No intros no nothing lets cut the shit at once: I dont like this movie and any reason Ive been given to like it boils down to the exact reasons I dislike it. If you liked it then good you probably dont overthink stuff and/or are happy just having cool action and a bit of fanservice but as someone who was a big fan of Gridman and Dynazenon for all the things they tried to say and the universe they built this movie at best just kind of incompetent or at worst selfabsorbed to no end one of the greatest cases of it insists upon itself I have ever seen Gridman and Dynazenon were pretty sweet but they had obvious flaws be it Gridmans main cast being pretty uninteresting besides Akane and Dynazenon feeling kinda rushed and like it forgot what it was going for near the end. Trigger and rushing things is nothing new theyve been doing this for years but youd think that with a movie that they were in no rush to make and would serve as an epilogue to their miracle child of a series theyd learn from their mistakes tie up any loose ends and then everyone would be happy a job so easy any halfcompetent AO3 writer could make work. Sadly Universe is too busy sucking itself off while apologizing for its own existence to do this Mecha and metafiction have been going hand in hand for a long while now and every time its either some life changing franchisedefining work of art or a halfassed insult to the rest of the series. Universe is closer to the latter than the former seeing as the first half of the movie is every character going Wow guys isnt Gridman WEIRD? hes kinda cool tho i think in the bluntest and least interesting way possible a metafiction is supposed to make you question the very building blocks of the work not just point at them and go damn thats crazy which Universe is adept at doing The second half of the film tries to bait powerscalers into adding Gridman into their pantheon of misunderstood overpowered mechs like Mazinger ZERO or Demonbane or Aquarion Logos Genesis go watch Aquarion Logos btw that anime is the realest shit ever etc etc. It tries to pull off some Mazinger ZERO thing where every Gridman is a creation of Gridman and the amount of spin offs is breaking the balance or who gives a shit. Its well executed for about 3 minutes before they remember the movie is ending in 20 minutes and have to shove in one last highbudget key jingl i mean one last final fight with all the new toys before the movie ends. Thats right baby they made the same mistake as Dynazenon AGAIN Speaking of Dynazenon I hope you werent expecting an actual crossover or anything like that this isnt Gridman x Dynazenon this is Gridman ft.Dynazenon. I almost closed the movie when the Dynazenon cast literally got fucking erased for like 30 minutes as someone who likes the Dynazenon cast WAY more than Gridmans that shit felt like a slap to the face it was insulting. Oh and forget about any mention of any spin off or even Hyper Agent all the manga spin offs appear for like 5 seconds as loose panels probably just so no one complains that the movie about Gridmans Universe forgets about most of the universe but Ill complain anyways because Dogma is one of my favorite mangas of all time and it deserves way more respect that like 4 panels put straight from the manga into a throwaway scene Akane is there too the Kaiju kids get mentioned Anosyllus gets a mech form which I thought was fucking awesome until I realized she doesnt even get used. Then the movie ends But heres the thing and this is what really makes my opinion on Universe go from its incompetent to go fuck yourself: What if its all intentional What if the movie is supposed to suck what if its repeating mistakes because hey Gridman had those mistakes what if its rethreading every step and every slip of the SSSS series as one huge looksintothecameraandsays wow guys get a load of this anime moments. Maybe its just the creators talking to themselves and addressing all the criticisms of their animes themselves maybe every word spoken by the characters is just an echo of the shit that goes down at Trigger HQ maybe the movie is extremely smart but just not in a way that the audience wanted or expected. Maybe Gridman Universe is a movie made for the Gridman team first and the audience second Well good for them but if something is supposed to suck intentionally then it still sucks. Im the audience I didnt do shit for Trigger and Im pretty sure anyone reading this also didnt I dont want to hear what the crew of this movie thinks of their franchise for two hours I want an epilogue to the franchise Ive been loving these last few years. They had every chance to fix every problem with the franchise but instead we got two hours of the team ranting on about how weird Gridman with a focus on the two least interesting characters in the franchise while anyone actually likeable never gets the spotlight or is well forgotten half way through the movie So in conclusion if you just want to see the SSSS cast one last fight and check out a cool kaiju fight go watch this. But if youre expecting any sort of gratifying conclusion to Triggers only work that doesnt give me a headache youre shit out of luck. There are many better metamecha works out there and most of them dont feel ashamed of their own franchise I aint proofreading this