So this franchise has started doing a thing I hate, and that is having a story that relates to a previous entry in the franchise, but the title of the show doesn't give you any reason to think that is the case. Yes, Dynozenon is a stand-alone story. However, there are aspects of the show like Knight showing up and talking about how he's here to protect 'this world', but you never get any real context as to what he's talking about. The only way you would know is if you had watched SSSS.Gridman. It's frustrating because it looks like a show that is meant to be enjoyed entirely on its own. It may not be as bad as naming entry one 'Hand Shakers' and the second entry 'W'z' as it keeps the SSSS part of the name, but it's frustrating all the same. That said, I will avoid spoiling anything from Gridman in this review, so no worries there.
We are introduced to a modern world setting where seemingly nothing supernatural is going on in the day-to-day life of the people, that is until there is the sudden emergence of a Kaiju, along with a giant robot named Dynozenon. Four kids who are out at the time get sucked into the fight, each one being able to pilot a piece of the mech along with the main Pilot, Gauma. Their foes seem to be people calling themselves 'Kaiju Eugenisists', who want a world where Kaiju's reign supreme, or something to that effect.
Where things start to get a bit messy for the story is that barely anyone seems to care about the plot. The world just seems to treat these Kaiju as a minor inconvenience and go about their day as nothing happened. Even the ones fighting them barely seem invested, especially Yomogi who seems more interested in working his part-time job than fighting the Kaiju. What's worse is the focus of the story seems to be more on the relationship between Yomogi and Yume, even mid-battle there I times I feel Gauma, the guy who is here explicitly to fight the Kaiju is more interested in helping these two get together. And it's not even a very interesting relationship.
What's worse is I walk away from this barely knowing what's even going on. Gauma and the Kaiju Eugenicists all come from 5000 years in the past. They learned how to control Kaiju, but for some reason, Gauma turned on them and sided with the government. We have Gauma claiming they betrayed the government, and them saying Gauma betrayed them for the Princess. What happened here? Why were they revived in this era, and why did the princess entrust Dynazenon to Gauma? More specifically, how did she know this would happen? Why did she have that thing at all? Well don't worry, cause not one of these questions is about to be answered. Hell, you don't even get an answer as to why Dynozenon, Knight, and a random Kaiju that was birthed in this world can somehow all fuse together. It just all happens.
These were all really interesting things the show introduced, it just didn't feel the need to answer any of them. With all that, I really can't help but feel the show would feel like a bunch of nonsense if you didn't see Gridman, because the things I mentioned at the beginning are all going to continue to feel like unanswered questions you're just never going to get resolved. As both a stand-alone story and a follow-up to Gridman it just falls short.
There is some really good animation to some of the fights though. I think they are all poorly paced, but at the same time, there are some fun moments in each fight worth noting. Even those, however, are pretty poorly put together. There are only two modes to any fight in the show, the good guys are dominating or the bad guys are dominating. There never feels like there is a struggle between the two sides, it's always a clear-cut power difference that goes back and forth.
The visuals are the best part about the show though. I like a lot of the Kaiju designs here, and while it's a bit odd to see no one react to the destruction of the fights, the fights do seem to leave the kind of damage you would expect when these things do battle. If the only thing you care about in your anime is a visual treat, I guess you won't be too disappointed here. If your expectations are anything beyond that there isn't going to be a lot here for you.