The dance continues.  The never-ending search for a Trigger anime I can embrace, so far fruitless – my history with their catalog ranges from ambivalence to outright dislike.  It’s a funny situation to be in, as someone who came of age as an anime fan through Gainax and absolutely reveres their best work – you can see the familiar elements in Trigger’s shows, but they’re mostly just wrong on every level – cynical, calculated, misogynistic, sloppy.  At some point I’ll just give up, but the love of Gainax is too strong to do so just yet.

I tweeted out earlier today that since the general trend has been for the anime fandom at large to go nuts for Trigger shows I can’t stand, maybe I’d actually like SSSS.Gridman – the reviews are certainly bad enough.  I was at least half-kidding, but a part of me seriously wondered about that – and damned if I didn’t sort of like this premiere.  It was nothing great or anything, mind you, but I really did quite enjoy it – certainly more than the likes of Franxx or Kill la Kill.

As I ponder this inverse relationship between zeitgeist and my personal preference when it comes to Trigger, I definitely don’t think it’s a coincidence.  One of the main reasons I liked Gridman is because it wasn’t crass and calculated and patently false – it was rather unpretentiously goofy in fact.  The Gainax visual flourishes certainly didn’t hurt (director Amemiya Akira is a Gainax man from way back, though not one of the big names), but the best – and most anti-Trigger – part of this premiere was that it wasn’t over-produced and twitchy and self-aware.

Given how spectacularly the big names (like Imaishi and Nishigori) have dropped the ball every time they’re run with it at Trigger, the fact that SSSS.Gridman is mostly the product of second-tier and younger staff is actually a good thing in my eyes.  And it’s a big reason, no doubt, why it does feel so unpretentious and natural by Trigger standards.  I’ll stipulate that I have no familiarity with the old “Gridman” franchise apart from knowing it exists, so that’s the source of no biases either way.  I just know that it makes an interestingly quaint premise for a modern anime, and I’m interested to see where Amemiya and writer Hasegawa Keiichi go with it.

The story follows a young boy (junior high, I’m guessing) named Hiroki Yuuta who passes out in front of the junk shop run by the mother of classmate Takarada Rikka.  Yuuta has lost his memory, and he’s seeing things – like a giant kaiju in the mists outside, and a strange robot-like being called hyper-agent Gridman talking to him through an old PC in the shop.  Rikka can see none of these things, and neither can Yuuta’s friend Utsumi Shou, but it’s quite clear they’re real.  Gridman keeps imploring Yuuta to “remember his calling” and complete his mission.  Eventually Yuuta gets sucked inside the monitor to do just that – specifically, taking on a kaiju that’s wreaking havoc on Tokyo (this one, everyone can see).

Listen, I have no idea if any of this has legs or not, and I sure as salt ain’t getting my hopes up.  But it is kind of nice to watch a Trigger premiere and feel genuine affection – even mild – rather than exasperation or disgust, so you’ll have to excuse me if I revel in the moment while it lasts.  I may watch the next episode and wonder what the hell I was thinking and drop SSSS.Gridman like a hot rock, but it’d sure be nice if that didn’t happen.  With FLCL being butchered by Production I.G. and Evangelion by Khara, it’s not like Gainax fanboys have had a lot to feel good about lately.