The TV Tokusatsu drama Gridman the Hyper Agent, broadcast in 1993, will re-launch as TV anime SSSS.Gridman to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Tsuburaya Production. And its anime script writer is Keiichi Hasegawa, who has participated in many Tsuburaya Tokusatsus, such as Nexus Ultraman.
Production Team
Hasegawa joined the planning and production of anime for the combination of Tsuburaya. Tsuburaya told him: “The Gridman the Hyper Agent is going to produce an anime, I hope you can help.”
Then he was introduced to anime director Akira Amemiya. Amemiya showed him the short anime “Gridman the Hyper Agent: boys invent great hero”, which showed in “Japan Anime Exhibition”.
In fact, Hasegawa did not watch Gridman the Hyper Agent before. But from the dialogue and short anime pictures, he realized that Amemiya has extraordinary love for the Grid hero.
Script Of SSSS.Gridman
Hasegawa has written lots of Tokusatsu scripts. But he did not participate in anime as much. However, in terms of writing the script, Tokusatsu and anime are not so different.
In SSSS.Gridman, Hasegawa had to write the screenplay based on Amemiya’s outline, like Grid upgrades in episode x or a certain monster debuts in episode y. That looks like Tokusatsu even more. However, Tokusatsu did this because the schedule of toy promotion. And the episodes broadcast to match the toys promotions. But in the case of SSSS.Gridman, Amemiya planned these on his own even if there’s no toy to sell.
Tokusatsu And Midnight Anime Style
Hasegawa consciously matched the tastes of anime lovers and purposely added the elements of “midnight anime”. So he joined the Nichijou story like campus learning and cultural festival, etc. In order to create a barrier between Nichijou and non-Nichijou, he pays attention to shaping the handsome image of the hero. Meanwhile, he carefully described the life of Nichijou high school student who’s close to reality.
Hasegawa said that thanks to Amemiya, the anime can subtly blend “Tokusatsu style” and “modern midnight anime style”. Amemiya is not only a Tokusatsu lover, but also owns depth knowledge to midnight anime. He repeatedly emphasized to the production team that SSSS.Gridman is not a work only for Tokusatsu fans carnival and narrow target audience. Although Hasegawa think there will be some sort of threshold between anime enthusiasts and Tokusatsu enthusiasts. He also wanted to write a work that would make the audience disregard such boundaries. Therefore, he carefully setup characters that would be loved by anime fans.
In addition, TRIGGER’s line producer Masato Takeuchi told Hasegawa that he wanted to follow the setting of “Two men and one woman borrowing the power of Grid to fight against evil classmates” in Gridman the Hyper Agent. Therefore, Hasegawa also complied with this requirement when shaping the role.
SSSS.Gridman Worldview
In Gridman the Hyper Agent, Grid’s three supporters and behind-the-scenes criminal leader Takeshi Todo are classmates. But none of them realized until the end of the story. However in SSSS.Gridman, the anime will describ the relationship between the “Grid League” and Akane Shinjo from the beginning of the opening.
The reason for this change is because Hasegawa intends to be different from the original. Before he started writing, Amemiya told him that Grid will fight in the scenery of Nichijou in this work. The staff thought together about how to make it possible. Finally, they came up with an idea that the world is created by Akane Shinjo. Consequently, it will be an explanation for “Why there’s not even a shadow of the Self-Defense Forces when monsters show up in the city”?
Incomplete Handsome Hero: Yuta Hibiki
Meanwhile, Hasegawa wanted to place Yuta Hibiki in the opposite position to Akane Shinjo, leaving him ignorant of the world. Hence he is set to has amnesia.
In SSSS.Gridman, Grid also lost its memory like Yuta. There is no such “one-size hero” feeling as in Gridman the Hyper Agent. In fact, another hidden theme of anime is “connection”, as Hasegawa explained. Whether it is Yuta Hibiki, Sho Utsumi, Rikka Takarada, Akane Shinjo or Grid, you can’t play your own strength. Incomplete people will save their life by connecting with others and managing to open the way to the future. This is a theme that Hasegawa wants to describe. Therefore, the Grid has become such an incomplete hero.
At the same time, the memory of Yuta and Grid is also related to a major puzzle of this anime. He hopes that the audience look forward to how this puzzle in the next story would be solved.
Realistic High School Girls: Rikka Takarada and Akane Shinjo
Rikka Takarada
The image of high school girls in SSSS.Gridman is very realistic. In order to create a strong sense of Nichijou, Hasegawa deliberately wrote Rikka Takarada as a realistic high school girl when writing the script. Rikka’s voice actors Yume Miyamoto also contributed a lot. Her performance sounds like an actor in a real-life drama. Meanwhile, she takes into account the anime-style acting. He praised that thanks to the balance of Miyamoto’s performance for the realism around Rikka.
Akane Shinjo
In contrast to Rikka, Akane Shinjo gives a feeling of alienation, easily killing people and other students around. Hasegawa has no resistance to write her in such a cruel image. On the contrary, in order to emphasize Akane Shinjo as a “non-Nichijou symbol” side, the anime emphasizes her “innocent cruelty” more than expected.
After all, in Gridman the Hyper Agent, Takeshi would create a monster because of some trivial reasons like the decline in the ranking of the test. Hasegawa also hopes to follow this as much as possible.
When the audience first started watching the anime, they thought that the opposite like Rikka and Shinjo would have no connect at all. However, as the story progressed, the relationship between the two gradually emerged.
How The Story Goes
The story will describe the world from the perspective of Yuta. Therefore, the audience was the same as Yuta. They did not know that Rikka and Shinjo had contacts. With all kinds of experience, you will see a wider world. The relationship between Shinjo and Rikka will also be the key to the story.
Hasegawa hopes that the audience will look forward to the follow-up story. Among the many monsters that appeared in SSSS.Gridman, only Anti can become a human shape. Hasegawa believes that in Amemiya’s heart, Anti and Shinjo are one. Anti is Shinjo’s other personality, or the desire of Shinjo to become a hero. She looks up to Grid but has to hostile to it for maintaining her own world. Perhaps because of it, Anti assumes this part, so he will be different and become human.
The Neon Genesis Junior High Students
“The Neon Genesis Junior High Students” in SSSS.Gridman is a character that does not exist in the original work. The reason why they appear is the residue of the initial plot outline produced by TRIGGER. In this initial syllabus, there is a third force watching the battle between Gridman and Alexis. And the name of this third force is “The Neon Genesis Junior High Students.”
Although Hasegawa feels that the setting is very interesting, he also worried that the story would get messy for too many forces. Therefore, he finally omitted this setting and only retained the name “The Neon Genesis Junior High Students”. He redesigned the characters of the various equipment corresponding to Grid.
One of the differences between SSSS.Gridman and Gridman the Hyper Agent is that there are not too many adults. Amemiya told Hasegawa that the trend of the recent anime story is not to have adults intervene. Let the children think and act alone. Therefore, there’s basically no adult except Rikka’s mother. But in this way, people who support Yuta would not be enough. So the Neon Genesis Junior High Students play the role of replacing Yuta’s parents in a sense.
Max watched Yuta like a family, Samurai Calibur watched Rikka, and Borr watched Utsumi. In this way, there is one more Vit. So Vit took the position as entangling with Rikka’s mother.
Anime And Tokusatsu
Tokusatsu Hasegawa evaluated the anime picture completed by SSSS.Gridman easily beyond his previous imagination. Although as an anime, it also has a lot like Tokusatsu, combining the strengths of both media.
In addition, when it comes to Tokusatsu, it has to be mentioned that the use of utility poles and wires to reflect the monsters’ giant. This technique has been fully restored in anime. In Gridman the Hyper Agent, wires are the way Grid moves in the computer world, so it is one of the themes of the work. And anime attaches great importance to this theme, so that Hasegawa feels Amemiya’s love for the original.
Hasegawa thought that it would be difficult to adapt the past Tokusatsu into anime. But witnessing SSSS.Gridman doing so well, he felt a possibility that in the future there maybe more Tokusatsu adaptation anime.
Finally, Hasegawa also revealed anime’s next focus: episode 9 is an episode of further digging into the worldview of the work. And after episode 10, anime will go all the way to the end. The hidden theme of “Connection” will also fully surface. It will extend the relationship between Shinjo, Yuta, Utsumi and Rikka.
Source: MEGAMI MAGAZINE January 2019