Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Godziban Episode 05 – KAIJU PUPPET SHOW 「Secret Training on the Pointed Mountain」 Go! Go! Godzilla # 3【Goji Ban】(Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

Godziban Episode 05 – KAIJU PUPPET SHOW 「Secret Training on the Pointed Mountain」 Go! Go! Godzilla # 3【Goji Ban】

aka ゴジばん
Godziban ゴジばん
September 6, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban ゴジばん
It’s episode 5 of Godziban and we’re still going strong with lots of puppet action and adventure and jokes. Mostly jokes. As you can see from the ever-expanding episode titles, Godziban is running into the problem of YouTube’s stupid algorithm ruining everything. That’s what happens when you have a bunch of skits and a platform that makes searching arbitrary at best.

Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
Godzilla-Kun is teaching the boys more monster stuff and they head off for lessons. On the way they run into Anguirus….and Godzilla-Kun and Anguirus talk with pop up speech bubbles (here held up by signs because puppet show!) and it’s adorable and amazing callback to Godzilla vs Gigan. Also hooray for Anguirus now showing up in these, more kaiju please, expand the cast!!!

There is a bunch of bananas on a far away high mountain connected to the Godzilla brothers via a ramp. Godzilla-kun demonstrates how to run fast in a Sonic-the Hedgehog manner to get up a steep ramp to grab a banana. Little is next to try, but he repeatedly can’t get all the way up and Godzilla-kun and Minya drop a rope to pull him back up to their cliff. Minya just falls over the side and rolls around, they immediately drop the rope on him to yank him back up, lol. Poor Minya.

Baby Mothra then shows up, and because Baby Mothra is awesome she rolls across the ramp and yanks a banana for Little, and then rolls again to yank a banana for Minya, and then rolls once again to yank the rest of the bananas. Then she keeps rolling back and forth because Baby Mothra is not only awesome, but also crazy! The monsters watch her as she has her fun.

Then they all eat bananas! Anguirus also eats a banana and Mothra continues to roll. In conclusion, sometimes when life gives you ramps, you gotta roll!
Godziban ゴジばん
Hedojii
Hedojii continues the same wasteland wandering format. There is no rolling or bananas.
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Godziban Episode 04 – “The Sad Ballerina” Kamatte Godzilla # 2 (Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

Godziban Episode 04 – “The Sad Ballerina” Kamatte Godzilla # 2

aka ゴジばん
Godziban ゴジばん
August 30, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban ゴジばん Sad Ballerina Kamatte Godzilla
More Godziban with a Katatte focused fourth episode. Don’t worry, there is still a Hedojii bumper for fans of pollution monsters!

Kamatte Godzilla
A lady is doing ballerina practice super hard, but continues to fail to do the super hard spins. Problem because the big recital is coming up! Kamatte Godzilla hears her in her time of need and appears in the studio to cheer her up by being weird. At first she thinks she’s seeing things, but the next day he’s back and keeps appearing wherever she spins.

A tear of frustration drops from her eyes, but gets sucked into Kamatte Godzilla’s mouth. Because EWWwwwww! This is followed by more tears, but it also turns out to be the secret sauce to making her feel better. She realizes Kamatte Godzilla is good and hugs him.

It’s now the big recital day, and the ballerina can now do the ballet recital effortlessly, thanks to the power of Kamatte Godzilla!

Also Kamatte Godzilla spins in wearing a tutu. This is canon, it’s canon, people, Shin Godzilla wore a tutu and does ballet! 100% canon, no takebacks!!

Hedojii
Hedoji and Hedochi are still wandering the wastes, but by now the moon is big and red as it too sets in the sky. It soon becomes dark, but both Hedojii and Hedorah glow in the dark. After the explanation part of the skit, both of them fade their glow except their eyes glow red for a few more seconds before going out. Then small one says his joke and we get a flash of Hedojii annoyed. Good stylized change to the format while keeping the same basic structure, who needs to understand the joke to understand this is good?
Godziban ゴジばん Sad Ballerina Kamatte Godzilla
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Godziban Episode 03 -「かっとばせ!ゴジラ三兄弟の巻」Go!Go!ゴジラくん#2【ゴジばん】(Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

Godziban Episode 03 -「かっとばせ!ゴジラ三兄弟の巻」Go!Go!ゴジラくん#2【ゴジばん】

aka ゴジばん
Godziban ゴジばん
August 23, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban ゴジばん
Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
Godzilla-kun is going to teach the other two brothers how to bat rocks with their tails so the rocks fly far. I guess he got tired of banging rocks with his head like in Godzilla vs the Sea Monster! Godzilla-kun demonstrates by knocking a home run with his tail. Little gets a hole in one by hitting it right into a hole in the ground. Minya is hopeless per usual and the rock just sits on his head. The same thing happens the second time! The third time Minya hits the rock!!! right into Godzilla-kun’s face! That’s our Minya!

Godzilla-kun gives up and moves to the next challenge – batting three rocks! I think we all know what is going to happen here… Godzilla-kun bats three rocks very far into three home runs. Little bats three rocks into three different holes getting three holes in one. Minya bats three rocks far into the air…and they all land on Godzilla-kun’s head! Minya is pretty awesome!

Baby Mothra then shows up and wants to do the tail challenge. She does, and bats a rock super far off, farther than Godzilla-kun. Godzilla-kun then tosses 8 rocks in the air for her to hit, she hits all eight….and has them all land in a row nearby in a configuration that looks just like Baby Mothra!
Godziban ゴジばん Mothra
Hedojii
Hedojii continues the same format with Hedoji and Hedochi.
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Godziban Episode 02 -「さよならの恋人たちの巻」かまってゴジラ#1【ゴジばん】(Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

Godziban Episode 02 – 「さよならの恋人たちの巻」かまってゴジラ#1【ゴジばん】

aka 「さよならの恋人たちの巻」かまってゴジラ#1【ゴジばん】 aka Gojiban aka ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】
Godziban ゴジばん
August 16, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban ゴジばん
Episode 2 of Godziban is here and encapsulates the variant features of the show, for this week’s episode features the Kamattee Gojira skit as the main story (and then has a Hedojii bumper) Yes, which segment is featured will vary week to week, it’s pure variety, baby! Also by extreme galaxy brain reasoning, we are numbering the episodes of Godziban based on their appearance as part of the ongoing series, treating the pilot as basically episode 0. This is consistent with the numbering of the skit entries in the descriptions of the episodes on the youtube channel. (Sometimes the descriptions are just in Japanese, sometimes they have an English translation, but it is usually simple enough to figure out what it says as it usually is just a synopsis of the episode. And recently there have been more official English versions!)

Kamatte Gojira
One feature of the Kamatte Gojira series is that it is live action, but also there is a puppet there. A lady is dumped! On a walkway over traffic! And breaks the heel on her high heels! Cue So_You_Had_A_Bad_Day.mp3 to play…

The lady is in a funk, but then hears the weird noises of…Kamatte Gojira! It’s gross, so she kicks if off the walkway onto the street. Hey, animal cruelty isn’t nice, lady! Later on street level, the lady sees Kamatte Gojira hanging from a tree as she passes by, still making noises. By now she’s decided to take it home and love it, so she does!
Godziban ゴジばん Kamatte Godzilla
Hedojii
We continue the same Hedojii format, but the sun is setting on the wasteland desert so there is a red glow on everything.
Godziban ゴジばん
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Godziban Episode 01 – “We Godzilla Three Brothers! ” Go! Go! Godzilla-kun # 1 (Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

GODZIBAN Episode 01 – “We Godzilla Three Brothers! ” Go! Go! Godzilla-kun # 1 (Review)

aka ゴジばん
Godziban ゴジばん
August 9, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban ゴジばん
It’s Godziban! Post GEMSTONE contest, Gojiban got picked up by Toho to become an official web series, and thus Gojiban continues it’s skits and expands its universe week by week! Godziban is the English name for the series, I’m not just having an attack of auto-correct here. Every episode is made up of skits, most of them multiple ones, so we’ll announce the skits as they happen.

Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
Godzilla-kun is going to train Little and Minya to be good fighting monsters. First up is breathing fire! Can the monsters shoot flames? Godzilla-kun can! Little can! Minya can….not! D’oh! Minya continues to try with encouragement but all we get is a sneeze. Minya tries once again with more effort, but all we get is a fart joke! Poor Minya.

The three monsters then head to three piles of rocks. Each monster will try to destroy their pile. Godzilla-kun blasts his pile of rocks with his breath. Little blasts the top few rocks of his pile with his breath. Minya shoots a smoke ring that does nothing to his rocks. With much effort, Minya then shoots TWO smokes rings that do nothing to his rocks. See, he doubled his effort! Minya is told to try again, and as he does, Godzilla-kun stomps on his tail. Minya then shoots dozens of smoke rings that blast all three piles of rocks and lots of random scenery. Minay is a fountain of untapped power, but still activated by callbacks to Son of Godzilla
Godziban ゴジばん
The Godzilla brothers then look to the clouds. Minya sees a banana. Little sees grapes. They all see pineapples, strawberries, muscats, lots of fruit. This reminds them that they are hungry. So it’s time to feast on fruit!!! After eating tons of fruit, it is time to go to the mountains and shoot their flame breath into the air. They do so until the air erupts into fireworks! “Yatta!” they declare, and then say goodbye.
Godziban ゴジばん
Hedojii
The Hedoji show will continue to follow the same format, with elder Hedoji and young Hedochi wandering a wasteland, Hedochi asking a question, Hedoji giving a big pronouncement, and Hedochi making a zinger to end the show. So far we have never seen what wasteland they are wandering. Is it just other parts of Monster Island? Is it the future, where mankind’s environmental destruction had destroyed everything and only beings made from pollution live? Are they just lost in a national park and wandering around in circles because Hedoji is too prideful to ask for directions? A mystery we may never solve.
Godziban ゴジばん
The end credits is the Gojiban song from the pilot and will play out over all the credits for the series.
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Godziban – ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】 (Review)

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March of Godzilla 2019

Godziban

aka ゴジばん aka Gojiban aka ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】
Godziban GEMSTONE ゴジばん
March 20, 2019
Written by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi and Jun Shimazaki
Godziban GEMSTONE ゴジばん
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)
Godziban GEMSTONE ゴジばん
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.
Godziban GEMSTONE ゴジばん Kamatte Gojira
So let’s get started, first up is the original GEMSTONE contest video!
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