Godziban Episode 21 – Go!Go!ゴジラくん#12「飛べ!未来へ向かって」(Review)

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Tars Tarkas

Godziban Episode 21 – Go!Go!ゴジラくん#12「飛べ!未来へ向かって」

aka ゴジばん

December 31, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi

King Ghidorah makes his grand entry into the Godziban story line proper and causes a whole heap of trouble! Keep in mind King Ghidorah’s puppet has been seen in the stage play that was put on in the special event episode, but that is not entirely canon to the current story line even though it could easily fit in before the actual show as where Mothra came from. So maybe it is canon. It’s canon! If Santa Kaiju can be canon, this is canon. Canon!

Not only do we got King Ghidorah, but there are some other new faces in this episode, which turned out to be the final Godziban episode. Of the season? Of all time? We will wait to see. Until then, it looks like March of Godzilla 2019 in 2020 has come to an end. But don’t fret, because March of Godzilla 2020 will be starting up soon enough! Godzilla marching will never die as long as they keep producing more and more Godzilla stuff to keep marching on!

Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
Minya is still taking care of Baby Rodan, giving him food and trying to get him strong. He’s basically doing for Rodan what Godzilla-kun was doing for him in earlier episodes. Godzilla-kun and Little stop by (Little tossing a folded leaf around like a paper airplane) to check on the pair. Little asks about flying, and Godzilla-kun thinks about flying using his atomic breath to power it (like in Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster) and then laughs as he dismisses the concept!

But the message is clear…Minya must teach Rodan how to fly. Even though Minya can’t fly! So expect a lot of puppets falling to Earth!

Next we see Minya and Rodan at the top of a big cliff. Minya demonstrates flying by launching the paper/leaf airplane off the cliff into the sky. Rodan tries to fly…and hovers for about a second before dropping like a rock. Minya runs down to go get him and carries Rodan all the way back up the mountain. Minya is a pretty good dad, but he should be, as he had a pretty good dad himself. That’s been consistently one of Godzilla’s best traits.

Rodan tries again, fails again, and Minya hauls him back up the cliff again. Rodan is apprehensive about trying again. Minya is trying to encourage him when suddenly they hear the cries of “Dorat dorat dorat dorat dorat!” Yes, the Dorats are back, who you may remember tried to eat Baby Rodan’s egg last time we saw them.

The Dorats are still jerks, and are back to eat Rodan now that h’es big enough to make a full meal for the trio. They try to float the Baby Rodan away, but Minya grabs him. So they start blasting Minya with electricity! Again and again until eventually Minya is scorched and collapses. Rodan begins to panic and desperately tries to wake him. The drama going on here!

Then the fear becomes blinding white hot rage as Rodan takes flight and smashes through the villains, knocking them around as he swoops and soars among their ranks, causing them to all crash into the ground. Minya is back awake with Rodan returns, and they are both happy at the victory and Rodan’s new flying ability.

The Dorats aren’t going to go away that easily. They get mad and decide to get even, thus they merge into King Ghidorah! It’s a truly massive King Ghidorah, larger than all the other puppets on the show combined! King Ghidorah floats in the sky as Minya and Rodan shake in fear, then King Ghidorah blasts them with the electric breath rays. Good ol’ Minya still protects Rodan despite now being blasted with even more powerful blasts than before. The two are helpless…until Godzilla-kun is there!

Godzilla-kun charges…despite King Ghidorah being 20 times his size! He is not detoured by being blasted, Godzilla-kun jumps and grabs onto the neck of King Ghidorah’s central head! He tries chocking and scratching it, but the other two heads clamp on to Godzilla-kun’s head and tail and tosses him into a cliffside.

Godzilla-kun gets up, still determined to fight even though it is fruitless and he’s going to die. But behind him…Minya and Rodan got every other kaiju in town with them! Little, Baby Mothra, Anguirus, Baragon, even Gorosaurus, Manda, Kumonga, and Varan who we’ve not even seen before on this program. Somehow Minya and Rodan got new characters to join the show in order to help their friend. That’s some pretty effecient help! This is amazing!!! It’s Godziban: Endgame! Or Destroy All Monsters, yes yes, but that means I can’t make my jokes!

They all charge at King Ghidorah….and then it ends.

Godzilla-kun talks directly to the camera to thank everyone for watching the show. We are either taking a series break or this is the end of the line, but we go out on something amazing and this show rules so hard I hope it continues. Either way it is an amazing journey.

We end with the full version of the theme song playing to some of the highlights of the season while drawings by Onigiri and シウ*単行本発売中 flank the action.

Here’s hoping there is more Godziban in our future, whenever that may be! Until then, March of Godzilla 2019 in 2020 concludes, but keep on marching, people! Okay, I lied, there will be one more March of Godzilla 2019 in 2020 article, because I’m going to make a character guide for the show, but as that is a guide and not an article we gotta say goodbye here! (and there might be a few movie reviews in between depending on how lazy I am in posting the backlog of completed reviews!)
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Godziban Episode 17 – 「ミニラの息子」Go!Go!ゴジラくん#8 【ゴジばん】(Review)

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Tars Tarkas

Godziban Episode 17 – 「ミニラの息子」Go!Go!ゴジラくん#8 【ゴジばん】

aka ゴジばん

November 29, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi

It’s time! The two parter comes to the conclusion after a month of waiting! What will happen to the egg, Minya, the danger, the cliffhanger? It’s a Godziban miracle that I didn’t go insane waiting for the dramatic conclusion to this episode!

Go! Go! Godzilla-kun
It’s Egg part 2: The Eggening! At night…lightning strikes and the three Dorats appear! Yes, the Dorats who become King Ghidorah in the Heisei series have arrived, and they want the egg! As of now the egg is in Minya’s arms as they sleep through the night. The Dorats fly to Minya and use their Dorat magic to make it start floating away! Minya gives chase and manages to grab it, but the Dorats decide they can just float away the egg while Minya is holding it and he will eventually fall off. There is a lot of floating and MInya holding on for dear life (and dear life of the egg), but Minya is a tough son of a gun and holds on to the egg despite their best efforts to shake him off!

Minya refuses to give up, so the Dorats start blasting him with lightning! Poor Minya! He collapses and the Dorats move toward the egg, but the egg is too small for them to all eat so they instead just decide to leave! They fly back to the top of the cliff they appeared on and disappear!

The next morning Minya wakes up, covered in scorch marks, but the egg is still there! He takes it back to the nest, then the egg starts making noise and begins to crack for hatching. It’s baby Rodan! Rodan and Minya watch the sun rise. Godzilla-kun and Little return to check on Minya, and now they can meet the Rodan baby as well!

Hedoji
No more stargazing, back to wandering. This time the wasteland looks more grey than usual, but it might just be a trick of the darker palate they were using. The joke format is the same format as usual. Until…

Suddenly more talking is heard but with a slightly different voice for Hedoji, and Hedochi says “Wow Wow Wow!”

The cast is bigger, the Godzibanning is better, we got ourselves a real show! Plus it proved once again that Minya is the best, Minya will go through hell for his friends and just wants to love despite being the spawn of a giant anger monster. If you don’t like Minya, you are just wrong. Sorry, but it is true!

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Godziban Episode 14 – 『ゴジラ・フェス2019』ゴジばん生上演ダイジェストムービー【ゴジばん】(Review)

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Tars Tarkas

Godziban Episode 14 – 『ゴジラ・フェス2019』ゴジばん生上演ダイジェストムービー【ゴジばん】

aka ゴジばん

November 8, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi

There was a Godzilla Fest for the 65th birthday of Godzilla on November 3, 2019 and as part of the celebration there was a Godziban production play. This show is behind the scenes clips and portions of the final production. I can’t tell if it was a new play or if it was using the prior play architecture from the previous puppet shows they did 15-ish years ago.

The play answers one big question…THERE IS An OLD MAN GODZILLA! With a CANE!!!! A cane with a snowglobe or crystal ball on the top of it!!! This is insane and awesome! The old Godzilla is ShoGoji, the first generation Godzilla from the Showa-era 1954 original movie (hence the ShoGoji nickname you may have heard of!)

There is some subplot involving a medal coin/medallion/similar object, I am not exactly sure what was going on with it but it seemed meaningful even though it wasn’t directly involved in the egg drama. The main plot has been partially adapted already for the youtube show (though already modified to where they are different adventures!) but does involve the Big Egg on the side of a sheer cliff that we just saw in the show. This time the egg is clearly a Mothra egg, copying the coloros from the Mothra movies exactly.

The three Godzilla brothers attempt to climb the cliff as we’ve seen, except this time they fail and fall down the cliff in exaggerated play format. Eventually Godzilla-kun gets the idea to just slam his tail into the side of the cliff, which is enough to dislodge the egg so Minya an Little catch it. At this point this seems more disruptive than the skit in the series where they just go to investigate the egg and it falls out of the next via earthquake. I’m glad to that change at least.

The triplet Dorat monsters (that made King Ghidorah in the Heisei-era films!) fly by to be rude and demand the egg for themselves. Godzilla-kun fights them as Little and Minya take the egg to safety. The three Dorats are more than a match for Godzilla-kun, but then ShoGoji appears and drives them away. Not for long, as they then transform into King Ghidorah and return. The King Ghidorah puppet is truly monstrous, huge and dangerous looking. It smashes poor ShoGoji as Little and Minya scream in horror! But all is not lost, for ShoGoji then transforms himself into a gigantic Showa-era Godzilla (and is himself another massive puppet) and gives King Ghidorah a thorough thrashing.

King Ghidorah is beaten, ShoGoji transforms back to normal size and the Godzilla Brothers thank him. The egg hatches and it is the Baby Mothra we all know and love, who proceeds to say “Moshi Mosu!” again and again.

It’s bye-bye time!!!

There is also a tiny clip of Hedoji and Hedochi puppets at the end!

The play was fun as it is cool to see the origins of the show and what potential future puppets could show up. A grandpa level ShoGoji complete with fancy cane who wanders around defeating giant threats while serving as an inspiration to our heroes is a great concept. Thumbnail previews already show the Dorats will be appearing very soon on Godziban and the celebration had displays with other kaiju that should potentially appear later. Basically I need to get around to setting up the cast page, lol!

There is full version of the play someone recorded and put online. It is not a full episode of Godziban but it is related enough that you might find it interesting! It is basically the same except with all the scene transitions and the Hedoji/Hedochi jokes in the beginning of the show. It is a good way to see how the real play was set up (even if the backgrounds are just sheets instead of the more lush backgrounds the plays seemed to have from photos of the time).

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Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (Review)

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Tars Tarkas

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah

aka Gojira vs. Kingu Gidora

1991

Directed and written by Kazuki Omori

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is the third of the Heisei series of films, and the first to include a classic Toho kaiju in a new form (other classic monsters such as Mothra and Rodan would soon arrive as well.) The big story with Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is not the plot or the monsters or any of that jazz, but the controversy surrounding the release of the film. Back in 1991, the US was still having rough relations with Japan economically, following a period where Japan seemed to be buying up much of America at wholesale prices. Japan’s edge had started to slip at this point, and they would soon be in the middle of a decade-long recession, but fear of Japan soon controlling the world war rampant in the dimmest of bulbs, who coincidentally just happen to have radio and TV shows. They were upset over the sequence where the precursor to Godzilla, the Godzillasaurus, slaughters a bunch of US troops during World War 2. The fact that men from the future who were white also went back in time to ruin Japan economically in retaliation of Japan’s dominance was also touchy. Accusations of anti-Americanism flew wild, and Japan had to say “What the frak?” No one seemed upset over the thousands of dead Japanese people in the film, the fact a Japanese woman was one of the time travelers, a white guy was a good robot, or the fact that everyone in the future where Japan dominated hated the country and thought of them as corrupt and deserving death for their arrogance.

But talking heads are morons, so who gives a crap what they thought in 1991? All I am concerned about is if that had any decision in the delaying of release of the post-Biollante films in America. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah did not hit the US market until at least 1996, because I bought the VHS of it while I was in college. A few bootlegs circled at conventions, but outside of the grey market you could not get a glimpse of new Godzilla for five years. Of all of the Heisei era films, I think I enjoy this one the most, largely due to the human characters not being that annoying. It was very much better than its predecessor, Godzilla vs. Biollante, which was terrible (when Godzilla wasn’t fighting the army) and featured a stupid monster that I hate. Biollante’s poor showing at the box office basically forced Toho to tell the director he is bringing back a named monster, something that happened again when GMK: Tokyo SOS director Masaaki Tezuka was forced to put Ghidorah and Mothra in a film neither had any business being in. Toho could easily avoid this by not having lame monsters like Biollante or Megaguirus, but I guess that is just too difficult. Rumors swirl that this was originally going to star King Kong in a rematch against Godzilla, but negotiations went sour.

Enough rambling, let’s get to this production! We will have the cast breakdown, and then jump into the feature

	Kenichiro Terasawa (Kosuke Toyohara) – All Godzilla films need a reporter and a scientist, so Kenichiro Terasawa is our reporter. He predicts where Godzilla comes from, IN THE FUTURE, but for now he is just a guy who hasn’t done anything cool yet.
	Emmy Kano (Anna Nakagawa) – From the future! She came back in time to destroy her native Japan because Emmy has self-hate issues or something. Regardless, she soon realizes that Japan is ichiban and switches teams to be all 100% pro-Japan. She is also a pseudo-love interest for Kenichiro Terasawa, which is sort of gross because she is his descendent. I guess in the future the inbreds rule the roost.
	Miki Saegusa (Megumi Odaka) – Recurring character Miki Saegusa returns for the first time, thus she is a recurring character. Recurring, you see. She is psychic and has big ears. They are related. Also, she will be a recurring character, have I mentioned that?
	Professor Mazaki (Katsuhiko Sasaki) – Hey, a physics expert! Our resident scientist helps Terasawa discover the secret of Godzilla’s origin and explain the time travel junk to the military.
	M-11 (Robert Scott Field) – A white guy who isn’t evil or related to a director just happens to be a robot! But that allows for cyborg action like the world has never seen. Okay, not quite. M-11 is pretty cool for a second-rate Data so I give him two robotic thumbs up!
	Godzilla (Kenpachiro Satsuma) – Godzilla grows in size thanks to modern radiation from 80 meters to 100 meters. Now he can kick even more butt! If Godzilla ever wanders past your house, don’t use any radiation on him, because he’ll keep growing bigger and bigger and have to buy new wardrobes each time, making Godzilla madder and madder.
	King Ghidorah (Hurricane Ryu) – King Ghidorah is the agent of the evil Futurians used to try to destroy Japan so they won’t rule the world of the future. Three heads are better than one, unless you have low ceilings.
	Mecha-King Ghidorah (Hurricane Ryu) – Mecha-King Ghidorah is the modified version of King Ghidorah that transports from the future to fight Godzilla. Piloted by Emmy and M-11.
	Godzillasaurus (Wataru Fukuda) – Godzillasaurus was just chillin’ on his island when these Japanese guys showed up and trenched in. Godzillasaurus suspiciously ignored them until heroic Americans came to kill the Japanese, and Godzillasaurus decided he should get involved in the conflict. His attempts at peacemaker resulted in his body being riddled with bullets, so Godzillasaurus lashed back and struck out in anger. Godzillasaurus hid his rage deep inside until it consumed him and he became rage personified. So learn some stress management, kiddies!
	Dorats (puppets) – AHGH!! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE! Sorry. These ugly as sin things turn into King Ghidorah. If the Futurians wanted to destroy Japan maybe they should have dropped several dozen back in time so there would be many King Ghidorahs. But that would require having some brains!

The best special effects money can buy!