Hyper Agent Gridman, or Gridman: The Hyper Agent depending on your translation, was a 1993 Japanese TV series in which someone at Tsuburaya Productions decided to meld Ultraman with Tron. A group of kids build their own computer, Junk (named after what it was made out of), that accidentally connected to the computer Hyper World. There they teamed with the Hyper Agent Gridman, one member even combining with him, to fight monsters in the digital domain and challenge a villain working with an Earthling boy who is also their fellow student who takes his aggressions out by creating monsters for the enemy. If that sounds familiar, the show was reworked by DIC in the style of Power Rangers to create Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad. Yes, they spelled “cyber” wrong to keep a theme going.
If you’re curious about either show, Gridman is up on Tubi and Pluto TV as of this writing, while SSSS is just on Sling. They used to have it on YouTube, but that’s no longer the case legally.
SSSS Gridman, and you can guess what inspired that title, was the first in the Gridman Universe series proper, spinning off from the live-action series into anime. This 2018 anime decides to bring the monsters into the real world, with a new group of kids teaming with Gridman. Only now, Gridman can also journey to our world, which frankly takes away what set it apart from it’s Ultra-cousins. Crunchyroll has this series and it’s spinoff as Funimation did the original English dub, and that’s now owned by Crunchyroll. However, that requires a subscription.
Since they own the dub, I’m surprise the subtitled version just recently popped up on the Japanese Ultraman YouTube channel, but I’m not surprised the dub isn’t on their English channel, nor is there a dub track on the Japanese channel like they’ve done with Ultraman. You’ll need to turn on the closed captions, and since they took down the original series a long time ago, you may want to watch fast. Episode one introduces Yuta Hibiki, a new character who has lost his memories and can connect to Gridman, who needs him to complete his mission. Luckily he makes some friends who can help him in his fight when a kaiju enters the real world, and brings a host of other questions along with it. Enjoy it while you can, as it may only be here long enough to promote the booster pack for the Ultraman card game. Hopefully it’s still up at post time. Sorry to disappoint if it isn’t.
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Could Doctor Who Time Jump Past The Rose Doctor?
Sure, we all knew the BBC wasn’t going to go with MY idea to use the Rose Doctor to fix Doctor Who‘s recent failings. For one thing I’m an obscure blogger they probably never heard of. I’ve also heard that some of the rules for the tender include things that didn’t exactly make fans happy before with the past three Doctors. The idea was a last-minute addition because Davies didn’t want it to look like an ending, which the planned open regeneration apparently appeared to be while editing. I still like making it the Doctor trying to finally put everything behind him and return to the Doctor he was would be better than just ignoring it.
However, Fansided contributor Daniel Bibby posted the possibility of them doing just that. In an article for the “Winter Is Coming” section (odd to stick the Doctor into a blog I thought was based on Game Of Thrones–maybe they were confused by Matt Smith showing up in one of the spinoffs?), Bibby suggests a time jump is the better option.
Call me bias towards my own solution if you want, but I’m not so convinced this is the right move. It beats a reboot, but that doesn’t mean I’m on board.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on October 8, 2026 in Television Spotlight and tagged commentary, Doctor Who, theorizing, time jump.
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