Introduction
After several years, I have finally watched SSSS.Gridman. I wanna note that I am a big fan of tokusatsu in general, so this one has been a long time coming. Before watching SSSS.Gridman, I wanted to understand a bit more about the original show but I came out realizing that this anime is not Gridman The Hyper Agent. It’s a sequel, sure, but it aims to do very different things from the anime. Also it’s very likely this has become my favorite all-time anime.
I don’t know many of the hot theories about this show. The only one I’ve mostly read and seen is the one where people claim Akane is Rikka, but I don’t buy into that for a few reasons as we’ll get to. But I’m mostly here to talk about Akane, the Computer World, and her severely debilitating depression. More importantly, how all of this wraps together in my own theory about who Akane is and, more importantly, why I didn’t buy into the theories regarding the idea that Rikka is an idealized version of Akane’s actual self. I saw many people saying that the final scene between Rikka and Akane represents Akane forgiving herself, though I don’t necessarily agree with that interpretation.
One of the biggest themes for Akane is her depression. It has one of the most realistic and scarily relatable depictions of mental illness I’ve seen in media, which is surprising considering where this was made. With how wonderfully depicted depression is, showing how absolutely debilitating and destructive it is, placed on the backdrop of a niche 90s toku I felt the need to write something about it. Because I absolutely loved this anime. I have yet to watch SSSS.Dynazenon, but this writing here is primarily about Akane.
First off, we need to talk about Gridman and how the universe works. Gridman’s world is primarily split off into three places: the Real World, the Computer World, and the Hyper World. I’ve seen some people not fully understand the difference between the idea that it’s a “dream state” world and that the Computer World is its own fully functioning existence.
In the original show, Computer World is mostly used as a place where the main antagonist, Takeshi Todo, would send his kaijus to cause problems alongside Khan Digifier. When the Computer World is damaged, it causes similar damage in the real world, usually related to whatever Todo is trying to cause problems with. In the first episode, for example, he targets the hospital that Yuka’s family runs and it causes an operation to stop in its tracks due to power outages and electronics running haywire.
How Akane Ended up in the Computer World
We don’t know much about how Akane ended up in the Computer World, but it’s important to note that beings from the Hyper World can link the Computer World to the Real World. Assuming Alexis is a being from the Hyper World, which is likely since he’s meant to be Digifier 2.0, we can assume he was fully capable of linking the Computer World to the Real World. Since he is a being that feeds off extreme negative energy, we can assume he brought Akane to the Computer World where he could essentially make her fall into complete despair while attempting to lure out Gridman and defeat him.
One thing to note is that human avatars within the Computer World can be assimilated or combined with a being from the Hyper World. That’s how it works with Gridman and Naoto in the original show, and it allows Gridman to fight and draw power from the Real World’s Junk. At the end of the series, after Anti saves Akane, we see Alexis gains immeasurable power after assimilating Akane. This is because he is a being from the Hyper World and she is from the Real World.
SSSS.Gridman introduces a new facet to the Computer World, which is likely an evolution that occurs over time. Originally, computer systems were a lot more simple than they are in the modern day. So it makes sense that a virtual world is capable of being created in it, while still retaining the original core of the world. So here is my ultimate theory regarding how Akane ended up in the Computer World.
Akane is a teenage girl who suffers from severe depression. She is a geek, enjoying tokusatsu and the kaiju within them in particular. She loves it so much that she can rattle off the name and history of these kaiju and even design her own. These interests are generally disregarded, especially by her peers. Suffering from poor self-esteem, Akane typically beats herself down in her head. This gets worse and worse, as she is incapable of interacting with others which only fuels her downward cycle.
At this same time, Alexis Kerib is a criminal fugitive in the Hyper World. He is wanted for attacking and preying upon mentally ill humans. As a result, Gridman, a lone Hyper Agent, is dispatched to find and arrest him. At this point, Gridman is alone, armed only with his normal Assist Weapons: the Gridman Sword, God Zenon, and Dyna Dragon. While Gridman investigates the location of Kerib, the latter has targeted Akane.
Considering the series latter shows that Akane is suicidal, it’s highly possible she was looking up things regarding suicide and self-harm on her home computer. From here, Kerib targets and talks to her the same way that Digifier managed to lure Todo into his schemes. Both Akane and Todo are social outcasts with interests that seemingly go outside the norm for their respective time periods. The difference here is that while Digifier’s schemes revolve around destroying the Computer World with Kaiju, Kerib’s main goal is to dredge Akane into total despair before absorbing her and moving onto his next victim.
Kerib entices Akane with promises of a perfect world, created to her specifications always. In this perfect world, she will be able to have everything she wants: friends, total adoration, beauty, etc. Total control. Akane’s depression makes sure of one thing, and that is that she is never in control. Depression can rule one’s life, making you incapable of doing much of anything. It keeps you constricted, forced into a perpetual state of itself. All of this is absolutely possible, due in part to the fact that the Computer World has evolved alongside Real World technology.
As a result, Akane creates a virtual utopia for herself: Tsutsudjidai. In this city, she is beloved and wanted and people think she’s the best. In this world, she can fix and do anything she wants. One might even mistake her for a god. Despite this, she is still internally spiraling. Her interest in kaiju is something she doesn’t necessarily share with anyone, even in the world where everyone is designed to love her. So things continue on as normal: she uses her kaijus to delete and reset the world whenever things grow too far out of her control. It is a world after all, meaning that it will constantly evolve and change without her input. She just so happens to have administrator access.
Then everything changed when Gridman finally hunts down Kerib. The duo fight, and Kerib manages to get the upper hand on Gridman. What he believes to be a successful blow destroys Gridman and splits him apart into different pieces all based around different memories. Four scattered pieces become their own individual Hyper Agents dedicated to helping Gridman. Each of them are his scattered memories of the Gridman Sword and the three pieces of God Zenon. The final two pieces represent Gridman’s memories of the original show, the first being hosted by Naoto, so that piece embeds itself into Yuta, a completely unassuming teenager within the world. The other piece represents how Gridman communicated with Naoto, Ippei, and Yuka via Junk, the memories of that being his primary method of communication forming a new version of Junk within the Computer World itself.
At this juncture, we get the series beginning where Gridman, without his memories, believes he is Yuta and communicates with his other fragments to fight the kaijus. Because despite no longer having his memories, Gridman is still drawn to fighting to save innocents but no longer remembers anything about his own history. So he has no memory of the multiple layers of reality, nor that he is a Hyper Agent tasked with hunting down fugitives.
This of course gets in Kerib’s way, as Gridman’s interference with Akane’s kaijus results in his long-game plans being thrown out a window. He attempts to keep things on track by manipulating Akane to keep making kaijus, an activity she typically enjoys due to her love of the toku genre and its many creature designs. But she only spirals the more that things fall out of her control.
Who Are Yuta, Utsumi, and Rikka? What are their relationships to Akane?
One of the biggest things I’ve seen is the idea that everyone is based off of someone that Akane knows in the real world. Obviously, this is not something I believe because it feels a bit too off with how Akane is. In the Real World, one can assume she doesn’t have a whole lot of relationships so the fact that she would be able to accurately recreate people doesn’t seem right. Episode 9, Dream, does an incredible job at depicting where these three come from and what their goal is in terms of Akane’s creation.
We’ll begin with our main character, Yuta/Gridman. Firstly, I don’t believe Yuta was a “main player” in terms of relationships to Akane. Obviously, she created certain people in the city to be her friends and Yuta was not one of them. He just so happened to be the one in the seat next to Akane when Gridman was split apart in the city. Now, I don’t believe Akane was ever really “in-love” with Yuta. Him being Gridman causes her to focus on him a lot, and when she enters into the Dream with him, he becomes her boyfriend. But notice how she doesn’t really understand what that entails. To her, it’s both a meaningful dream, not because it’s with Yuta, but because she desires a romantic relationship with SOMEONE in the Real World. Whether this is someone specific or just a general thing, I believe that’s why she doesn’t want the dream to end with him: she doesn’t want to be alone again and that if it ends she’ll be right back to creating kaijus and causing destruction. Yuta is not a character in the show, Gridman is. And it’s important to note that.
Then we have Utsumi, the local tokusatsu nerd, who is a very big fan of Ultraman in particular. Unlike Yuta, Utsumi was designed by Akane to fill a very specific niche that she was unable to ever find in the Real World: a friend who shares interests with her. If anything, Utsumi more represents an idealized version of the type of person Akane is. He is a tokusatsu fan, though unlike Akane he has his best friend, Yuta, and is shown to be capable of being friends with other people, eventually becoming a close friend to Rikka. He openly loves the Ultra series and isn’t super embarrassed to talk about it, and at the end of the day his major goal is to become closer to Akane. Why? Well because he’s programmed to, generally, but also because Akane specifically wanted him to be her friend.
Despite being omnipotent inside of the Computer World, she still fails to befriend the person designed specifically to do so. And slowly, thanks to Gridman, he grows past that initial crush phase and becomes his own individual. In the dream, Utsumi specifically notes how he wishes that he and Akane could be friends, because it makes him happy to have someone by his side who shares a similar interest to him. But he has singularly moved past the programming he had hardwired into him, likely because he is close with Gridman. And this is why his loss is specifically hard on Akane. He was made to be her best friend, but ends up becoming the best friend of whom she considers her greatest enemy.
Finally, we have Rikka. Rikka is the one who I’ve seen most dissected regarding who she is specifically and what she was designed to be. As I’ve mentioned prior, many people believe the theory that Rikka is the perfectly idealized version of Akane and I do not agree with this. This mostly, I believe, comes from a misunderstanding of the final scene of the show where a sleeping Real World-Akane is shown to have the train pass that Rikka gave her in the Computer World. So many people interpret that final scene, and the preceding scene with the two saying goodbye to mean something about self-love. And I do genuinely like the idea, but also Rikka is so far removed from Akane that it’s hard for me to buy into it. Especially more so when we see how absolutely obsessed Akane is with Rikka. First off, why would she create a separate version of herself in this world? What does that accomplish exactly? Second, just because the Real World-Akane has longish black hair and not short purple hair doesn’t mean anything. That’s just what normal human beings look like in Japan. They have darker hair and Rikka’s friends also have darker hair. Third, their personalities are extremely different from one another, and it wouldn’t make sense that she would make Rikka into a different person entirely. Rather, Rikka would be an idealized version of herself, but I feel that if Akane could do that she would have done that with herself. Akane is a short-purple haired girl because it allows her to live a fantasy away from the Real World, where she is just a normal girl with normal longish black hair.
So what does Rikka represent then if not a reflection of Akane, herself? If Yuta represents a basic want for a relationship and if Utsumi represents the fact that she wants to be around someone who likes tokusatsu like her… Then, I believe that Rikka represents a want to have a very close relationship with a girl. Some people don’t buy into the idea that Rikka and Akane are gay, mostly because that goes against the “Rikka IS Akane” theory, but go with me on this. Out of all of the main trio, it’s Rikka whom Akane is constantly fawning over and trying to be closer to. Rikka is just a normal girl in the world, specifically designed to be friends with Akane. Now I don’t believe she was specially designed to be her “best friend,” mostly because I feel as though Utsumi was specifically designed to be that for Akane.
Rikka is a representation of a forbidden desire she has, one that likes girls and not boys. She finds herself more attracted to Rikka and spending as much time as she can with Rikka. This initially because she thinks Rikka is close to Yuta and can find out information about him from her, but it quickly becomes a deeper and more meaningful relationship to Akane. Rikka is the only person capable of getting through to her. Everyone has an important relationship in this show with Utsumi’s being Yuta/Gridman and Rikka initially thinks the same, but quickly finds herself running after Akane. And I don’t think it’s because of how she was designed.
Rikka is simply a kind person. Much like Utsumi, she is capable of breaking free of that “Akane is the greatest with no flaws”-type of thinking. But Rikka is also a very smart girl, and it’s plain to her that Akane is suffering. So to Rikka, she believes that she can help Akane by being there for her and being her friend. She goes out of her way to try and be friends with her, and it’s by going out of her way after not being friends at all that triggers this extremely close relationship between the two. Akane feels comfortable airing her depression and negative thoughts in front of Rikka, and I think that’s the ultimate sign that Akane desires a closer relationship with her.
In the dream episode, despite it ending with Gridman gaining back control, the most notable moment is when Akane watches Rikka leave in the same fashion as in the Computer World. Additionally, in the dream world, right before Akane meets Rikka in the nurse’s office there are a couple… things happening. First off, the way that Akane sits in the bed is as though she’s trying to attract Rikka to her. It’s not a normal way someone would be sitting or laying in a bed. But then additionally is the LGBT sign on the wall literally right before that scene, straight up in front of the screen. The L is cut off, but you can tell what it is. I feel like this is an extremely obvious point to have this be right in the front right at the scene with Rikka and Akane.
This is a crushing and devastating moment for Akane, so much so that this loss directly triggers her worst spiral in the show. She is basically inconsolable at the loss of Rikka, who at this point had dedicated herself to TRYING for Akane. But then she leaves Akane to go join Yuta and Utsumi, her friends. And at the end of the day, Akane attempts to kill herself by jumping. But she fails to do so because she’s not from the Computer World, so she just falls and is completely fine.
Akane’s Spiral
From here on out, she goes out of her way to villainize and demonize herself, specifically to Rikka. She stumbles across the Junk shop and attempts to kill Yuta, to end everything in multiple ways. Kerib is constantly telling her that he wants another kaiju, something he was able to take advantage of due to the fact that Akane herself loves them. But now her depression is at its worst, and she is incapable of doing what she once loved. Making kaijus and designing them was her favorite thing to do, but the loss of Rikka and the different dreams results in her being completely drained of the ability to care anymore. She physically CANNOT bring herself to do it.
We see throughout the series that Akane cares for Rikka deeply, even though she constantly pushes her away. The reason for this is really related to the fact that horribly depressed people, especially chronically so, tend to lash out at people they love. Akane lashes out at Rikka, doubling down that she is a horrible person deserving of death. She stabs Yuta to give an excuse for why she should be killed. She can’t kill herself, due to the nature of the world preventing her from doing so, but she can trigger someone else to kill her. Because after the dream episode, it becomes wholly clear that Akane should be on suicide watch because if she was capable of killing herself we know she would do it. She lost everything in her magical world where she was promised that she would have everything she lacks. Now, the only person who genuinely meant something to her is gone, so she might as well kill Gridman and get killed herself.
Of course, this isn’t even mentioning how she and Anti note that Anti has the eyes of a human while Akane has the eyes of a kaiju. Because this is how she sees herself: as a kaiju. When she is turned into one by Kerib, it is the most horrifying and destructive one yet. It’s a kaiju born of how Akane sees herself, and she’s only capable of screaming. Now she can die, but she also doesn’t want to die. People with depression may have a mix of someone to save them while also wanting their pain to end. It’s a cry for help, but also a desperate attempt to escape. To people who don’t suffer this clinical depression, this may seem like a contradiction. Does the person want to die or do they want to live? Suicide is an option that is not taken lightly, it’s one that happens when the person feels there is no way out. But at the same time, a person is capable of also not wanting to die while also wanting to die. It’s a complicated feeling, yes, but it’s one that you needn’t not understand fully, but accept it is a valid way of thinking. And that’s what the kaiju represents to me, it’s why she doesn’t even fight it when Kerib turns her. It’s her suicide attempt, to finally die in the Computer World.
The Conclusion
In the final scenes of the show, Akane is saved by Anti but not before we see that she realizes the full extent of her actions. It’s a sort of realization that she knows that the people in the city have grown beyond just being things she controls. They are their own people, and she willingly killed and manipulated their minds to make her life slightly easier. Then the moment she believes she’s been saved, Kerib crashes it down upon her and seemingly kills Anti. Once more reinforcing her belief at someone caring about her as futile.
At the same time, Gridman recovers his memories of the original show and rushes to regain his original form. He needs everyone to be present, as Gridman is made up of specific parts. However, in performing this final deed, Yuta will reawaken and Gridman will once more be a separate entity. The gang is gathered for one final battle: to defeat Alexis Kerib and save Akane. Of course, after a wonderful battle scene that is both indicative of the original series and the current one, Gridman succeeds and defeats Kerib. When Gridman used his Fixer Beam to save Akane, he revitalized the Computer World in its entirety. I believe this is because of how much this place means to Akane, it has become real to her so that when Gridman uses his Fixer Beam it generates an entire world based around the memories of its inhabitants, which is why Yuta suddenly has his long lost parents coming home. The city is no longer just a city, it is an entire world.
And in the end, Akane is finally willing to try again with her life in the Real World. She only bids farewell, however, to Akane. Why? Because Akane was the only real relationship she ever had in the Computer World. What they had transcended the tricks and designs of the world. Akane profusely apologizing only to Rikka makes sense, because she’s the one that Akane feels she’s personally harmed the most. Even when she stabbed Yuta, it was out of a desire to make Rikka hate her. To make Rikka think that Akane is the awful, horrible person that she believes she is. Why? Because Rikka is the only person Akane cares about, and Akane believes Rikka will inevitably be better off without her.
However, Rikka realizes how much of Akane’s actions were both manipulated and encouraged by an actual monster that feeds off of negative human energy. Both Akane and Rikka realize how real the new Computer World is, and Akane could realistically stay within it. Rikka finally works up the courage as well to give the pass holder to her, noting that she wants to be together with Akane. But she also knows that this is not the place for Akane, and that the latter can only heal and get better if she returns home to her own world. This scene is the most contentious, because the theory I see for this is that this is Akane forgiving herself and moving forward. But I disagree wholly. If that was true, then Rikka would not be saying things like “I want to be together with you, Akane.” and “Let’s hope that my wish… never comes true.” All of this while she holds onto Akane’s hand for dear life, hoping that doing so will keep Akane from leaving.
This scene for me is Akane coming to terms with hurting other people and getting a chance to apologize for doing so. Akane has hurt so many during the events of the show, but she can’t apologize to any of them because of how the world works. So she apologizes to the only person who matters, the only one who can understand. I feel like it’s an ongoing thing for her to forgive herself, and it’s not shown here because to me that’s the ultimate goal for Akane. Her ultimate goal is to get better and forgive herself for what she did to everyone in the Computer World. Right here, though, it’s just her asking for forgiveness from one of the people she hurt. Someone who is more than just a program, someone whom she loves and cares for deeply. And someone she will never see again.
The final actual scene of the show is live-action, designating the Real World. Akane has the travel pass, which many people see as proof that Rikka is Akane, but again I feel like this comes from a misunderstanding of how the Hyper World, Computer World, and Real World operate. How does she have the pass? Because she physically brought it with her, a constant memory from the Computer World. She didn’t just wake up in her bed, she likely came in through a computer in her bedroom. Also, that final scene, in my opinion, does not take place immediately after the show ends. Meaning, it doesn’t happen right after Akane vanishes from the Computer World.
Why do I think this? Because if we watch the official OxT Union Music Video from 2019, it serves as an extended epilogue to the show with Akane heading off to school with her travel pass in hand. We see that she has some friends now, as well, three to be exact. If everyone in the Computer World was somehow BASED upon Real World inhabitants, and Akane was supposed to be Rikka, then she would only have two friends because in the Computer World, Rikka only has two major friends.
And from her actions, you can see that Akane is making an effort in the Real World to overcome some of her problems. When she’s at the train platform, she makes a quick movement to be slightly closer to other people. She isn’t speaking to them, but it’s an effort to feel less like an outsider. And finally is how tightly she is holding that train’s pass holder, really showing how important it is to her. It was the only keepsake she has from her time inside the Computer World. And the importance of showing that the Real World is live action proves in the end that she is just a normal girl suffering in one of the worst ways imaginable.
My final conclusion is that if Akane was Rikka and everything happened within a “dream”, then that totally undermines everything that happened in the show. It undermines the fact that Akane constantly hurt people because she couldn’t cope with her depression and more importantly undermines the most important development she has at the end, which is to apologize for her actions and seek out forgiveness instead of just trying to further demonize herself. The Computer World inhabitants aren’t just dreams made up by Akane, they are their own real people in their own version of the world. The final scene does not take place immediately after Akane returns to the Real World, as well, because that’s not how the logic of the universe actually works.
The series is about Akane learning to cope with her depression, understand herself better and what she desires from life, and about learning that her depression can affect those closest to her if she doesn’t learn to cope properly.
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