>ACCESS CODE: ‘Bring The Thunder’
Episode 8 of #SSSS.GRIDMAN was something of a whirlwind for mecha fans, being the culmination of the ongoing love letter to Japanese animator/designer/director Masami Obari. There’s a lot to unpack with this aspect of the episode, including some misunderstood controversy.
BEFORE WE ADDRESS THAT, HOWEVER, let’s tackle the Ultra Series nods. First up, a clear shot of a Live Sign from ULTRAMAN GINGA. The Live Sign was part of the show’s gimmick, being on every Ultra Hero/Kaiju 500 figure. Using the Ginga Spark to detect the Sign, the user could “Ultlive” into an Ultraman and/or kaiju. Fun fact: The Ginga Spark itself is basically the Mobirates for the Ultra Series, able to interact with every figure of the Ultra Hero/Kaiju 500 series. To see the interactive feature in action, check out this review by @k2eizo!
Additionally, the sign in the foreground lists the numbers 2020 — a possible nod to the ULTRA Q episode, “Challenge from the Year 2020”.
Later on, Sho panics and starts rambling about “The Vanishing City” and how Dancan is coming back. These are flat-out nods to the title and premise of Episode 34 of ULTRASEVEN. The episode involves an alien who is making buildings & people disappear….which sounds familiar.
Oh, and be sure to remember that moment, it will come back later.
In a welcome appearance, one of the signs being made for the school’s festival features Pigmon! Specifically, it’s Pigmon as he appears in ULTRAMAN KIDS: 3000 LIGHT YEARS IN SEARCH OF MOTHER. The sign is also rendered in the same style as the opening credits, and even references the show’s theme song “Cosmo Adventure”.
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE, we have yet another foreshadowing kaiju group shot in Akane’s room! This time around, they’re all strictly mecha-based. The group includes…
- King Joe Black (ULTRA GALAXY)
- Mecha Baltan (ANDRO MELOS)
- Gobnu Ogna (TIGA)
- Bios (GREAT/TOWARDS THE FUTURE)
- Imperizer (MEBIUS)
- Crazygon (SEVEN)
- Galactron (ORB/GEED)
- Builgamo (RETURN OF ULTRAMAN)
- Chaos Clevergon (COSMOS)
- Diabolic (ORB Movie)
This group ties into the motif of this episode: Mecha upgrades! A classic Ultra Series trope, this often sees past monsters being either turned into cyborgs or full-on robots. But interestingly enough, this is a trope that is also unique to Gridman!
Midway through GRIDMAN THE HYPER AGENT, Takeshi Todo started to create and unleash mecha versions of previous monsters. These were largely the same suits, but with new robot parts attached to them. It’s not surprising to say that this was absolutely a budget-saving maneuver behind-the-scenes, but the mechanical versions often were more amazing that their original counterparts!
Bit of an ironic parallel: SYBER-SQUAD often re-used monster battle scenes to extend the series’ episode count to reach the 65-episode mark needed for syndication. The reuse of monsters was never formally acknowledged in-show, with a lot of them sometimes being used a filler for an opening episode stinger fight. As an end result, the final episode of SYBER-SQUAD doesn’t resolve the plot and see the defeat of Kilokhan — it just ends.
But the most fun Ultra Series nod of this episode, (as pointed out by @MarzGurl), was the appearance of the ULTRAMAN R/B ending theme during the scene with Sho and Yuta in the Seven-21 convenience store!
MOVING ON, THIS WEEK there was a deep cut from another side of town. During the scene in which Samurai Caliber causes alarm in the school courtyard, the two teachers in this shot are in fact characters from one of the most beloved Japanese dramas: MR KINPACHI IN CLASS 3B.
There’ve been several locations in SSSS.GRIDMAN pulled from real-life spots. But it gets even weirder when you find out that Akane’s house is not only a real location but that it was actually in an episode of KINPACHI-SENSEI’s 5th series.
(I’ve been stumped as to the actual locations used for SSSS but it also looks as if KINPACHI-SENSEI shares several of them. It’s an insane deep dive that I eventually had to back out of due to my language limitations.)
THIS EPISODE FINALLY INTRODUCED Full Power Gridman to the show! With it came several nods to the Brave Series, MORE tokusatsu tropes, and the climax of an ongoing love letter to Masami Obari.
The trope in question has to do with Gridman & the Assist Weapon team having to reduce their output size to combine. In several tokusatsu shows, some of the more powerful/larger robots or upgrades always end up shrinking proportions due to them having to fit a suit actor. The best example of this is within GRIDMAN THE HYPER AGENT. Whereas both Thunder and King Gridman both were slightly taller when fully combined, their suit scale sizes were still relative to Gridman’s suit actor.
Also, it’s abundantly clear that Full Power Gridman is basically an upgrade of the original Thunder Gridman (aka Synchro in Syber-Squad). That said, there’s a slight allusion to the legs of King Gridman/Dyna Dragon with Sky Vitter. Sadly, between that and the Ryutei restaurant, this is the closest we will ever get to King Gridman gracing the screen.
NOW THEN, TIME TO ADDRESS the hot-blooded mechanical elephant in the room: if you don’t know Masami Obari by name, you still might have seen his work. 90’s anime fans may remember him for directing FATAL FURY: THE MOTION PICTURE…
Obari is best known for his outlandish and hyper-detailed mechanical/character design, animation direction, fanservice, and specifically That Sword Pose. It’s been in every Brave show (which he worked on several) and has even made as far as Gundam & even recently DRAGON BALL SUPER. His influence is everywhere.
In 1993, Obari worked as a key animator on BRAVE EXPRESS MIGHT GAINE. He also worked on the opening animation. The show itself is dumb fun but the theme songs & mech design were more than memorable. As it turns out, MIGHT GAINE is actually a weird sort of nexus point for not only SSSS, but also for Studio Trigger and GRIDMAN THE HYPER AGENT.
The big connection right away is with the involvement of Norio Sakai. For MIGHT GAINE, Sakai was part of a duet unit w/ Naoki Takao that sang the two combiner themes, “Let’s Might Gaine!” and “Great Dash!” The same year, Norio Sakai sang the opening & ending themes for GRIDMAN.
As for the Trigger connection to Sakai? The HYPER AGENT ending was used for “boys invent great hero”, but Sakai sang for another show that influenced SSSS’ director, Akira Amemiya: CYBERCOP. Which is outright parodied and homaged with INFERNO COP.
The last piece of the connection to MIGHT GAINE is the straight-up homage of the Great Might Gaine combination sequence in “boys invent great hero”, basically Amemiya’s pilot for SSSS.
Amemiya’s apparent love for MG apparently went above and beyond this week with the combination and final attack for Full Power Gridman. The latter is a shot-for-shot remake of Great Might Gaine’s finisher:
After the episode aired, Masami Obari took to weibo, a Chinese social media platform, and mentioned Trigger of copying his work. Not just with Might Gaine, but the GRAVION references made in the Full Power combination, and even the nod to DANGAIOH in Episode 2. However, the severity of this was a bit exaggerated online.
From SakugaBlog’s post on Episode 8:
I asked a Chinese member of the sakuga community to translate his comments to make sure the nuance got across right, and the main gist is that Obari did indeed say that the team took this too far, and said that it was heartless of them to copy his storyboards and key animation to that degree. But at the same time, he also made it clear that it wasn’t a money issue: Obari simply wanted to be notified beforehand about the work the production intended to mirror, not to be compensated for it.
The context to all of this is the most important part, which is why I find both the people pretending this is a nasty rivalry that will escalate and those who paint Obari’s feelings as petty just because he’s inspired tons of works (as if an Obari punch was on the same level as sequences following each of his keys) to be frustrating. Had he wanted this to blow up, Obari would have tweeted it on the account that all the Japanese industry has their eyes on; wanting to vent to a reduced number of people is something plenty of you will be able to relate to, and as massive as weibo is, that’s what it represents for him.
Sometime after the airing of this episode, Obari was tapped to design a special box sleeve for the first run of the DX Full Power Gridman toy set. It’s happy to see a good resolution for this.
And that’s it for this week’s GRIDMAN Reference Recap! To take us out (and show how close Trigger got with Full Power Gridman, here’s a mash-up w/ audio from the actual Great Might Gaine combination & finish.
This is part eight of my twelve-part SSSS.GRIDMAN Reference Recap. To go back to the master page, click here, or click here to go to Part Nine.
