We're talking anime now, baybee. While Attack on Titan was an adaptation of manga/anime, it was a live action film. So the first time we're talking about anime. In fact, this is our first animated film covered on this entire blog. This one is a bit complex as it is actually a trilogy of films rather than just one, but these are so closely connected that it felt weird giving a different post to each. When learning this existed I found myself confused about why it had never been done before: animation seems like the perfect medium for Godzilla (and all kaiju, really). So we're here to see if animation is indeed a good fit for the main man Big G, with a series of films directed by Kōbun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita. This is going to be an extremely long synopsis since it is 3 films, so let's get to it!
If You Haven't Seen it Before
- Humanity has been away from planet Earth after being chased away by Godzilla, all of humankind living on a space colony alongside the alien races the Bilusaludo and Exif.
- The Exif are a religious species which worship an unnamed God and have advanced technology which allows them to glimpse the future, while the Bilusaludo are a hyper-logical and pragmatic species who have given up most of their culture and material comfort for the sake of accomplishing their goals.
- Main character Haruo Sakaki (human) desires nothing more than to return to Earth and kill Godzilla.
- With no viable options for another habitable planet, the Coalition decides to return to Earth but know they will have to contend with Godzilla. Upon arriving back on Earth, they discover they've been gone for 10,000 years due to relativity.
- Sakaki has developed a plan to kill Godzilla using EMPs, and it actually appears to work when they kill Godzilla shortly after making it back to Earth. They then realize that the Godzilla they've killed is basically Baby Godzilla, and the real one has no awakened again and kills nearly everyone on the planet.
- Sakaki swears revenge and is rescued by a group of humanoids who now live on Earth: the Houtua. The Houtua worship Mothra, and Sakaki's get involved with the Shobijin twins.
- The Houtua introduce the Coalition to nanometal, an incredibly advanced material created while developing MechaGodzilla and that can be shaped into functionally anything and they believe can be used to kill Godzilla once and for all.
- Despite being warned by the Houtua that the city is poison, the Coalition embraces the nanometal that has consumed a segment of the planet and dub this area MechaGodzilla City. They use the resources of the city to prepare to finish Godzilla.
- With the showdown with Godzilla impending, the Coalition is running out of time to finish their preparations and Sakaki learns that the Bilusaludo are fusing their bodies with the nanometal to serve as neural processors to increase the speed, efficienct, and power of the living city.
- Despite being told by the Bilusaludon commander that the process was strictly voluntary, when Godzilla wipes out most of their weaponry the commander orders the nanometal to forcibly absorb their remaining troops to make one final offensive and is guaranteed to work.
- Sakaki, having had his injuries treated by the Houtua and therefore immune to the nanometal (if he wants to be), makes the hard decision to destroy MechaGodzilla City rather than kill Godzilla, as the city itself would continue to absorb the rest of the planet after finishing the current task.
- While Sakaki's fate is being considered by his superiors, he is being treated as both hero and villain by the Coalition while he has taken refuge with a group of Exif led by the priest Mephties.
- The remaining Bilusaludo functionally force the Coalition's hand, and remove their resources from the greater unit to demand that Sakaki is punished or even executed for destroying MechaGodzilla City.
- The Houtua have a philosophy that making life is "winning" and dying or disappearing is "losing," so the Shobijin twins offer to mate with Sakaki (on separate occasions, don't be weird) to ensure that he "wins" by continuing into the future. He eventually accepts one of their offers.
- The God of the Exif is revealed to be Ghidorah, who consumes almost all of the Exif as he manifests through an amulet in Mephties' eye.
- Unbound by the rules of physical reality, Ghidorah lays waste to Godzilla while remaining completely invulnerable to all weapons either human or kaiju.
- Sakaki is told he is key to the Exif's plan, who worship Ghidorah because of his unbridled and unstoppable power: Sakaki's hatred of Godzilla will be an anchor for Ghidorah to take permanent hold in this universe, allowing his destruction to be unimpending and no longer requiring summoning rituals.
- WIth the help of the Shobijin and some others, Sakaki decides to fight back and shatters the amulet in Mephties' eye, now binding Ghidorah to the physics of this universe and allowing Godzilla to fight back.
- Godzilla kills Ghidorah relatively easily and Sakaki, told that Ghidorah would be watching him as long as he lives, decides to provoke Godzilla into killing him so that Ghidorah will not be able to take hold in the world using Sakaki ever again, as he cannot give up his hatred of Godzilla.
- With both the Bilusaludo and Exif now extinct as a result of Ghidorah's actions, Humans and the Houtua live together happily on Earth, with Sakaki's descendants being among them. The difference is that they treat Godzilla as a natural unstoppable force rather than an enemy to be overcome.
Kaiju Notes
- The baby Godzilla from part one is a chunky monkey in this one. Mah boi has big legs, big thighs, big chest, and big eyes. It looks much like Legendary Godzilla, being a little chonkier than most of the other versions.
- Godzilla's abilities have taken several levels in badass, including sending shockwaves with a flick of his tail and Atomic Breath which has evolved into something more akin to a sound cannon.
- Ghidorah being some sort of out-of-phase-of-time-and-space entity is a very great concept for the creature. Ghidorah has always been established as an alien and powerful entity, but the version we get here takes that aspect to 11 and it really works. The necks are also much longer than they've ever been, which is really only doable when the monster is not made using a suit, but am glad they decided to embrace what they could do.
So, the first thing to be said about this trilogy is that above all else they are truly sci-fi movies. We open in space, with aliens and advanced technology, and the kaiju are honestly minor elements in films that are primarily about exploring science fiction themes. The mystical religion of the Exif counterbalanced against the extreme logic of the Bilusaludo gives us "the two sides," and then we see the dangers in religion and technology in Ghidorah and MechaGodzilla, respectively. Combined with the other themes of nature's advance, the meaning of humanity, legacy, et cetera, this Planet Godzilla trilogy is really more a Future Planet featuring Godzilla trilogy. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it does make it less interesting as a kaiju movie.
Let's talk about the kaiju in the sci-fi movie. Godzilla (and Ghidorah) is quite honestly just barely a character. Granted, this series is clearly going for the "force of nature" aspect of the character, especially when taking the ending into consideration, but it does become harder to really engage with any of the monsters in a series of movies that is named after one of those same monsters. In truth, MechaGodzilla doesn't even have a face and appears in one movie but is as much a character as Godzilla was throughout all three. Ghidorah gets an entire 5 minutes of screentime, so he too gets represented more as a force of nature. That, combined with how pretty much ever humanoid character dies, means that Sakaki is basically our only chance for emotional connection throughout. It's a bold choice, but honestly doesn't pay off in the end.
Sakaki is not a compelling main character. It really hurts the overall ability to enjoy these, because basically nothing that Sakaki does or says is interesting. He's like Forrest Gump in that every major event seems to revolve around him by some fluke of history, but he lacks the personality of Gump. Once we hit the third film and all of the other humanoid characters except Mephties and Sakaki are around, we basically lose any ability to really connect with anything going on. If one is super invested in Sakaki's genetic lineage, maybe it would work for them but I don't give a shit.
And that's really the conclusion of this series. While some elements are interesting and even fun, at the end of the day I found it really hard to get invested in this trilogy. I just can't really give a shit. I do appreciate some of the choices made (Ghidorah is pretty badass in this) and really embracing the sci-fi aspects of Godzilla movies, but the sci-fi movies they made around the kaiju just aren't awfully good. The 2nd one, City on the Edge of Battle, is the best one, by the way.
Next: Kong: Skull Island!
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