Adaptation Displacement: Some of the show's fans are completely unfamiliar with the Ultra Series and the majority of Tokusatsu shows and instead think the show's following in the footsteps of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The fact the Assist Weapons are called the "Neon Genesis Junior High Students" as a Shout-Outto Eva doesn't help.note It's not actually a Shout-Out to Eva but that's just how Funimation decided to translate it.
Adorkable: There's something endearing about Calibur's aloof antics. His stoic expression, his love of cats, and the way he keeps forgetting about his swords whenever he walks through a door or gate suggest a strong case of chuunibyou, and being in "junior high" that seems to suggest he's supposed to be about that age despite looking older. The fact that he came across as an alien when the Gridman Alliance first met him certainly helps. That said, when push comes to shove, he actually is a genuine badass between his swordplay and superhuman strength and acrobatics.
The true nature of Akane and Rikka's relationship was made blurry by the reveal that Akane created Tsusujidai and that Rikka was programmed to be Akane's friend. At the same time however, there is just as much evidence stating that Rikka was a friend of Akane in the real world whom Akane looked up to and wished to be good enough to associate with. This interpretation is best seen in the ED and Rikka's episode 9 dream, with the latter seemingly being Akane's memory of her and Rikka's meeting and relationship deterioration, only with their roles reversed.
Similarly there's several hints thrown about that Akane created Yuta to be her boyfriend in her ideal world. Her first act in the series is to use her Kaiju to erase Sakiru Tonkawa and her friends from existence because they interrupted her Meet Cute moment with Yuta. And later, after learning that Yuuta pilots Gridman, she makes several sexually charged advances at Yuta in an attempt to make him switch sides and stop destroying her kaiju. In the dream world that she creates for Yuta, she sets herself up as his Love Interest, effectively inserting herself into the role that Rikka was presently in.
Additionally, with Utsumi (a Kaiju otaku) being Yuta's best friend, does this mean Akane created the former as her geeky counterpart to see if Yuta can stand another Kaiju otaku like her?
Was Rikka's effort to redeem Akane even after she stabbed Yuta in the gut a genuine effort of friendship, or because she was created/programmed not to hate Akane no matter what? There's evidence on both sides.
Gridman's supposed influence on the homeroom teacher has several implications. Before, he didn't really care about the students or his job, but as the series went on he suddenly did. Was this Character Development, or did his life actually improve because certain people (like maybe some of his students, some of his acquaintances, etc.) died to the kaiju?
This dwells into Fridge Funny, but did Gridman pick Yuta because he was the closest to Shinjo in the classroom (and in other, emotional ways), or did he pick him because of his Shonen Hair? If Akane has a crush on IRL Yuta then it would make sense for her to give him Shonen Hair.
A popular interpretation of Akane and Rikka’s relationship is that that of the ideal self and the true self with the thinly veiled yuri ship tease between them being an allegory for self love.
OxT perform the simultaneously blood-pumping and uplifting opening theme "UNION," while Maaya Uchida's "youthful beautiful" serves as the wonderfully upbeat ending theme.
Speaking of OxT, they also give us some splendid covers of the opening and ending themes of the live-action Gridman series, "Yume no Hero" and "Motto Kimi wo Shireba."
With Shiro Sagisu of Evangelion fame doing the soundtrack, there were bound to be some winners. We present to you "Human Love," a delightful little tune that plays during Anosilas the 2nd's explanation in Episode 6. But what's really notable is that this song is remixed into the shows two main battle themes: the bopping techno number "HumanLove_CH_edm_all" and the rocking banger "HumanLove_CH_metal_all."
"My Way" is the simply rocking character theme of everyone's favorite Kaiju boy, Anti. So good that it got to play in Episode 7 of the sequel show during the first team-up between Gridknight and Dynazenon.
Best Known for the Fanservice: If there's anything you can glean from all the Pixiv and Twitter art, SSSS is about the cute girl with the thighs, the cute evil girl with the big breasts, the cute boy that crossdressed that one time, and maybe something about cybernetic kaiju.
Broken Base: Some fans feel the show's marketing and fandom focus way too much on Rikka and Akane as opposed to Gridman himself. Others point out that Rikka and Akane can reel in Moe fans into the show and Tokusatsu genre. For what it's worth Gridman is a much larger household name in Japan alongside the Tokusatsu genre, so there's less of a broken base in Japan over this.
Captain Obvious Reveal: Let's just say that whoever read the Gridman F prototype is bound to expect Akane as the supporting villain. Probably why it's very nonchalantly brought up in the middle of the second episode. It's the true depths of her role in the story that's harder to see coming a mile away.
Catharsis Factor: After seeing the suffering and destruction Alexis has caused, seeing Gridman beat his face in and capture him is very satisfying.
Continuity Lockout: Episode 12. The entrance, the final Gridman form, his attacks, the song that plays, the Fixer Beam - all are directly from Denkou Choujin Gridman, leaving people who haven't seen or aren't aware of the original series confused since they seem to come out of nowhere with no prior reference.
Epileptic Trees: At the end of the series, some fans liked to speculate that the real Akane based Rikka's appearance off of her own body due to some design similarities like long hair and the uniform. It hasn't been confirmed one way or the other, but it's still a very persistent theory.
Evil Is Cool: If the character page is anything to go by, Alexis, Akane, and Anti are far more interesting characters than the Gridman Alliance. Anti of course soon falls into a well received Dark Is Not Evil, especially as the intimidating Gridknight.
Gridmanime, a portmanteau of Gridman and Anime. Do the math.
Borr-chan-kun: The reveal of Borr being a boy leads to this by Japanese fans.
"Transformers: Gridman"/"Gridformers", due to the heavy Transformers-based Shout-Outs on the show.
Fetish Retardant: Akane is already one of the fan favorite characters, regardless of her status as The Dragon to Alexis. But the reveal that she lives in a similar manner to hikikomori, having tons of garbage bags in her house and kicking the computer screen barefooted may be unsettling for certain fans, including clean freaks.
Harsher in Hindsight: One of the victims of Akane's pettiness are three of the Arcadia members, one of which voiced by Ryota Suzuki. In the anime adaptation of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Ryota voices Yu Ishigami, a young boy who was condemned into a pariah for taking the blame of being a stalker to Kyoko Otomo when her boyfriend was cheating on her. To twist the knife further, Akane and Otomo share the same voice actress.
The fact the show is really a sequel to the original tokusatsu makes it the Japanese counterpart to the additional episodes Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad had when the originally intended ending was changed.
Akane being the new Takeshi Todo is this to fans who read the Gridman F draft.
Some fans were expecting a yuri moment between Rikka and Akane due to past yuri subtext in other TRIGGER shows like Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia. Akira Amemiya sneaking in two characters from his yuri web novella as side characters probably helped expectations too. Episode 8 reveals that Akane hugged Rikka while requesting her to get along with a god (as in Akane herself) with more yuri moments in the finale.
Before episode 11 came around, many fans had theorized that Yuta is Gridman with amnesia, or at least a fragment of him. Some also predicted that Yuta was possessed by Gridman, given how Ultra Series works have that as a common twist.
Inferred Holocaust: Hundreds, if not thousands of people are presumably injured or killed (and then wiped from existence via Reset Button) each time Gridman and a Kaiju fight, but in true toku fashion the narrative doesn't touch on this at all for the first three quarters of the series. Then we get episodes 11 and 12 where, thanks to Akane breaking the reset button and not bothering to fix it, the sheer carnage and destruction which two multi-foot beings duking it out in the middle of the city leave in their wake is lovingly showcased. Poor Utsumi is pushed into a Heroic BSoD after realizing that he was essentially cheering on the leveling of the entire city each time he fanboyed over Gridman's fights.
Just Here for Godzilla: Quite a few people showed up for Rikka and Akane after an explosion of memes and fanart emphasizing their attractive bodies. Even though the show ended up winning a lot of people to the Mecha and Tokusatsu fandom, a significant portion of the show's post-run marketing and fan art is of them instead of the actual Gridman.
Les Yay: There is a lot of it between Rikka and Akane, which is expected as their implied relationship is a nod to Takeshi Todo having a one-sided crush for Yuka Inoue. An in-depth analysis of the queer themes of their relationship can be found here.
Episode 8, Akane embraces Rikka from behind as they were seated on the bus as Akane tells Rikka that she created her as her friend by her kaiju.
Episode 9, the beginning of Rikka's dream is presumably the recreation of how she and Akane started their friendship. There is a brief showing of an LGBT poster.
Outside of the show, there is a cafe located in Japan called "Animate Cafe" that served special drinks as part of a past collaboration with the show, with special drinks that officially represented the characters of "SSSS Gridman" as a part of a Licensed event surrounding the show. The special valentines couples' drink that was served as part of the event was themed around both Akane and Rikka. The drinks in question can be found here
In a past interview with Akane's voice actress, Reina Ueda, she stated that, in episode 12, Rikka was supposedly very close to admitting that she loved Akane, but chose not to so then it would be less hard for Akane to decide on returning to her own world . However, with no official confirmation regarding the topic from anyone working on the show besides the voice actress, its debatable whether or not this information can be considered canon. The untranslated article can be found here, while the auto-translated version of the same article can be found here.
Almost every single officially licensed anthology manga of the show features ship teasing with Akane and Rikka.
LGBT Fanbase: Akane flirts with everyone and her realizing her feelings for Rikka who is based on her real world appearance can read as coming into acceptance with your bisexualitynote (things like a strategically-placed LGBT poster during Akane and Rikka's plot in episode 9 suggest that this is intentional). Cue LGBT following.
Gridman is Forever. Explaination A snowcloned version of the "Breasts are temporary" meme, fans parroted the sentence (very likely to be unironic) just to show that they watch the anime for Gridman's action scenes instead of showing affection to "waifu baits" like Rikka and Akane. The joke skyrocketed after Gridman lured Yuta out of a dream date with Akane, as if Yuta himself was fan of the show that forgot the purpose of fighting kaiju.
Gridman's Upper/Lower Body in Charge. Explaination Written as "グリッドマンの上半身担当/グリッドマンの下半身担当", the hashtags are used to tag on any fanart related to Rikka and Akane. Later expanded (jokingly) to include Utsumi's pudginess, using the tag "Gridman's Middle in Charge".
Gridman/Trigger Saved Christmas. Explanation The final episode of the show aired late on 22nd December, just in time for a Christmas finish; given the increasingly popularity of the show, this variant of the "Trigger saved anime" meme surfaced.
Also doubles as an (ironic) subversion of Periphery Demographic, fans also claimed that the nostalgia & Gridman's combination sequences made them turned on rather than seeing Rikka's thighs and/or Akane's knockers.
A Facebook user's complaint about episode 5 spawned "I'm not even sure anymore if this show is about X fighting Ys or about..." which involves pointing out fanservice-y Beach Episode moments from other mecha shows in a tongue-and-cheek manner.
"Baby Dan Dan Stops" Explanation A snowcloned version of the Jazz Music Stops meme that started circulating the web utilizing the memetic "BABY DAN DAN" lyrics from the orignal series' theme "Yume no Hero", this image is used as a disgust reaction to things.
The secret Trigger fanfic we never knew we needed.Explanation With the Transformers design references calling to mind personifiedHigh School AU fics, the revamping of long discarded Tsuburaya scripts, and the sheer amount of callbacks, references, and nods to the source, some fans are unironically calling SSSS the best fic they ever watched.
The Melancholy of Akane Shinjou Explanation Once it was revealed that Akane was basically god in the world of the show, the references to Haruhi Suzumiya were inevitable.
Your Lie In Aplil Explanation A nickname for the acclaimed episode 9, taken from a bit of Engrish on a calendar that reads "Aplil" even though in another scene that same calendar has "April" spelled properly, combined with a pun on Your Lie in April since Akane is trying to trick the main characters with fake dreams.
SSSSRedmanExplanation A tongue-in-cheek collection of fanart replacing Gridman with Redman, the Memetic Psychopath Kaiju Killer, with the cast increasingly frightened by his brutality in destroying Kaiju.
Fixer Beam is so powerful, it even fixed Akane's real-life friendships! Explanation With the release of the UNION official music video that continues the epilogue from when Akane woke up, fans cracked jokes about how Gridman's Fixer Beam was so powerful, it even repaired her relationship with her friends in the real world despite being used inside the dream.
Moral Event Horizon: If he wasn't already over the line for taking Anti's eye out as "punishment" for something that he'd put Anti up to doing in the first place, Alexis officially crosses this in the penultimate episode by turning Akane into a kaiju against her will.
Those who went into the series without any knowledge of the original series could see Gridman’s Fixer Beam as an Ass Pull, but Gridman being able to restore virtual worlds to their original form was well established Reset Button in the Tokusatsu show. Fixer Beam's purpose of fixing a person's heart, on the other hand, was mentioned in supplementary materials.
Those who did not see the original two shows were surprised by the live-action scene of the real Akane waking up. Especially since Trigger's previous Gridman animation didn't use live-action.
Periphery Demographic: Some fans started watching after seeing the Self-Fanservice laden fanart expecting a show with waifus and fanservice galore due to the Studio Trigger involvement, but were hooked by the Tokusatsu-style action and Mecha-Style fight scenes. After the show's conclusion, a lot of them have stuck around for the Rikka and Akane art, sometimes giving one the impression that it isn't a Gridman show at all.
Can't forget the show's appeal to Transformers fans, either. The sheer number of shoutouts alone got fans of the robots from Cybertron quite intrigued. Perhaps as a nod to this, recent comics included with Japanese Transformers toys have even begun including subtle references and visual shoutouts to this show.
A lot of fan artists draw Rikka with much thicker thighs and a larger butt than how she's drawn in the show. A trend that's gotten even more common after an interview with the director of the series revealed that he actually requested her to be designed with thick thighs and a big butt.
Akane's already very busty in the show but hasn't stop fan artists from drawing her with even larger breasts.
Speaking of Rikka and Akane, both of them are occasionally drawn as giantesses.
Not even Yuta's immune, with fans drawing him lither and shorter to match Rikka and Akane's voluptuous proportions. There's also a camp that draws him with a much girlier figure to match his Wholesome Crossdresser school festival costume.
It's quite nostalgic to hear the same piano version of "Yume No Hero" from the classic Gridman again in episode 6 of the new anime.
Despite her role and everything she's done, Akane leans into this by the end of episode 9, seemingly attempting suicide as her latest efforts fail miserably. She looks shockingly distraught compared to her earlier haughtiness.
Akane's words in Episode 11 to Alexis about why she doesn't want to make new Kaiju anymore hint that she may have had feelings for Yuta and killing him launched her even deeper into the Despair Event Horizon.
The cameo appearance of Masaya Obi (Naoto Sho's actor) in episode 6 is a complete shock to the viewers.
The above case is only topped by the return of Original 1993 Gridman in episode 12.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Akane, despite being on the antagonist's side for the majority of the show, was supposed to be seen as sympathetic in the very end, with the finale finally making her break out of her escapist world and learn to love herself as well as making her remorseful for all she's done. Some fans couldn't buy it however, given how nonchalant and even gleeful she was at destroying the city, and they haven't forgiven her for messing with Anti and stabbing Yuta, all of which they felt was glossed over.
Vanilla Protagonist: There's not a whole lot about Yuta that's interesting - his personality is a fairly blank slate compared to the rest of the cast, he has no memory of who he was before the start of the series, and he doesn't even have a particularly strong motivation for being The Hero other than a gut feeling that he has to. It turns out this is because Yuta is possessed by a part of Gridman's own severed consciousness with Laser-Guided Amnesia about who he really is, so the real Yuta is technically never around until the very end of the very last episode in the series.
Win Back the Crowd: After how controversial DARLING in the FRANXX ended up being, the success of SSSS.Gridman has redeemed Trigger in the eyes of many viewers, especially because it lacks the Romantic Plot Tumor that was so contentious in Franxx.
Rikka is the only person in the digital world that Akane loves. However, a drama CD that introduced Akane's counterpart in their world, with the ironic implication that Rikka herself ships Utsumi x Akane, while Utsumi ships Rikka x Yuta, did alleviate this a bit. The Yuta/Rikka pairing would later rise back up thanks to GRIDMAN UNIVERSE, which focuses heavily on their relationship and upgrades them into an Official Couple by the end.