Nightmare Fuel / SSSS.GRIDMAN

Compared to the Lighter and Softer Denkō Chōjin Gridman and its American adaptation Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, this series crosses the Darker and Edgier territory in each episodes. How so? Well look no further...

In General

• Kaiju attacks take place in reality instead of the Computer World. Because of this, they are an actual Person of Mass Destruction instead of just hacking anything that's electronic.
• So how does all this get started? They are created by Akane Shinjo, who has the good qualities of Yuka Inoue (being the ace of her class) and all of these make her beneath suspicion of anybody else.
  • The inspirations to send out monsters are even extended to minor mistakes. She makes both Takeshi Todo and Malcolm Frink (pre Heel–Face Turn) look like saints. Sure Malcolm once poisoned his town's water supply with hydrochloric acid because he didn't get a part in a school play, but even that was a better motivation than someone bumping into you by accident without apologizing. And also, the only casualties that Takeshi ever made was a hapless dog in episode 29 of Gridman and that wasn't out of his own will.
  • Just remember that every time this happens, Alexis is there with Akane helping things along.
    • This article details just what's so horrifying about the ways in which Alexis preys on Akane, isolating her from the outside world and the real life experiences of others, and encouraging her to follow a path of violent intent all while constantly telling her that she's the most brilliant and perfect person in the whole wide world, and that only he understands her and can help lessen her fears and anxieties even when he in actuality worsens them and keeps Akane in a place where her emotional and mental well being can only keep getting worse. He's like a recruiter and groomer of young malcontents into terrorists who does his work from online, "a chilling avatar of online predation and the targeted radicalization of alienated youth."
  • To top it all off she is essentially god in this world and her reasoning for destroying things and resetting over and over is simply removal of things she dislikes. Perhaps more unnerving is that exactly how she's doing this remains unexplained. If you've ever wondered why people feared Haruhi Suzumiya. Well Akane Shinjo is basically the reason why. As she is quite literally a dark reflection of all the horrors that Haruhi could unleash upon the world if she was ever made aware of her own divinity.
  • One more terrifying aspect of this? Alexis manipulated Akane into seeing the world she created as pretty much a Life Simulation Game. How many times has the average player of the Sims or various Tycoon games killed or tortured NPCs because they annoyed them or even just for fun, and like Akane saw nothing wrong with that? The terrifying part of this is how easy it would be to fall for Alexis' gambit, and it's heavily implied Akane isn't the first to do so.

Episode 1

• Just how the attack of Ghoulghilas is played out from the perspective of Sakiru Tonkawa: she is only sitting outside the school gym until a large fireball hits her. At that point, she has nowhere to run and can only face her impending doom.
• There's also some existential horror that right before that happens, its revealed to the audience that Tonkawa holds a bit of a torch for Utsumi. Just a sliver of something obviously personally, that no one will ever know, find out, and now never happened.

Episode 2

• The opening is also another nightmarish moment: during the class' photo session, Yuta is seen there but there's no sign of Akane. So who or what is she exactly? And then the final shot is her glaring at the window from her classroom before Gridman suddenly bursts in.
• The fate of anyone who is killed by a Kaiju: they get Unpersoned, dying earlier than they should have. Their friends completely forget about them and their families are left in their grief. Talk about wanton murder with no evidence...
  • The part that confirms to the audience that Akane did indeed do this, which comes complete with "Psycho" Strings, and Akane cheering "Yes! They're dead!" not like someone who's just taken human life, but like a kid who just scored high at a video game and is really ecstatic about their achievement.
• The inspiration for Akane to create Devadadan: to kill her homeroom teacher, who accidentally bumped into her without apologizing. This becomes even more horrifying when you realize that Sakiru died in the last episode simply because she accidentally squashed Akane's Special Dog. Considering how Sakiru at least apologized but the rest of her team get the comeuppance as well, this shows how psychologically ill Akane is.
• Said homeroom teacher almost being the victim of the attack had it not for Gridman's intervention.

Episode 3

• The monster of the week this time is Anti, disguised as a young boy. The least he can do in his human form is eating vigorously without proper table manners. His attitude as a monster?
  Anti: Gridman... You're an eyesore! I'll make you disappear! Die die die die die!
• Anti's transformation scene is having red aura glow from his body. The picture above is a glorious look on his transformation process.
• All these can be traced back to Akane, who seemingly creates Anti (with help from Alexis' power) solely just to fight Gridman and nothing else, collateral be damned. When he failed the task, she tosses him aside with nary a word. Just how warped her mind can be is anybody guess.

Episode 4

• Akane's pettiness strikes again, and this time it's towards Arcadia, a quartet of college student YouTubers whose only fault is getting in the way for her to ask Rikka if she is related to Gridman and misinterpret her LINE profile picture of Alien Reguran as Alien Baltan. Talk about a Fandom-Enraging Misconception going wrong...
• The monster Gonglee kills all three members of Arcadia by covering itself with smog, making it undetectable by Gridman or the Neon Genesis Mid School students. For those who never watched Ultraman Nexus, this scene is pure Paranoia Fuel. What makes this worse is one of the members of Arcadia calls up another after witnessing another be killed by Gonglee to try to warn him only for the call to be cut off with a bloodcurdling scream. To make matters worse, Gonglee's fog appears immediately behind him and we get to hear him panicking before the kaiju kills him too. This gets worse later when Gridman yanks Gonglee out of the fog and we see its main tentacles are also close to its mouth.

Episode 5

• Go'yavec in this episode is introduced as a monster whose gigantic that it even camouflaged as the mountains, and its sole reason to appear is not to kill a person she hates but to solely fight Gridman or at least kill the human he's associated. Had not the Neon Genesis Students purchased Junk and carry it all the way to the mountains, things could have gone worse.

Episode 6

• Anosillus the 2nd suddenly enlarging herself to prove Yuta that she is a monster◊ is rather disturbing. Its a good thing that she's a benevolent one.
• While Anosillus and Yuta were on a train, there's a shot of a destroyed house that's hidden in the mist. Anosillus the 2nd proclaims that Akane had those Venora-like monsters to fix them but this one's remain destroyed for no reason, except that it might be a portion of Tsutsujidai that she discarded.

Episode 7

• The end of the episode has one of the most violent scenes in the show so far: Alexis fucking cutting out Anti's right eye with a motor saw for not being able to stop Gridman with his own kaijuu!

Episode 8

• Akane becomes a lot more terrifying in this episode. And considering she is a god with a penchant for smiting with kaiju. TRIGGER deserves a prize for this. The reason why Akane is so beloved by everyone is essentially because the entire town is brainwashed to love her. Including Rikka whom she has brainwashed into her best friend since the day she was born. So not only is Rikka a potential Manchurian Agent, but Akane flat out gloated to her face that she is a slave to her whims.
  • Rikka's expression during all of this is a slow, dawning horror when she is given the opportunity to think on it. Being told that she couldn't even hope to stop Akane on her own, never mind that she was created by Akane on implication, completely shatters her views of her supposed friend. And then she just gets off the bus and seems fairly well-adjusted about it so soon, implying that despite fully knowing the futility of her situation, Rikka either doesn't try comprehending it or can't and already forgot the worst of it because of the programming.

Episode 9

• The first half of the episode. It starts with Yuta's ordeal in episode 1, but instead of being greeted by Rikka, he's greeted by...Akane herself.
• By the end of the episode, Akane reaches the point of suicidal, dropping from a higher point but survives and lands perfectly as it was nothing. Then she bangs herself to a nearby steel fence and walks away, with her mental health seems to be at its worst.
  • The entire second half of the episode is this mixed with a Tearjerker in that our sympathies and worries are shifted from the three main characters stuck in the dream to Akane herself, who is stuck in a "dream" of her own and has been for the longest time, with her refusing to wake up and face reality, and Alexis only ever ensuring she stays that way. But the result we see this get is that Akane is rejected by her three "friends" one after the other, leaving her more isolated and more depressed. It's now no longer enough to just stop Akane - she needs to be awakened.

Episode 10

• The ending has Yuta slumping to the ground after being STABBED IN THE GUT BY AKANE.
  • The horror of this moment goes beyond Yuta getting stabbed - this is Akane at her absolute rock bottom point. She's gone from gleefully killing people using her kaiju as proxies to very joylessly stabbing someone in person. And this is after she's been very visibly, eerily detached and out of it for the entire episode.
• The Monster of the Week isn't much of a slouch. It starts off rather puny and pathetic, but still unnerving; it looks incomplete and half-assed. But then it transforms. What follows is the monster going on an absolute rampage and very nearly killing Gridman, all while moving erratically and giggling like a psycho. When Anti becomes Gridknight to fight it, he remarks that it's the very essence of Akane's heart; this kaiju is her psychopathic behavior given physical form. No wonder it was so strong!
• Speaking of this episode's kaiju, it kills the background kaiju that rebuild the city after attacks. Akane remarks that everyone in the city's dead now.
• Utsumi seems to be losing his grip on what little reality he has left, given his nervousness and panic throughout the episode after Akane's godhood is confirmed. While the "god is in his heaven" quote he writes in his notebook serves as a nice reference to Evangelion, it also implies that Utsumi is starting to put a lot of faith into a higher power...

Episode 11

• The ending where it shows the extreme extent Alexis will go for Akane, which counts as his most horrific action he ever committed compared to cutting Anti's right eye. And right after that, it ends with Akane being surrounded by the red aura, and a closeup of her face, which looks like she will NOT enjoy it.
  Alexis: Hurry it up, Akane. You're needed after all.
  Akane: I can't make Kaiju anymore...
  Alexis: I think you misunderstand me. I'm fine with you becoming a Kaiju yourself. Instance...Abreaction!

Episode 12

• Akane's single word after getting transformed by Alexis truly shows the horror of her situation.
  Akane: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
  • And her Kaiju form. Dear god, her kaiju form! Words can't describe the monstrosity that Alexis created! Its roar is even an edited version of her screaming in terror.
    • The screams sound more like painful wailing in the English Dub. Given that was definitely done against her will, the sudden transformation into a Kaiju implies she is in physical and mental pain.
  • The interior is just as creepy, with Akane held in place by a number of hands and her confronted by the people her previous monsters have killed. Alexis also later uses her to fuel his own transformation, creepily enveloping her in his cloak and subsuming her.
  • It's also by far the strongest kaiju shown, as just by roaring it can level a huge portion of the city. What's worse than that? Alexis is both stronger and immortal.