Grendizer U Ep #4 Review: Different Times, Same Tragedy

Even so, I feel this episode is a major downgrade compared to the original one. The first reason is that all the impressive visuals in the original episode went poof in episode 4. If you watch the original episode, you will definitely be impressed by the images that convey many emotions, such as when Naida accused Duke or the visions that Duke suffered in his agitated state. The impressive images and visual storytelling disappear almost completely in the modern version, where Naida in this version has to spell out every word, “Why don’t I have the courage to kill him?” instead of dropping the knife into the lake and crying tears of both happiness and pain to express the two opposing emotions inside her.

The only things I found okay in episode 4 were Naida’s insert song, the way the scene transitioned from Naida’s pain to a flashback of her beautiful memories of Duke on planet Fleed, and all of that flashback. Oh, and Hikaru’s huge forehead. Other than that, I also respect the idea of ​​Duke undoing Naida’s brainwashing instead of her having surgery to remove the chip from her brain, but its execution is quite poor and leaves less emotion than what happened in the original episode, so I can’t say I like how episode 4 handled the climax. And no, I’m not impressed by the fact that episode 4 tried to recreate exactly the same frames from the original episode. I think anyone could do that. The recreating even backfires sometimes, such as the frame below. You can see all the tension from the original manga and anime versions is lost in the Grendizer U version.