English Dub Review: SSSS.Gridman “Suspicion”

“What are those two getting so worked up about?” “I can assure you it’s dumb.”

Overview (Spoilers!)

Akane and Alexis want to know if Yuta really is Gridman. At the bus stop, Rikka reminds Akane that they used to walk to school together. Akane asks why Rikka has been talking to Yuta so much, but she doesn’t answer. Arcadia—a group of college-aged YouTubers—have promised to hang out with Rikka’s friends, and Akane volunteers to come along.

Rikka is just excited to be spending time with Akane again, but Yuta and Utsumi are convinced she’s going on a group date. Still crushing on Akane, Utsumi is heartbroken. Gridman urges the boys to fight for what they want, so they follow the girls and Arcadia in secret.

At karaoke, Akane keeps getting interrupted while asking Rikka about Yuta, so she leaves. Yuta and Utsumi sneak into the building, but the girls and Arcadia head home early. Akane orders Anti to kill Arcadia. Yuta admits to Max that he likes Rikka.

The next day, Rikka and her friends watch the latest Arcadia video, but only one member of the group—Yamato—is in it. Rikka thinks this is strange, but her friends say that the videos have always only featured Yamato. Yuta asks Gridman when his memory will return, and Gridman reveals that he can’t remember his past either.

Rikka tries to warn Yamato, but a kaiju grabs him; Caliber saves the day. Gridman is troubled that he couldn’t sense this kaiju. When Anti transforms, Gridman’s battle becomes two-on-one. Anti pushes the other kaiju out of the way; the kaiju don’t like that, so it attacks Anti instead. This time, the entire team shows up to aid Gridman, equipping him with two tanks, a plane, and sword—but they’re too much for Junk to handle, and they all freeze like a jammed computer. Anti takes this opportunity to hurl the other kaiju into Gridman. After Rikka reboots Junk, Gridman returns to battle, equipped with only Max. Using a “super lightning kick,” Gridman takes out the second kaiju. Before they can fight, though, Anti and Gridman are both returned to their human forms. Yuta tries to ask Rikka out, but she misunderstands. On the bus the next day, Rikka wonders if she’s the cause of the kaiju attacks.

Our Take

This show was going so well! For a mecha/kaiju show, it was handling some super profound topics. Last week, SSSS.Gridman made viewers question what it means to be human. This week, a couple of jealous high school boys stalk their female friend to make sure she isn’t dating anyone. Sigh.

I cannot even begin to count the number of jealousy plotlines I’ve seen on TV. It’s tired and boring, and frankly, I know that SSSS.Gridman can do better. Why did the boys immediately assume that Rikka’s going on a “group date”? (And who even does that? I’ve heard of double dates, but not quadruple ones.) More importantly, why do they even care? Yuta showed zero romantic interest in Rikka before this, but the second he thinks someone else might be interested, he’s suddenly in love with her. He seems to think he may have confessed his love to her before he lost his memory, and I hope that’s not the case—surely such a clever show could do something more interesting with its amnesia plotline.

But anyway, what would follow Rikka and Akane even achieve? Borr told Yuta and Utsumi not to let some other guys make the first move, but what’s the plan here? To burst in and cock-block the first Arcadia boy who makes a move on Rikka or Akane? How is spying on them remotely the same as trying to get to them before anyone else does? At the end of this uncomfortable spying scene, Borr flippantly tells Yuta, “Stalking is a serious crime, after all.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but dammit, more characters should listen to him. The only saving grace of this sequence is Caliber bursting in on a random karaoke room, and then acting totally baffled when Yuta tells him he can’t do that. I just love how awkward Caliber is all the time.

Don’t even get me started on Gridman, the mysterious mecha who up until now constantly warned Yuta that he needed to focus on his anti-kaiju mission. Suddenly, he’s a girl expert, noticing that Yuta is “troubled” by Rikka and encouraging him to “fight” for her. The scene is half hilarious and half so ridiculous I can’t even believe it even happened. In general, the emotional reactions in this episode just aren’t as on-point as in previous installments: Utsumi’s overblown frustration at Rikka hanging out with her friends feels similarly out-of-place.

Aside from that groan-worthy plotline, “Suspicion” is as polished as I’ve come to expect from an episode of SSSS.Gridman. All the past highlights are there—great animation, great realism, great attention to detail. This show uses silence and white noise extraordinarily well, utilizing the sounds of the bus’s motion to allow us quiet moments of reflection on Rikka’s feelings. I love that she was able to fix Gridman by turning him off and on again. And I especially like the many tiny moments in this episode that characterize Akane through her actions. She’s a little off when she talks to Rikka, tapping away on her phone instead of looking at her. She uses her cutesy voice to make people think she’s not up to anything. Her phone screen is cracked because she’s constantly throwing it. In her impatience and fury, she presses the elevator button hundreds of times.

And I like the Rikka/Akane story that’s been coming together. I was really curious about the show’s ending song, and we get snippets of an explanation here. I love that, even though she’s meeting with lowkey celebrities, Rikka is most excited about being around Akane again. It’s relatable and a little heartbreaking, and it makes me feel like something must have happened in Akane’s past to transform her into such a monster—she couldn’t have been this messed up when she was hanging out with Rikka every day, could she?

Arcadia, too, is pretty funny. I like that Namiko and Hass don’t fangirl over boy bands or movie stars—they’re obsessed with a group of college YouTubers, which feels very 2018. One of Arcadia’s videos opens with the delightful, “Today we’re gonna be testing the limits of cheese fondue.” But I don’t really get how the whole hangout scenario works. How do Namiko and Hass know Arcadia? Why did they need four girls in order to hang out with them? Why does everything fall apart as soon as Akane walks out? What’s going on here?

In a similar vein, I still haven’t figured out what exactly Max, Borr, and Vit add to the story. So far, they mostly serve to provide silly quips and comic relief, but they don’t contribute anything that Caliber wasn’t already doing for this show’s plot. It’s especially disappointing that, after realizing that Gridman can’t use all four items at once, Yuta chooses Max’s tank, which we already saw the last episode. If we don’t get to see Borr and Vit in action, what is even the point of them?

If SSSS.Gridman can avoid more hokey jealousy plotlines in the future, it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out. But in this case, I agree with Max—watching Yuta flirt with Rikka really is vexing.