Godziban Episode 06 – “Secret recipe! roll of drop kick” Go! Go! Godzilla-kun #4/ Kamatte-Godzilla # 3 (Review)
Godziban Episode 06 – “Secret recipe! roll of drop kick” Go! Go! Godzilla-kun #4/ Kamatte-Godzilla # 3
aka ゴジばん
September 13, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
The sixth episode of Godziban is packed with skits, not only having the Godzilla brothers do Godzilla things, but there is a Kamatte Godzilla skit thrown in and TWO Hedojiis! Bigger, better, and banging, that the Godzi way!
Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
Godzilla-Kun is still having the monster practice for his two brothers near the Sonic the Hedgehog ramp. This time they are to kick a giant rock off a cliff onto the ramp. Godzilla-kun demonstrates this using the horizontal flying we saw in Godzilla vs Megalon and kicks the rock. Little tries next, he masters the horizontal flight, but when he hits the rock it is far too massive and instead he is the one who goes flying. At least Little manages to land on his feet.
Minya tries next, but he can’t do the horizontal kick straight and keeps somersaulting around until he hits the rock head-first. Needless to say, that does not work. Minya tries again and gets a straight horizontal kick, but the rock is again too big and he bounces on top of it. That’s enough to dislodge the rock, it falls over the edge and begins rolling with Minya grabbing on for dear life. It rolls back to the top of the cliff where Little then tries to grab Minya, but fails and instead is now clinging to the rock as well as it rolls back and forth. It reaches the top of the cliff again and this time Godzilla-kun is now grabbing onto it as well as it heads back down. This is like reverse Sisyphus or something!
Baby Mothra comes by and they call for help. Mothra helps…by rolling alongside the rock as it rolls back and forth!!!! This goes on for quite a while, Anguirus spies them rolling around and a big question mark appears above his head.
I appreciate that one of the lessons of this episode showed that doing a horizontal kick is easy, but doing it with enough force to dislodge a rock is what is hard. I would have never guessed. It’s now canon that Little Godzilla and Minya can do horizontal kicks now.
Hedojii
Hedoji and Hedochi have finally reached a new place to wander, instead of a desert wasteland it is now a rocky wasteland. This is progress, but is just exposes the entire show as taking place in an endless runner where the background changes only slightly over time. It’s the same format as usual, but it’s obvious that Hedochi asks about the Godziban show in his question even if this still isn’t subtitled.
Kamatte Godzilla
A lady named Yuko works at a dead end office job where her boss yells at her. By the time she gets home she’s too tired to feed her Kamatte Godzilla pet or even acknowledge it as he makes noise and slides on its glass cage. She’s already passed out on bed.
But not too passed out to remember to love her pet and pick it up for hugs and now things are a-ok! Love conquers all, even love of strange ugly lizards.
Hedojii
Huh, they wandered back to the old wasteland. Beyond that it is still the same format of question/pronouncement/zinger. Hedochi!
The rock encounter with the Godzilla brothers was so awesome I’m just granting this episode a perfect score. Please continue to be silly and dumb fun while continuing to give a nice mix of skits, Godziban!
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Godziban, Godzilla, Godzilla Junior, Hedorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Minya, Mothra
Godziban Episode 05 – KAIJU PUPPET SHOW 「Secret Training on the Pointed Mountain」 Go! Go! Godzilla # 3【Goji Ban】(Review)
Godziban Episode 05 – KAIJU PUPPET SHOW 「Secret Training on the Pointed Mountain」 Go! Go! Godzilla # 3【Goji Ban】
aka ゴジばん
September 6, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
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!
Hedojii
Hedojii continues the same wasteland wandering format. There is no rolling or bananas.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Godziban, Godzilla, Godzilla Junior, Hedorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Minya, Mothra
Godziban – ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】 (Review)
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!
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Baragon, Godziban, Godzilla, Godzilla Junior, Gorosaurus, Hedorah, Jet Jaguar, King Ghidorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Minya, Mothra
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction (Review)
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction
aka すすめ！ゴジランド aka ゴジラと遊ぼう aka Let’s Play With Godzilla
1994
Well, if you gotta learn addition, I guess you gotta learn subtraction. Multiplication and division, sorry you are out of luck! But never give up hope that some random thing will pop up from who knows where! Unproduced scripts, story boards, a new generation of Godzilland merchandise with altered character designs but a budget for more topics. The future is full of endless possibilities, the only subtraction is your limited life span.
This is an episode from the second batch of edutainment Godzilland shorts, thus it has the expanded cast and live action wraparounds with Godzilla and the Big Sister lady. Please make sure you check out the full character breakdown and the other Godzilland episodes in this series.
Now don’t be frakken, watch some Gakken! Sing Godzilland theme song!
Live-action human sized Godzilla has made some cakes, but there isn’t enough strawberries for the amount of cakes. 6 cakes minus 4 strawberries equals two cakes left over with no strawberry adornments. This knowledge impresses the lady, who realizes he learned this on Godzilland and also brings up his girlfriend back then, Gojirin, which is embarrassing for Godzilla. Lady demands more knowledge about Gojirin, so Godzilla shares that she loves fruit.
We cut live to an animated flashback of Godzilland, where cartoon Godzilla is bringing an armload of oranges to share with Gojirin. Gojirin is watering her plants and assumes all the oranges are for her and is so happy, scarfing them all down. Godzilla is a bit shocked that he doesn’t get any oranges, but he’s seriously been a jerk this whole series to its good he’s now forced to be nice even if it is against his will.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Baragon, Gigan, Godzilla, Godzilly, King Ghidorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Mechagodzilla, Moguera, Mothra, Rodan
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition (Review)
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition
aka すすめ！ゴジランド aka ゴジラと遊ぼう aka Let’s Play With Godzilla
1996
Gakken is backken and in the meantime they got a new logo! After the two year gap, Godzilland was revamped and retooled. There is a different theme song performed by a lady! But more importantly, the show has more kaiju kid characters! Joining the Godzilland team are Gigan, Moguera, and Mechagodzilla! Mechagodzilla looks like 1970s Mechagodzilla, not the 90s Mechagodzilla, which is a weird aesthetic choice but maybe they didn’t like the new monster being cartoonified so much. Let’s not forget the wholly original character – a female Godzilla! This one is pink with hearts for the spinal ridges, and her name is Gojirin! Gojirin is just adding a female suffix to Gojira, and is equivalent to calling her Godzilly in English, thus that has become her unofficial English name. And the show now has live-action segments where Godzilla tells stories to a human lady, both of them being the same size! We’re really tripping balls here for this new series and it is amazing!
The best part is all of this is canon now, baby! You can’t uncanon this, it exists, Godzilla had a girlfriend and has a human lady friend and couldn’t do math or read due to having no real parents, which is why he’s a good dad to all his adopted kids he’s picked up over the years. This is the truest of truths. Be sure to check out the cast list page for Godzilland!
Godzilla is making pancakes for his lady friend, who is impressed that he can use the power of addition to tell how many pancakes he has made. Godzilla enjoys regaling her with tales of his youth, so today he’s gonna tell her (and us!) about how he learned addition. It is not entirely clear what the nature of their relationship is, so I just call her his lady friend while he seems to call her something like “Big Sister”, so I guess she is a friend that is like family? A nanny? A nurse caretaker due to a chronic medical condition that we are not aware of due to the short length of the series? Could it have to due with Godzilla’s propensity to eat all sorts of terrible food? Is Godzilla going to die of a heart attack at an early age because he won’t eat a salad? Damn it, Godzilla, pull yourself together, man! But I digress…
A long long time ago on Godzilland…
Mechagodzilla’s peaceful flight around Godzilland is spoiled when he spies Godzilla and Anguirus having an argument that turns into a physical altercation. These boys do nothing but cause problems! Mechagodzilla marvels that such good friends are good enough friends to fight each other, which sounds like a very mature view until the episode continues and we see it is a very immature view that just lucked into sounding more philosophical than it is.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Baragon, Gigan, Godzilla, Godzilly, King Ghidorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Mechagodzilla, Moguera, Mothra, Rodan
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count (Review)
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count
aka すすめ！ゴジランド – ～かず1・2・3
1994
Do you know how to count? Of course you don’t! It’s hard! Numbers are bad! They each one is a different amount, who has time to count all these numbers? Luckily, Gakken Video and Godzilla are here to help you learn things like numbers and what to do with them. So prepare to get numb, people!
These Godzilland episodes have opening credits with lots of stuff not in the two episodes. Was this all planned but abandoned videos or just a highlight reel to make the series seem more like an actual thing with the monsters going on constant adventures? Buddy, your guess is as good as mine! Confused by Godzilland? Check out the Splash Page!
Anguirus has made hot tea and cakes for Godzilla’s birthday party. Rodan smells them and demands cake even though Anguirus says to wait. Wow, is this the Rodan from Godzilla: King of the Monsters?
Meanwhile Godzilla bumps into Baragon and they discuss going to Anguirus’s for the party. Mothra also is on the way, while King Ghidorah has already arrived and the party begins.
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Categories: Movie Reviews Tags: Anguirus, Baragon, Godzilla, King Ghidorah, March of Godzilla 2019, Mothra, Rodan
