SSSS Gridman was an… interesting affair. It was an outright tribute to all things Tokusatsu while also being a bizarre ride of metafiction and divinity. It could grab fans of cheesy action and fans of philosophical science-fantasy material alike. And while it was ultimately fairly self contained, it did hint at a much larger multiverse that left the door open for some sort of continuation.
However, it should have been clear from the first outing that just doing the same thing again wasn’t going to fly. The wonder of discovering new layers was a big part of why Gridman worked as more than just a beat-em-up sort of show, and while it certainly had rewatch value from its strong characters and interesting scenarios, watching a setup play out that was “the same but different” would kind of suck. So, when I heard that there was to be a sequel show, SSSS Dynazenon, I was somewhat apprehensive. Trigger didn’t seem like the kind of studio to just repeat itself, but Trigger is only partially responsible for the property and it is such an easy trap for sequels to fall into. Fortunately, Dynazenon did not suffer such an issue. What we got instead was… still a fairly divergent take on the genre, but one of a different stripe to what was done in Gridman.
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