What are two great tastes that go great together? Well, firstly, the team-up between anime icons Studio Trigger and Tsuburaya, the Tokustatsu company behind Ultraman: Gridman. The second? Taking two excellent anime collaborations between those companies and mashing them into one big movie.
We’ve known for a while that Trigger was working on a crossover between SSSS. Gridman and SSSS. Dynazenon, its two animated twists on the classic ‘90s toku series Gridman the Hyper Agent (adapted Power Rangers-style as Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad in the West). But at long last, Trigger has finally dropped a trailer for said crossover, dubbed Gridman Universe.
Does it really tell us anything? No. We get flashes of the Gridman and Dynazenon kids. Cryptic shots of Gridman and Dynazenon themselves, including an ominous one of the former wreathed in flame. There’s buildings and vehicles flying everywhere, so you can tell that obviously stuff is going to go down in this mashup of super robot and giant hero goodness. And yet, it’s still so good because it tells us exactly what we need to know: this is Gridman, and it’s Dynazenon. Again, two great tastes that go great together.
The two shows are from a studio that has a veritable smorgasbord of iconic anime to its name — from Kill La Kill to Promare, from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to Star Wars: Vision’s “The Twins” — perhaps some of Trigger’s secret best work. Aside from the incredible action that feels both evocative of Gridman’s Tokusatsu roots and at the same time a full embrace of just how dynamic and energetic animation can be, both Gridman and Dynazenon were incredibly well-written character dramas too, exploring trauma and human connection in ways just as cathartic and satisfying as watching a giant digital knight and a giant combining dragon mecha punch the everloving crap out of kaiju.
You’ve got plenty of time to catch up with them — Gridman Universe is hitting Japanese theatres on March 24.
Leave a Reply