Godziban

aka ゴジばん aka Gojiban aka ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】

March 20, 2019
Written by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi and Jun Shimazaki

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, 2004 in Tokyo to be precise, there was a Godzilla puppet show called Gekigoji. It was officially licensed by Toho and performed by the Koganemushi Theatrical Company. Koganemushi has produced a bunch of puppet shows featuring a variety of cute monsters and also some Ultraman shows such as this one. The Godzilla show was around 30 minutes long (according to fan lore online) and featured a variety of puppets including Godzilla, Minya, Little Godzilla, a huge King Ghidorah puppet, Gorosaurus, Mothra, Anguirus, Baragon, and Gabara. There does not appear to be an official recording of the play but pictures from the event have shows up online (largely from Koganemushi’s own website, and helped spread to the English speaking side by Monster Island Buddies)

That seemed to be the end of it until 2019 called. One of the Koganemushi people who goes on twitter as g_zanika announced he is bringing the puppets out of retirement to make a 10 minute long film for a contest. The GEMSTONE contest picked the short as the winner, and before you can say “Godzilla” they had announced there would be a new biweekly series featuring the puppets called Godziban (that’s the official English name, before that we called it Gojiban) appearing exclusively online. The series is a bunch of skits, the main one involves Godzilla-kun teaching his two brothers Little and Minya how to be great monsters. There is also a Kamatte Godzilla, where the Kamatte Godzilla from Shin Godzilla appears to women in need. A long-running short gag sequence is Hedojii, which has old man Hedoji (Hedorah as a wizened scribe) and his grandson Hedochi wandering through barren wastelands. Hedochi will ask a question which causes Hedoji to give a long answer explaining the way of things. Then it all ends on Hedochi making a joke. Go! Jet Jaguar is an animated segment where Jet Jaguar answers questions and has adventures. Moshi Mosu features two baby Mothra as they speak to each other through two cups connected by a string. These segments all have precursors in the original 10 minute video, but I am unaware if any of the material comes from the prior stage show. Gojiban has started providing English versions with their latest videos and often incorporates fan comments into the segments. there is even a comic strip version now called Godziman (Gojiman)! It is great having a new, ongoing Godzilla media project that will eventually bring all sorts of new, weird, and wonderful monster canon into the world of Godzilla.

So let’s get started, first up is the original GEMSTONE contest video!

The Gojiban contest video arrived as a pilot for a series fully formed. It is made up of several skits, all of which were retained in some form for the ongoing series. The most important one is Go Go Gojira-kun, where the three Godzilla brothers – Godzilla-kun, Little (as in Little Godzilla from the 90s movies), and Minya – learn to be powerful monsters. I was initially confused if Godzilla-kun was a separate monster from Godzilla or not, as all promotional material treats the three monsters as brothers instead of a father and two sons, but it appears for now that Godzilla-kun is Godzilla so we will treat him as such. There is a very small photo of Godzilla in the song section carrying what looks like a baby Godzilla-kun on his back, but so far this does not seem to be the case for the actual series and that might just be a promotional shot from the puppet show, as the song also contains a few other puppets that were in the show but aren’t characters on the show (yet) Of course this paragraph can easily change based on new episodes that change the game.

This time Godzilla-kun is teaching the brothers that good monsters are fast runners. He and Little have a race, while Minya stays behind. A Baby Mothra arrives and Minya decides to have a race with her. However, Baby Mothra is so fast she literally leaves Minya in her dust. She then races past Little and Godzilla and also leaves them in her dust. The monsters decide to crown Baby Mothra as the winner of the race, which is only fair because she is the best!

Hedojii is what will become one of the most used segments on the actual series. It features an old man scribe Hedorah named Hedoji wandering the wastelands, followed by his young nephew Hedochi (who was not named for several weeks of the series!) Hedochi will stop and ask Hedoji a question, at which Hedoji will give a long and dramatic explanation pronouncing things as they are, usually with an eye glow (but not always.) The segment then ends with Hedochi giving a punchline to the wise saying.

Kamatte Gojira changes up the format as it is live action, taking place in the real world. We see a young girl walking home, looking wistfully at everyone out walking their dogs and having a good time with their pets. She longs for a dog herself for a companion. Just then she spies a box by the side of the road, and inside is a puppet version of the second form of Godzilla from Shin Godzilla sitting in it! At first she is disgusted by the ugly creature and its weird sucking sounds, but she can’t resist the urge to have her own pet, and runs back to pick him up. Now Kamatte Godzilla lives in her backpack!

Ask Jet Jaguar! is an animated cartoon/comic strip featuring Jet Jaguar! It has a lot of text and not a lot of action so I’m not sure what happened besides silly fun. So hooray for silly fun!

We return to the Godzilla brothers where Godzilla-kun makes a joke. Next up is Moshi-Mosu which features TWO Baby Mothras. They use cups on strings to say “Moshi-Mosu” back and forth to each other. That’s the entire segment but it is cute and weird so it works. This is followed by a Gojira-kun music video with two copies of the actress who played the girl in Kamatte Gojira as the twin fairies doing dances. There are photos of the puppets that are flashed around on the screen including characters that only appear there: Baragon, Anguirus, Gabara, Gorosaurus, King Ghirorah, and an adult giant Godzilla carrying what looks like another small child Godzilla on his back.

Hedojii gets one more go (See, I did not lie when I said it was used a lot!), this time Hedochi spies a flower in the vast wasteland, which leads to the usual formation of question/big pronouncement/end zinger.

The end credits for Goji Ban are just more of the Gojira-kun song. The entire thing is slick and makes great use of existing assets to create a well thought out plan for a series, no wonder it easily won and went into production! Though the end credits do show actresses in costume that pop up in later skits in the series, so it looks like they were already creating the series by the time they got around to the titles. Conspiracy, anyone????!!

Rated 9/10

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