was my favorite so far, boasting believable telekinesis and the ability to transform by turning itself inside-out. I wish we’d gotten to see it in action for a little longer, and that the battle had been more engaging on the whole.

As far as story goes, we’re currently in a holding pattern. Still waiting for Inamoto to reveal her designs for Koyomi, still waiting for the Kaiju Eugenicists to advance to the next phase of their plan. The latter group still has my interest, even if each of its four members have gotten comfortable in their roles: Sizumu pontificates about freedom and imprisonment, Mujina acts more interested in comfort than duty, Juuga plays the laid-back leader, and Onija says “I thought I was dead.” Notably, Sizumu was the source of this week’s second-biggest discovery – he expressed curiosity about our main characters because he “felt emotions from them.” His phrasing hinted at the rarity of that event, strongly indicating that Yomogi and company are some of the only emotional beings in their world. Gridman 2.0 confirmed, I guess – not that there was any doubt that we were in a digital realm populated with artificial life. Now that it’s a sure thing, though, I wonder what differences will arise between Dynazenon and its prequel in depicting that reality. Are we getting another dream episode? Another zoom-out to a live action finish? Despite my disappointment this week, I’m still interested to see how everything pans out.