English Dub Review: SSSS.Gridman “Dream”

This is what dreams are made of.

Overview (Spoilers!)

Yuta wakes up in Rikka’s house. Akane fusses over him, but he can’t remember who she—or he—is. The world has been reset, with Akane in Rikka’s role. Akane leads Yuta to the hospital and tells him they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. She takes him home and goes in for a kiss, but ends up just leaving instead.

Rikka heads to the infirmary to skip class and finds Akane, who apparently just moved to the area. They bond over not wanting to join a club. Utsumi attends his relative’s memorial service; Akane finds him in the bookstore and impresses him with her knowledge of kaiju. She invites Rikka to her house and introduces Rikka to her “caretaker” Alexis, claiming he’s in cosplay.

Akane tells Alexis that this is how things should have been. She’s made a terrifying kaiju, but Gridman isn’t there. In the shop, Borr can’t wake Utsumi, Rikka, or Yuta. The kaiju phases through buildings, causing no damage. In the dream, Yuta keeps seeing Gridman. Anti learns that the kaiju is preventing Gridman from appearing; he sets out to destroy it but can’t make a dent.

In the dream, Yuta is haunted by the feeling that there’s something missing—and then he stumbles on Tonkawa’s grave. After shopping for figurines together, Akane invites Utsumi over to her house, but he thinks it’s too good to be true. On the bus, Akane invites Rikka to hang out with her and her friends, but Rikka turns her down. At the cemetery, Yuta realizes it’s all a dream. Akane wants to stay inside the dream forever, but Yuta leaves. Utsumi realizes he’s in a dream too, running away and leaving his merch behind. On the bus, Rikka has the same revelation.

The Gridman Alliance runs toward each other, but the kaiju has materialized in the real world now, and Gridman is only present in the dream. Borr, Vit, Max, and Caliber take matters into their own hands, combining to form their own mecha. Together, they defeat the kaiju. Anti is furious, but Caliber tells him that Gridman won’t face him because he’s a living being with a heart. Akane attempts suicide but can’t seem to die. The Alliance wakes up from the dream, and Gridman says Akane has yet to be awakened. Rikka begins to share a secret.

Our Take

This may be the first time I’ve enjoyed a piece of media that fits the trope “And in the end, it was all a dream.”

Because usually, that kind of thing is the world’s biggest cop-out. It clearly spells out the attitude “I want to tell this story, but I don’t have the balls to play it out to its conclusion, so instead of writing an interesting and rewarding ending, I’m just going to pretend none of it ever happened and go home. But I can call it a TWIST ending, so it’s okay. Haha, I TRICKED you.”

But this episode doesn’t do that at all. This dream enriches Akane’s character, contributes significantly to the overall plot, and creates a haunting ambiance that has stuck with me long after the video ended. Yeah, that’s right. I loved it.

“Dream” recreates the foggy atmosphere of episode 1, this time infusing the bored and groggy intonations of the characters’ voices with new meaning. Initially, Rikka’s monotone, a depressed attitude reflected her personal character; in the dream, it’s a sign that none of this is real to her, that she’s nothing but for herself. Character’s eyes are obscured, showing only their hair and mouths as they speak. Colors are too vibrant—skies are neon blue, and the Gridman Alliance is painted in block colors like something out of a superhero comic book. Details about the world are inconsistent and constantly in flux—Akane lives in Rikka’s house when Yuta wakes up but shows Rikka around a different house entirely. Rikka’s mom appears to be Akane’s mom, but later Akane doesn’t have parents at all. Rikka and Akane wear different uniforms than in real life—or do they? The bus is full; there’s no one on the bus. It’s October; it’s summer vacation. It’s eerie and perfectly dreamlike.

In order to transition between short bursts of scenes, we see a traffic light, blinking red to signal that a train is coming across the tracks. Rain falls, hinting at the state of the real world while the dream is in session. Throughout the episode, the sky in these snippets slowly fades from daylight to darkness. And when Neon Genesis finally defeats the kaiju, the bar lifts to allow a train to pass through. The last time we see the traffic lights, they don’t light up at all.

One of the most poignant moments of the episode is on the bus when Rikka presses a button labeled “Please press this button if you wish to exit.” It symbolizes so many things—Rikka wanting to exit the dream, but also to exit the sphere of control Akane has over her. Akane wanting to exit a world of loneliness and boredom.

Because it’s pretty clear that Akane is upset. We see her go through a kind of mental breakdown on-screen, furiously clinging to the dream because it’s all she has. In real life, she’s like that too; she feels the need to exert perfect control over the people around her, to rearrange life and eliminate anything unsavory, because she’s desperately trying to force some meaning into a meaningless existence. Suicide is another trope that’s overused in media—writers employ it for shock value or symbolic effect without considering whether it really makes sense for a character to be suicidal in that situation.

But the moment before Akane steps off that ledge, I knew she was going to do it because it seems like the logical conclusion of her character. Akane is deeply dissatisfied, incredibly bored and lonely and scared and seeking refuge in fantasies to escape from all of it. But she’s so powerful that she can’t even hurt herself if she wants to. Rather than fighting Akane, the last three episodes are likely going to feature the Gridman Alliance trying to save her from herself, and I am here for it. Not that murder is forgivable, or that her sadness is an excuse—but wouldn’t it be a whole lot more interesting than just watching Gridman just kill her? I’m also so excited to hear the end of what Rikka has to say and to see what the conclusion of Anti’s arc will be.

“Dream” is an exemplary model of how to craft a haunting mood, how to develop characters in inventive and interesting ways. This episode isn’t all a dream—it’s a real video on the real Funimation.com, and I am so glad.