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

March of Godzilla 2019

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
Godziban title English
December 31, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziban
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.
Godziban
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!
Godziban
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.
Godziban
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 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)

March of Godzilla 2019

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
Godziban ゴジばん
November 8, 2019
Written and directed by Hideyuki Kobayashi
Godziaban ゴジばん
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!)
Godziaban ゴジばん
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.
Godziaban ゴジばん
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).
Godziaban ゴジばん
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Godziban – ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】 (Review)

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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Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction (Review)

March of Godzilla 2019

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
 Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction
1994
 Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction
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.
 Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Subtraction
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Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition (Review)

March of Godzilla 2019

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
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition
1996
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition
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!
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition
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.
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning Addition
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Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count (Review)

March of Godzilla 2019

Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count

aka すすめ!ゴジランド – ~かず1・2・3
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count
1994
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count
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!
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count
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.
Recommended! Godzilland – Learning How To Count
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