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.
So we start off with Yomogi Asanaka, your typical “normal boy” protagonist as he encounters Gauma, who is something of your typical insanely colorful Trigger character, and in context certainly seems to be a strange and sketchy fellow. At the moment, though, he also appears to be starving, and Yomogi offers him a sandwich, earning his overly profuse thanks and the declaration that he is, in fact a “Kaiju User”. After that, Yomogi gets asked out by Yume Minami, an odd and quiet girl from his class who seems to regularly ask out boys only to stand them up, or so the story goes. And, wouldn’t you know it, she seems to stand Yomogi up as well. What a non-shock.
More interesting is that Gauma happens to be around to witness the scene and see that she’s watching from a distance as Yomogi waits. Gauma confronts her, insisting (as he often will over the course of the show) that there are three things that must be kept: promises, love, and… we never hear what the third thing is. Ever. Gauma uses his three things catchphrase if not once an episode than at least often enough that it feels like it, and he never ‘remembers’ the third thing or finishes listing it or what have you. There’s a cheeky interpretation that the third thing might be “secrets” but there’s no evidence for that rather than Gauma just being a very strange person. He manages to browbeat a teenage girl, even if one being a bit of a jerk, into confessing that there seems to be something wrong with her, when suddenly a Kaiju appears.
Not that anyone thought this was just going to be high school drama, but the first battle is rather sudden. Gauma does his thing, and tries to take control of the Kaiju as a Kaiju User, but finds he can’t. So, he pulls out his off-brand Voltron toy, Dynazenon, and it becomes a real giant combined mecha. However, more than one pilot is necessary, picking up Yume, Yomogi, and a passing NEET named Koyomi Yamanaka as his cousin Chise Asukagawa watches. Together they do the awesome stuff, beat up the Kaiju, and all end up holding onto one of the component toys of Dynazenon: Yomogi with the humanoid mecha soldier, Yume with the plane, Koyomi with the gun car, and Gauma himself with the boat. Gauma insists that there will be more Kaiju, controlled by a group of hostile Kaiju users known as the Kaiju Eugenicists, and that everyone needs to train in order to fight back.
As training begins, Yume and Yomogi grow a little closer. Yume opens up that her older sister died when she was young (falling from a large floodgate, which Yume finds herself hanging out at from time to time now, in what may or may not have been suicide), and that she still has hangups about that. After another Kaiju battle (which serves to have Yomogi, who at first wasn’t sure about this whole Dynazenon thing, get invested in preventing as much damage as he can. There are no resets this time.), the Kaiju Eugenicists decide to introduce themselves. Like Gauma, they’re a pack of odd people with loud personalities. Despite their apparent desire to use Kaiju to rampage against humanity, they also mostly seem to be an affable sort, talking more or less pleasantly with the heroes from time to time. They’re even nice enough to let us know that they and Gauma were allies five thousand years ago, until he betrayed them and took them out (seemingly for someone he knows as “the princess” and loves even now).
From here, the episodes fall into a particular pattern for the most part: the meat of the episode revolves around the “normal” lives of the characters. This might involve Dynazenon-related stuff, but is mostly driven by how the experiences they go through change them as people, causing us to follow their individual arcs as they’re challenged as people. Towards the end, the Eugenicists will find and empower a Kaiju, sending it on a rampage, and it’s up to everyone being slightly better versions of themselves to defeat the new threat.
The Kaiju fights are really excellent. Each Kaiju has its own power, and they include some pretty freaky ones like turning objects two-dimensional as well as the more standard explosion conjuration style powers. They’re brief battles, being contained at the end of an episode, and they do rely a good deal on some of that delicious Tokusatsu-style cheese, with lengthy transformation/combining sequences and loudly shouted attack names that seem to be necessary. However, in the meantime, there’s always a good play of a combat puzzle to be solved, and the situations differ enough that the fights generally feel fresh despite the stylized repetition.
This is, in my opinion, what the fights in Star Driver, which were generally so bad, wanted to be. Some of the major points are pretty similar – the enemy has a unique power, the hero(es) have to strike back, and ultimately unleash the big flashy finishing move without which bad guys don’t go down. Along the way, there’s the stock footage sequences holding it together. But Star Driver was killed by its rigid formula, short time relative to the repeated bits, and often kind of worthless foes that didn’t feel like they posed a real enough threat, as well as the fact that there was no investment in the action that was going on.
Here, the structure and formula of the fights does vary. We can combine mechas at any point in a fight and often do so in new ways. Even the final ultimate combine and finishing move gets shaken up several times in this twelve episode show as opposed to only once or twice in the twenty-four episodes of Star Driver. On investment, which is arguably the most important part of all of this, the Kaiju present a very obvious threat: if not dealt with, they’ll destroy vast swaths of the city (or possibly everything) and people will die, a fact the first few episodes try to hammer home so even as you’re rooting for the big action later, you understand that there are at least technically things riding on it. The Kaiju feel fairly threatening as well, with a real menace to most of them. And, since our four involved modern characters (Yomogi, Yume, Koyomi, and Chise who involves herself as an alternate) all have issues they’re working through, sometimes alongside Gauma or even the Kaiju Eugenicists, we care about what the characters are experiencing, which lends a necessary weight to the action.
In some senses, the two come off as different submissions for the same project, and ones that (not to give anything away) got very different grades.
Since the episodes themselves have the repeating structure, though, let’s talk about the character arcs. The longest, and the main thread is Yomogi and Yume getting to know each other while investigating the truth behind the death of Yume’s sister. They find her former classmates, talk to them, and learn bits and pieces of what she may have been going through when she died, sifting truth and lie apart from each other and, ultimately, not exactly finding a satisfactory resolution; the trail is cold and the death a mystery to begin with.
This is, legitimately, what takes up the plurality of the show. And you know what? It’s fairly fascinating. The investigation makes sense, and it’s wonderful to see how Yume opens up both to Yomogi and to the world in general, finally breaking out of the cycle that was consuming her and trying to move forward. I would say, between this and the other human arcs in the story, SSSS Dynazeon is more about young people, adrift in life and trying to find their way having to come to terms with both their past grief and their present bonds in order to live as complete people. And there are Kaiju in it.
We do get some extra closure to the investigation around Yume’s sister, but it comes in the last few episodes, which necessitates addressing the other arcs first.
For Koyomi, his journey begins as this Kaiju stuff starts to make him consider picking himself up. In the process of actually being outside, he happens to run into an old flame from his school days. She’s more than eager to reconnect and reminisce about old times, which brings old regrets to the forefront of Koyomi’s mind, especially since the woman is now married and unavailable. In the aftermath of one of the Kaiju battles, Koyomi saves her husband, even though he admits to himself that part of him hates the man. He’s not the only one feeling a little jealous, though – Chise is clearly displeased by the changes in Koyomi’s demeanor, though whether out of some sort of romantic affection being denied or just the fact that her “senpai” in NEETdom seems to be leaving her behind is hard to say. Her feelings of abandonment clearly fester, though, driving her to more eagerly try to find a place in team Dynazenon.
Eventually, Koyomi’s arc sees him have a run in with one of the Kaiju Eugenicists, Mujina. All the Eugenicists are given different motivations (though they agree on their end goal) and Mujina’s seems to be mostly that she feels lost, adrift, and abandoned with a meaningless life in a meaningless world, which sees her want to use the Kaiju to give herself a purpose. Though they come into conflict somewhat, she seems to see a kindred spirit in Koyomi, and even more than Chise is enraged when he continues to struggle to better himself and be a good person rather than giving into despair, leading to an undercurrent of tension between the two whenever they clash as part of their respective teams. It’s not spelled out, but it seems to me that each one sees the other as someone who could be “saved”, and at the same time a frustrating reflection that forces them to confront the worst parts of themselves, Koyomi seeing his own despair in Mujina and Mujina having to reflect on (or avoid reflecting on) what Koyomi’s ability to pick himself up might mean for her fatalistic outlook on her own life.
Along the way, we meet some new characters… or rather, not-so-new characters, as a pair of interlopers involve themselves in the battles between Kaiju and Dynazenon. These are returning characters from SSSS Gridman – the little Kaiju girl (now called “Second” and more of an office lady. She doesn’t transform or fight.) and, with her, a grown-up Anti (going by the “Gridknight” name he took up with his new form at the end of the previous show, or just “Knight”. He fights as per last time). They represent something of an inter-dimensional anti-kaiju task force, having arrived in this world to see what’s going on and, as necessary, put down the mindless and hostile Kaiju that appear. Though Knight is as prickly as ever and especially butts heads with Gauma, he and team Dynazenon end up fighting together, leading to a lot of new combinations for the main fights as Dynazenon and its pieces are able to function as armor and weapons for Knight.
This leads to us asking more questions about the Kaiju and Kaiju Eugenicists and getting more answers.
First of all, who are the Kaiju Eugenicists? I’ve already gone over Mujina, the one lost to despair and nihilism. The others, briefly, are Juuga (the philosophical one, who seeks the power of Kaiju to alter the world and humanity), Onija (the wrathful one, who appreciates the Kaiju for their ability to destroy and wishes to simply smash stuff. He gets a bit where he has near-death or seemingly-killed moments only to reappear with “I thought I was dead”, which becomes his catchphrase), and Shimuzu who… it’s not clear at first what Shimuzu is about, but he transfers into Yomogi’s class and repeatedly tries to strike up conversations about the nature of Kaiju, the Eugenicists, and to an extent the world. Together, they’re a group that attempted a coup against their kingdom five thousand years ago and were stopped by their former compatriot Gauma, who loved the princess of their land and fought for her. It’s unclear why the Kaiju users have been resurrected in this era, but it’s clear that history is repeating itself when it comes to their conflict.
Their arrival might, however, be because of the Kaiju. The Kaiju, we find, are born from mysterious scattered seeds nurtured by the wishes and regrets of humanity, attracted to and given form by dark and powerful emotions. According to Knight and Second, it’s possible for a Kaiju to have a true heart (which makes sense, seeing as they both at least started life as Kaiju), but rare, and the ones that don’t have that capacity are in the end savage beasts that can only be put down, or else tools for Kaiju Users like the Eugenicists to wield. There are also, we’re let in on late in the show, a finite number of possible Kaiju, meaning that the work Dynazeon and Knight need to do isn’t endless, and the Eugenicists have a strict timer within which they must achieve victory if they are ever to do so.
As we learn about this nature of the Kaiju, we also discover two other things. One is that Yomogi might have the spark necessary to be a Kaiju User himself, as he feels something when attempting to mimic the “Instance Domination” that the Eugenicists use to control Kaiju, and doing it in battle seems to grab one’s attention. The other is that Chise herself seems to be the source of a growing Kaiju.
The Kaiju born from Chise, initially small, takes the form of a golden mechanical-looking dragon. She names it Goldburn and, fearing what they’d do, hides it from Gauma and the others, trying to take care of her little Kaiju with care and attention. Goldburn seems responsive to her, even as he grows into a full-sized dragon… perhaps a bit too responsive, as while she flies with him and sees the school she used to go to, where she was bullied, Goldburn nearly attacks it, recognizing the object of Chise’s grief and distress. Her desire to not get people killed overwhelms her distaste for school enough to keep Goldburn from crossing a line, but two things are clear – Goldburn is one of the Kaiju who has the potential to be something more, and Chise is playing with fire keeping him quiet despite that. This ends up coming to a head when Yume, overcome by despair from the investigation, keeps out of a fight and, as Yomogi goes to fetch her, nearly suffers the same fatal tumble as her sister before her. Chise and Goldburn, however, were on-scene enough to catch her, and they go with Yomogi and Yume to face off against the Kaiju of the episode unlocking yet another level of combination (Dynazenon + Gridknight + Goldburn = Kaiser Gridknight, complete with fancy energy cape. Collect them all, because this show is an homage to the kind of thing that’s made to sell toys.)
And, because the show knows better than to get stale repeating the same thing over and over the way certain other shows I’ve mentioned do, the introduction of Goldburn and the final transformation stage of Kaiser Gridknight signals the beginning of the end. There are three episodes left, and the Kaiju are running out. In fact, there are only two left (well, one and a fluke), but both of them are kind of big deals.
The penultimate Kaiju, initially believed to be the final one, is a quite intimidating creature that jump cuts people out of existence. It gets, frankly, everyone. Most of the city, most of the heroes, even the Kaiju Eugenicists are swallowed up, leaving Goldburn outside to take care of Chise and Second while Yomogi dives into the beast’s jaws to kill it from the inside.
And it’s a hell of an inside – the people swallowed up are trapped in the past, literally reliving moments that have been and going through them in different ways that they might regret less. We see when Koyomi split with his old flame in the prime timeline, when they found a huge amount of counterfeit money and he bolted in fear. In the Kaiju, he lives out something of his fantasy of standing firm that day, and has to face what might have been. In Yume’s case, we see both the last times she saw her sister alive and, as a consequence of doing things differently, the time and place of her sister’s death. Here, Yume is able to get closure, coming to understand that her sister died in an accident rather than by suicide and, at the same time, finally having a chance to say goodbye, while Knight is brought back to his time as Anti and Gauma to his time as a Kaiju Eugenicist. Yomogi’s call is able to reach all of them and convince them to shatter the illusions that bind them, allowing them to ultimately break out and defeat the “final” Kaiju.
With the mission ended, the Kaiju Eugenicists split up in failure, having to consider how they could live in a world without Kaiju. Koyomi prepares to step out into real life, Yume and Yomogi visit her sister’s grave and start doing normal things, Knight and Second prepare to world-hop, and to take Goldburn with them to join the team, and Gauma comes to terms both with his victory and the fact that he still hasn’t been reunited with his Princess. This takes an entire episode before, right at the end, when Yomogi confesses his feelings to Yume, Shimuzu decides to let us know that it’s not over yet: he carries one last Kaiju inside his own heart, being a monster deep inside, and transforms himself into one final opponent for the final episode.
Shimuzu proves to be an overwhelming opponent for the faltering hero team, and powers up further when the other Kaiju Eugenicists allow themselves to be swallowed up, joining with the monster for their own reasons – Juuga to see what it can bring, Onija to wreak havoc, and Mujina because she sees herself as worthless otherwise – effectively making the Final Kaiju a true equivalent to Dynazenon, bearing the power and emotions of the enemy team. Sure enough, as Dynazenon pulls together enough to fight back, we see the parallel characters have some last defiant words for each other; Mujina and Koyomi find their differences irreconcilable, as do Juuga and Gauma. And Yomogi? When all else seems lost, Yomogi once again attempts Instance Domination, successfully stunning the Shimuzu-Kaiju and allowing the final blow to be landed despite its awesome strength. In some sort of mind space, Shimuzu and Yomogi face each other at the end, the one who became a Kaiju unable to understand the one who would give up the role of a Kaiju user for a normal life.
With that blow, the true last Kaiju is defeated, and the Kaiju Eugenicists are returned to death. Yeah, they flat-out die here. Despite the fact that, in the time we spent with them, the Kaiju Eugenicists with the possible exception of Shimuzu seemed to be your typical Trigger goofballs who in another show would probably get away with being more fun than they were evil, they die. Even the seemingly salvageable Mujina had her chance, and in keeping with the themes of the show and how it addresses the regrets and grief of its leads, there’s not always going to be redemption or a second chance to make things right (unless you count the Azur Lane collaboration I would be remiss for not mentioning due to having commented on the game before, but that’s not canon). In the end their lives were all tied to the Kaiju, and they perish with the last one.
Gauma, too, turns out to not be very long for the world. He may have revived to fight the Eugenicists (even with the suggestion that he had been a mummy in a local museum before the show), but now that the battle is over so is his time on Earth. And, again, there’s nothing to do but make peace with it – Gauma is going over to the other side where his Princess is waiting for him, and those he leaves behind have to come to terms with saying goodbye to friends, given Gauma’s death and the departure to parts unknown of Knight, Second, and Goldburn.
This, in essence, brings us to the fact that SSSS Dynazenon, of all shows, is about coming to terms with loss and grief. Yume has to come to terms with the death of her sister, of course, but Koyomi has to come to terms with his past and missed opportunities, Chise with the possibility of drifting apart from Koyomi and giving up her first friend in a long time, Goldburn. Yomogi in particular and everyone in general has to accept Gauma’s passing, just as Gauma needed to understand that he wasn’t going to find his princess in this world. The Kaiju Eugenicists are all, ultimately, people who could not reach acceptance with what the world dealt them. Their styles are different but that undercurrent of unbending defiance does exist in all of them, hence why they pick up missions five thousand years out of context when they find themselves alive. Is it necessarily wrong to struggle to change things? No, and Yomogi is part of the show’s address of that, in that he mostly helps others (particularly Yume) with their own grief rather than grappling with their own. But it’s certainly not good to become mired in the mindset that there is only one way for things to work which must be forced through – that’s ultimately what drags them to their deaths.
Because of this, the last episode has what feels like a quite extended tail. It doesn’t actually take too long in terms of minutes, because the writers here are good at what they do, but we do have to see how everyone has moved on. We see Yomogi get the awkward question from his parents (who briefly met Gauma as his friend) about why Gauma’s not around, and how he answers (that Gauma was barred from school – which he was after attempting to get Shimuzu on campus – and won’t be around, dodging the true answer even as it’s clear he knows and has come to terms with it). We see Koyomi joining the workforce, working for his old flame and her husband, who are good and friendly people. We see Chise in her uniform, suggesting that she’s decided to go back to school despite the traumas she must have suffered there the last time. And we see that Yomogi and Yume are now dating and making a good future, which is where the show leaves us.
With the entire show considered, the balance is actually fascinating. It has every required action beat for the kind of “monster of the week” show that it’s emulating. Every Kaiju gets the time it needs to show off its powers and its character. The latter is something I’m glad that Dynazenon (like Gridman before it) remembers. At the risk of going off on a tangent, one of the things that gives suitmation monsters their particular charm is that they’re portrayed by actors who are still trying to get across a clear character. Speaking of entries in the classic Godzilla series, foes like Gigan, Megalon, and Hedorah don’t have the same personality, as their motions and body language convey different ideas. Gigan is a brute and a bully, and you can see that in how the creature moves in the classic films. Hedorah, originally portrayed by the same actor, is a creature of cold alien cruelty, and when you’re watching the film, you know that even though the role is, of course, not a speaking part. Godzilla himself can be a noble hero or a raging beast, and while that’s communicated by the writing and direction as well, it can’t be ignored that the acting does actually do a lot of the work.
When it comes to SSSS Dynazenon, there is of course not a human actor portraying the Kaiju. However, pains were taken in order to give the Kaiju distinctive themes and personas in animation as well, maintaining a good deal of what’s great about Tokusatsu monsters. This was true of Akane Shinjo’s creations in Gridman (and as an in-character fan of the genre, she wouldn’t have it any other way) and it’s still true here. The explosion-shooting Kaiju from Episode 3 comes off as brash and bold. The paint-slinging Kaiju that Yomogi first tests his latent Kaiju User powers on is energetic and even a bit silly. Goldburn gets more scenes, and is clearly overeager, sort of like a big golden mecha-dragon dog. The penultimate Kaiju that traps everyone in the past is, fittingly, rather viscerally cruel and perhaps too cunning even for the Eugenicists. They move differently, as well as taking advantage of the fact that they’re fully animated to have strange forms unconstrained by needing to fit a human inside there.
It is easy, far too easy, to simply write off all Kaiju as big stompy things that make a big mess. They are that, but the best ones have personality and style, which is one reason why (along with creative visuals and a good story) some legendary monsters are remembered decades and decades after their creation while others are easily forgotten. Dynazenon’s Kaiju aren’t really among the best; I don’t think I’ll be recalling their particular traits as long as I have Toho’s top dogs… but part of that is that the show, like Gridman before it, isn’t really about the Kaiju; the creators did clearly understand what goes into making a good Kaiju, and they put it to use.
The focus is with people grappling with life, trying to find their way out of dead ends they call life. And I know that probably sounds lame. Isn’t one of the biggest criticism of some monster movies that we spend too much time with some lame protagonists nobody cares about and not enough time smashing? Well, it is, but there’s a key difference. When we’re annoyed by some whoever-that-is generic lead in a monster movie, it’s not because they’re a human character, it’s because they’re a generic character. They’re lame because they’re lame, not because they’re human. To again reach into my background with Toho films, you don’t see the same complaints leveled against them and it’s often not just because it’s all monsters all the time. It’s because, in the better films, the humans are developed and interesting. Nobody complains about Doctor Serizawa in the original Godzilla, nor the maneuvering with grief, politics, and terrorism that dominates the early parts of Godzilla vs. Biollante. These films end ups significantly strengthened by their human cast, because it lends weight and interest to what the monsters are doing. It’s easy to have some cool looking designs knock over a model city, and that’s certainly better than nothing, but making the audience really care about it is something more.
Dynazenon, though, is the other way around. It’s not a Tokusatsu-style Kaiju story given weight by human drama, it’s a compelling emotional drama given motion by Kaiju battles. The fights that the characters have to go through drive them forward, and provide the necessary impetus for them to get unstuck, look at things in different ways, or just generally move on. In a lot of ways, this is similar to something I mentioned applying to Darling in the Franxx, particularly the middle episodes, in that fighting a giant monster was generally used as either the spark to do something with our characters or the resolution to something they were already doing, not the meat. Dynazenon takes that energy and goes even farther with it.
And for that, it works pretty well. Looked at almost like a weird romance anime with Yomogi and Yume as the primary pair, it has a lot of strengths. I genuinely enjoyed learning more about Yume bit by bit along with Yomogi, and seeing them grow close both through the battles and through the steps they were able to take on their own. It’s weird to say it, but there are ways in which Dynazenon is more closely related to something like The World is Still Beautiful than it is to something like Demonbane. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is also where it sets itself apart from its predecessor, SSSS Gridman. Gridman, for all its metafictional genre-bending, was still more a “giant robot fights giant monsters” affair, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Dynazenon, though, has its heart in a different place.
You can probably guess by now that I consider this to be more of a strength than a weakness for the show as a whole. So, what grade does it merit, then? I’m going to give SSSS Dynazenon an A-, for the same reason that I did Gridman. I think it’s a very strong show, and that it certainly has and should have its audience, but also that it might have some difficulty finding the audience that appreciates it because of its odd blend. You have to be looking for a romantic drama about coming to terms with death, but also be up for transforming toy combination scenes dripping with 80’s and 90’s style cheese and kaiju battles, because those are still a large part of the show’s DNA even if I don’t think they’re dominant. And that’s not easy. The audience for a slow investigation into the accidental death of a character’s emotionally distant elder sister is not normally the same as the audience for shouting your attack names as you lay into a giant monster with laser eyes. It’s something that I think works very well in context, but not something that always works as smoothly as it could, forcing me to have some reservations about its final status. I could easily see a viewer being very frustrated at the show being a bait-and-switch no matter which of its two more major components they saw as the bait. Take from that what you will, but if you’re ready for an emotionally effective story with some good monster of the week action, go ahead and give SSSS Dynazenon a look.