[ EPU Foyer ] [ Lab and Grill ] [ Bonus Theater!! ] [ Rhetorical Questions ] [ CSRANTronix ] [ GNDN ] [ Subterranean Vault ] [ Discussion Forum ] [ Gun of the Week ]

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

Subject: "SSSS.Gridman"     Previous Topic | Next Topic
Printer-friendly copy    
Conferences eyrie.private-mail Topic #733
Reading Topic #733
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
22859 posts
Dec-26-19, 05:51 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
"SSSS.Gridman"
 
   This show has one of the odder origin stories. Not within the show, I mean the origin of the show itself.

Back in the strange television wasteland that was the early 1990s, Tsuburaya Productions, the company responsible for the Ultraman franchise, was on a bit of a break from its most famous creation. They hadn't made an Ultraman series since 1980's imaginatively titled Ultraman 80; although a couple of licensed Ultraman series were made in English-speaking countries in the early '90s, Tsuburaya themselves wouldn't make another one until Ultraman Tiga* in 1996.

In 1993, perhaps missing a bit of that giant superhero action, Tsuburaya made a TV show called Denkō Chōjin Gridman ("Lightning Superman Gridman", sometimes rendered Hyper Agent Gridman in English). Gridman is... weird. Like, really weird. It's as if someone at Tsuburaya stayed up way too late one night and thought, What if we crossed Ultraman with Tron?

You see, like Tsuburaya's more famous characters, Gridman is a giant superhero of alien origin (it's suggested that he's actually from another dimension), but, as his name might tend to suggest, he lives and fights giant monsters inside "the computer world", not in the actual streets of Tokyo. Real-world consequences of his battles are thus limited to whatever weirdness is caused when the computers go haywire because there is a giant monster battle happening in, and wrecking large swathes of, cyberspace.

The thing is, like certain other fictional properties of the early '90s (yes, I'm looking at you, ReBoot), Gridman is a show about computers that seems to have been written by people who had heard of computers, but didn't know anything about them. (It sometimes feels likely that the writers of Gridman had never actually seen one. :) The effects which Gridman's battles in The Computer World have on the real world are hilariously impossible. Example: In one scene in the first episode, the monster's targeting of a hospital's computers is reflected not in the hospital's scheduling system going down, or the power failing, or perhaps the accounting computer mistakenly billing patients for procedures they never had; no, instead, an operating room in which a young boy is being treated for acute appendicitis is suddenly filled with arcs of lightning and inexplicably levitating surgical instruments, as if the place has been invaded by an unlikely and bothersome team-up of a feral Pikachu and a poltergeist with a grudge against the medical profession.

Couple that with the high, high visual standards of early-1990s "live actor matted into CG scenery" technology and you have one strange-ass viewing experience. Gridman is a relic from a simpler time, a time when Japanese audiences would happily put up with shows that neither made sense nor looked good as long as the premise was interesting and the presentation was sincere. And Gridman's presentation is certainly sincere. The actors all come across like they're in a Very Special Episode of ABC After School Special. (The quality of script and direction they have to work with is similar as well.) This nonsense is Serious Business as far as they're concerned. :)

Cut to North America, where Art Metrano and Harry Connick eat pizza and buy ties for their stupid girlfriends and Harry Truman gets off a plane by the sewage dump and then a blind guy goes by and says, "Help me," what the hell was that supposed to be?! DiC Entertainment, eyeing the success of repackaged tokusatsu shows like Mighty Morphin [sic] Power Rangers and Big Bad Beetleborgs, set themselves the task of coming up with something like that, only based on a show that is not as good and given an even dumber title. They succeeded wildly in both respects, because what they came up with was a series built around the battle footage from Gridman and called Superhuman Samurai Syber [sic] Squad.

Oddly for one of those shows, SSSS was produced with the actual cooperation and input of Tsuburaya, rather than just using Western actors and a pair of scissors like Haim Saban did to make the original MMPR. Among other things, this meant that the props and sound effects matched. On the other hand, it was still based on the fight footage from Gridman, with its iffy matte effects and hilariously bad CGI backgrounds, so it still wasn't a very good show. I was just at the wrong age to really get into any of these shows, besides a mild 20s-ironic flirtation with Power Rangers (which mostly consisted of seeing the first movie with Derek a few times), but I remember running across it a few times on cable and thinking it looked pretty bad even by the liberal standards of that kind of program.

By the time SSSS started airing, Tsuburaya had put its international adventures behind it and started work on the Heisei-era Ultra shows, starting with the aforementioned Ultraman Tiga. Gridman and SSSS lived out their runs and then faded into a well-deserved obscurity.

Until a year or two ago, when someone at Tsuburaya was apparently looking around for a project that needed doing and thought, Well, there's Gridman... oh, and the Americans did that other show that was based on it. Why don't we make an anime series based on both of them?

So... that's what they did. That's what the SSSS in SSSS.Gridman stands for. It's a mashup of Gridman and Superhuman Samurai Syber [sic] Squad. And it is just as weird as that sentence suggests it must be. The thing is that, at least over the first three episodes (that's all I've watched so far), although it's based on two television shows that were bad, SSSS.Gridman somehow manages not to be terrible. In fact it's pretty good.

I mean, the visuals are a lot better, but you would expect that from animation produced in the late 2010s as opposed to live-action-plus-CG from 1993. It's not just that, though; it's also better-written. Weird and trippy, yes, but one gets the sense that the general vibe of "I can't be sure what the hell is actually going on here" is cultivated instead of accidental. It feels like it's leading somewhere, rather than just being a function of the show being an incoherent mess.

It also feels, unlike the original series, like it was made by people who were having fun. For example, it's relentlessly referential to its origins—not just Gridman and SSSS, but Tsuburaya in general. One of the main characters (the Third Guy, who is not one of the deuteragonists but isn't quite a secondary character either) is an Ultraman fan and routinely remarks about the similarity of various situations they're in (mainly involving giant monsters attacking the city) to how things generally go in the Ultra series. Gridman's "manifest, then grow to giant size" thing is shown from above just like pretty much every Ultraman's, too.

Tonally, it reminds me a little of the Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova anime, in that Very Serious Things are happening, but at the same time you can never trust it not to just haul out the slapstick in the same scene. There's a group of characters who are apparently personifications of Gridman's inevitable power-up equipment, and although frighteningly capable, they are also idiots. For instance, one of them, Samurai Caliber (who turns into a giant sword for Gridman to wield), carries a bunch of very long swords crossways on his back, and although he possesses superhuman agility and combat prowess, he can't walk through a door without banging them into the doorframe and falling down. In the third episode, while the Female Deuteragonist and the Third Guy are trying to get an emotional handle on the apparent deaths of Gridman, Caliber, and their friend the Male Deuteragonist, three more of the "personified power-ups" characters randomly show up and do this whole comedy scene about ordering lattes.

I'm finding it to be good fun so far. It's not a "deconstruction" of the genre the way, e.g., Evangelion was; it doesn't have that mean-spirited "revenge" vibe to it. More like it's somewhere between there and the bald-faced celebration of all the clichés King of Braves Gaogaigar was—aware of its own absurdity, but having fun with it rather than trying to make you feel like a dick for enjoying it.

Of course, there are nine episodes left, so there's still plenty of time for it all to go horribly wrong, but so far I think it's very promising.

--G.
* Not to be confused with this year's Ultraman Taiga. Seriously.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
SSSS.Gridman [View All] Gryphonadmin Dec-26-19 TOP
  RE: SSSS.Gridman Peter Eng Dec-27-19 1
     RE: SSSS.Gridman Star Ranger4 Dec-29-19 5
  RE: SSSS.Gridman Star Ranger4 Dec-29-19 2
     RE: SSSS.Gridman Gryphonadmin Dec-29-19 3
         RE: SSSS.Gridman Star Ranger4 Dec-29-19 4
         RE: SSSS.Gridman McFortner Dec-29-19 6
             RE: SSSS.Gridman Gryphonadmin Dec-29-19 7
                 RE: SSSS.Gridman Offsides Jan-03-20 8

Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
Peter Eng
Charter Member
2078 posts
Dec-27-19, 02:34 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Peter%20Eng Click to send private message to Peter%20Eng Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
1. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #0
 
   Okay, first off, I can't believe they dug up SSSS and used anything from it. I mean, we're talking about a series where the transformation sequence was based on the protagonist strumming a power chord, the female lead saying something that made you think the character wanted to be a cheerleader, and the third character saying a non sequitur (until he was replaced by a generic airhead surfer.)

Really, the live-action visuals and characterization felt like they were leftovers from an 80s high school show.

> It's not just that, though; it's also better-written. Weird and trippy, yes,
> but one gets the sense that the general vibe of "I can't be sure what the hell
> is actually going on here" is cultivated instead of accidental.

I think it would have to be. It sounds like they didn't have much to work with, so they built on the weakness until it was a strength.

Peter Eng
--
("What were they smoking when they wrote this script?")
("I don't know, but I think we can work with this. What we do is...")


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Star Ranger4
Charter Member
2483 posts
Dec-29-19, 05:12 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Star%20Ranger4 Click to send private message to Star%20Ranger4 Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list Click to send message via AOL IM  
5. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #1
 
   >Okay, first off, I can't believe they dug up SSSS and used anything
>from it.

To be fair, Pete, what was wrong with SSSS was not really in the hands of the line producers or writers. To be blunt, the way RL-Gryph is handling this whole issue is a lot better than anything we lived through in the 1980's

Of COURSE you wernt
expecting it!
No One expects the
FANNISH INQUISITION!

RCW# 86


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Star Ranger4
Charter Member
2483 posts
Dec-29-19, 01:53 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Star%20Ranger4 Click to send private message to Star%20Ranger4 Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list Click to send message via AOL IM  
2. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #0
 
   So, I'm at episode 10... and while it is not the deconstruction that NXE was...
There whole 'what is reality and what is really going on here' is really pushing the dial up to Big O's 11. Depending on where you place 10 on that dial, it might already be there; but with two more episodes after this one we are already deep in the pool.

Only other thing I can think of at the moment is that the translators made a major error. Those 4 are anything BUT JUNIOR high students. I'd argue that they were what us californians would call junior COLLEGE students, but I'm not sure the whole junior (aka 2 years to an associate instead of a baccalaureate degree) college thing is a thing anywhere other than California?

Of COURSE you wernt
expecting it!
No One expects the
FANNISH INQUISITION!

RCW# 86


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
22859 posts
Dec-29-19, 03:46 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
3. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #2
 
   >Only other thing I can think of at the moment is that the translators
>made a major error. Those 4 are anything BUT JUNIOR high students.

They're meant to be first-year senior high school students, i.e., in the 10th grade, which would mean they're either 15 or 16 depending on where in the year their birthdays fall. (In Japan, junior high is grades 7-9, senior high is 10-12, as opposed to {6|7}-8 / 9-12 split more typical here in the US.)

>I'd argue that they were what us californians would call junior
>COLLEGE students, but I'm not sure the whole junior (aka 2 years to an
>associate instead of a baccalaureate degree) college thing is a thing
>anywhere other than California?

Oh sure, two-year colleges exist outside California, though they're not always called junior colleges. Here in Maine, for instance, we have the Maine Community College System, which is a network of two-year schools that exists in parallel with, and separate from, the University of Maine System's four-year ones. There are also a few independent post-secondary schools in the state that offer two-year degrees, although I don't know off the top of my head of any that don't also have four-year programs.

I think a lot of two-year colleges around the country are rebranding away from the word "junior" as part of a general drive to be taken more seriously as an educational option, although Maine's state-run ones were never called that. When I was a kid, the state's network of two-year public colleges were called Vocational Technical Institutes (because all their courses were in technical things like radiography and the building trades), then they were Technical Colleges for a while, and lately they've settled on the "Community College" label.

There's that whole thing of whether they're positioned as trade schools or feeders to a university system, too. The MCCs shifted from one model to more-or-less both along with their rename; they still offer associate degrees in the trades, but they also have liberal-arts offerings that do lead to a two-year degree, but are really meant as a less expensive way to do the first two years of a BA.

(I can think of an example from Massachusetts as well—when I went to WPI, there was a two-year nursing school nearby called Becker Junior College, but they also started awarding four-year degrees and dropped the "Junior" in the early '90s.)

I actually took my physics courses at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor when I was in the mechanical engineering technology program at UMaine; they were worth exactly equivalent transfer credit and cost about 10 percent as much, which was a nice thing for the lady who runs the School of Engineering Technology's admin office to clue me in on. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Star Ranger4
Charter Member
2483 posts
Dec-29-19, 05:01 AM (EST)
Click to EMail Star%20Ranger4 Click to send private message to Star%20Ranger4 Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list Click to send message via AOL IM  
4. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #3
 
   >I actually took my physics courses at Eastern Maine Community College
>in Bangor when I was in the mechanical engineering technology program
>at UMaine; they were worth exactly equivalent transfer credit and cost
>about 10 percent as much, which was a nice thing for the lady who runs
>the School of Engineering Technology's admin office to clue me in on.
>:)
>
>--G.

And that drastic decrease in paid tuition vs accredited credits pretty much describes the strength of the state/community/choose your own term system. Heck, if it wasn't for the number of credits that transfered into the 4 'year' system I'd have been carrying about 10 times the amount of debt I eventually had to use my Veteran benefits (and a couple of other programs) to eliminate. >.<;

Of COURSE you wernt
expecting it!
No One expects the
FANNISH INQUISITION!

RCW# 86


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
McFortner
Charter Member
579 posts
Dec-29-19, 05:05 PM (EST)
Click to EMail McFortner Click to send private message to McFortner Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
6. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #3
 
   >(In Japan, junior high is
>grades 7-9, senior high is 10-12, as opposed to {6|7}-8 / 9-12 split
>more typical here in the US.)

Oddly enough, when I went to school in this county back in the dark ages (Class of 85), they had elementary (1-4), middle school (5 & 6), junior high (7-9) and senior high (10-12). I moved back after the Air Force and College (1989-1997) they had switched to the "standard" of elementary (1-5), middle (6-8), and high school (9-12). I still confuse people when I talk about graduating from Stockbridge Senior High when it's just Stockbridge High School now.

The old Jr. and Sr. buildings are now the school for the discipline problems as well as the county police training and gym. I guess they want to keep the police near the problem kids.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
22859 posts
Dec-29-19, 05:35 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Gryphon Click to send private message to Gryphon Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
7. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #6
 
   >>(In Japan, junior high is
>>grades 7-9, senior high is 10-12, as opposed to {6|7}-8 / 9-12 split
>>more typical here in the US.)
>
>Oddly enough, when I went to school in this county back in the dark
>ages (Class of 85), they had elementary (1-4), middle school (5 & 6),
>junior high (7-9) and senior high (10-12).

Here in Maine at around the same time (I graduated from high school in 1991), most school districts including Millinocket's had K-5 elementary schools, a middle school for grades 6-8, and high school was 9-12. There were a few places around the state in the '80s, one of which I remember visiting as a member of the George W. Stearns High School stage band, that had K-6 elementary schools, plus a 7-8/9-12 junior/senior high school in a single building.

To save facilities cost in the face of cratering enrollment, Millinocket has gone to that model in recent years (having closed two of its elementary schools and added grade 6 to the remaining one), although they still call the 7-8 school "Millinocket Middle School", even though the whole thing is properly Stearns Jr.-Sr. High now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Offsides
Charter Member
1271 posts
Jan-03-20, 02:38 PM (EST)
Click to EMail Offsides Click to send private message to Offsides Click to view user profileClick to add this user to your buddy list  
8. "RE: SSSS.Gridman"
In response to message #7
 
   I grew up with K-6, 7-8, and 9-12 (Newton, MA). My step-siblings next-door in Brookline were K-8 and 9-12. Now (Cheltenham, PA), my kids are in K-4, with 5-6, 7-8 and finally 9-12 in the future. They're currently in 4th and 1st, so this is the last time they'll be in the same school until my oldest is a Senior in High School, and my youngest is a Freshman. Which is definitely a little weird for me, but whatever...

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>


  Alert | IP Printer-friendly page | Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Conferences | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic

[ YUM ] [ BIG ] [ ??!? ] [ RANT ] [ GNDN ] [ STORE ] [ FORUM ] GOTW ] [ VAULT ]

version 3.3 © 2001
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Benjamin D. Hutchins
E P U (Colour)