=== A moment where *SSSS.Gridman* exploits distorted camera perspective and superdeformation

(There's a bit of a spoiler for *SSSS.Gridman* here.)

One of my ongoing interests is things around [[the anicamera AnimeBokeh]],
the imaginary camera that 'films' anime, and along with it the various
deliberate artistic distortions animation uses ([[including in CG
BubukiBurankiBrightCGFuture]]), such as smears and super-deformed things.
[[Studio Trigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Trigger]] is of
course no stranger to any of this, as anyone who's watched their shows
like *Space Patrol Luluco* or *Kill la Kill* knows, and so it is not
surprising that various aspects of both of these show up regularly in
*SSSS.Gridman*.

So, for example, there's this beautiful shot from episode 10:

{{IMG:/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep10.jpg 1920 auto Rikka looks out
into the sunset ||| People in anime never seem to have problems looking
into the sun}}

This isn't just beautiful, it's also full of deliberate anicamera
artifacts, including [[lens flare AnimeLensFlare]], veiling haze, and
the wide angle lens effect of putting curves on horizontal and vertical
straight lines.

But the case I really want to talk about is from *SSSS.Gridman*'s sixth
episode, where Yuta meets a little kid who wants to talk to him (and yes,
this is kind of dim, as they're in an alleyway; the kid is on the right):

{{IMG:/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-kid.jpg 1920 auto Yuta
meets a little kid ||| She's not very big, is she}}

She really wants to get Yuta's attention and Trigger winds up giving
us this classical looming, super-deformed shot:

{{IMG:/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-loom.jpg 1920 auto An
unnamed character looms over Yuta to get his attention ||| LOOOOM}}

\\
\\
\\
\\
Ha ha, no. That's not super-deformed. She's a kaiju.

{{IMG:/anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-cutest-kaiju.jpg 1920 auto
An unnamed character looms over Yuta from the side ||| The cutest kaiju}}

To be fair, she told us that she was, and there was some advance
visual warning as the scene unfolded ([[eg the shadow here
</anime/ssnaps/gridman/gridman-ep06-shadows.jpg>]]). Trigger didn't
spring this on us by complete surprise, however funny and startling that
might have been; instead they built up the atmosphere for an unsettling
moment.  But it was still a pretty startling moment for me, and probably
for a lot of viewers. Everything in our anime viewing pushed us towards
[[a reading TimeAndChangedInterpretation]] of that first looming shot as
being exaggerated and super-deformed, not literal. And then *SSSS.Gridman*
cut away to confront us with the unsettling reality.

That's why in the title of this entry I used 'exploited' instead of
'used'. Trigger did not actually use superdeformation here; instead they
deliberately exploited our expectations of it in order to give us a
startling moment.

(There is probably a bit of implicit wide angle distortion going on
in the looming shot, for impact, but in a comedy SD moment it would
be exaggerating the SD looming.)

PS: The revealing side shot is unrealistic in [[a normal cinematographic
way AnicameraUnreality]], because the characters are nominally in a pretty
narrow alleyway. In real life there's no way you could back the camera up
enough to get that sort of [[*normal perspective* AnicameraPerspectives]]
shot from the side without running into the side of the alleyway, so you'd
have to do this on a soundstage. Which is of course routine in films.

(This is part of the [[12 Days of Anime 2018
https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2018/11/20/12-days-of-anime-2018/]].)