• Home
  • Author: Tars Tarkas
Bat-man-vs godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Bat-Man (ゴッドマン対バットマン)

March of Godzilla Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Bat-Man

aka ゴッドマン対バットマン その1 – その3 aka Goddoman Tai Battoman
Godman Title
Week of February 22 – 28, 1973

I saw Godman and Bat-Man in the closet and they were making babies and one of the babies looked at me!

Godman battles Bat-Man, and then later that week, Kappalge. As Kappalge never bothered to be in Latitude Zero, he doesn’t make the cut for the DVD episodes. So enjoy Godman only defeating Bat-Man! For a who’s who of who the crap these people are, check out the Godman Splash Page, and enjoy this entry in March of Godzilla: Godman!

Bat-Man isn’t THAT Batman, nor is he Principal Joe Clark. He’s one of the bat people from Latitude Zero who is now running around attacking children. How the mighty have fallen… We get all three parts of this Godman story arc, so prepare for the entire exciting adventure to be detailed. Detailed only a bit, because mostly it’s just the monster punching each other again and again.

Two kids in short shorts are piling rocks in a vacant lot (Is this why Japan is so far ahead of us in education? Empty lot rock games?) Suddenly…the Bat-Man appears! The children run, but bat people are jerks and this one is no exception. Bat-Man flies around and annoys the kids, until the kids chorus screams for “GODMAN!”

Godman flies in to kick some bat butt, and Bat-Man runs away like a coward. He’s only brave when menacing tiny children! The attempted escape just means Bat-Man will get beaten up while on the run.

They fight and fight…until…

Tsuzuku for the next episode!

Bat-Man approaches Godman as random explosions happen. Is Bat-Man causing these explosions? I’m so confused. Bat-Man and Godman got giant sized at some point and now battle over a scale model town. Bat-Man seems to be a better fighter now that we needed some more dramatic tension in part II. Godman tosses his explosive discs at Bat-Man, who just knocks them down.

They fight some more, until we tsuzuku for the next part!

Godman is tired of playing and breaks out his flail weapon to smash Bat-Man with. He does that for a bit, then fires his Godman Supersonic Wave (aka he projects a swirly animation from his chest) which causes Bat-Man to explode! I guess Bat-Man shouldn’t have eaten all that nitroglycerin!

Godman wins!

Let’s chill until the next episode, but chill somewhere else, because we won’t get Kappalge on this dvd set! Which is weird, because he appears in the updated Godman special…
Bat-man-vs godman

Green-Mask Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Green-Mask (ゴッドマン対グリーンマスク)

March of Godzilla Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Green-Mask

aka ゴッドマン対グリーンマスク その1 – その3 aka Goddoman Tai Geriinmasuku
Green-Mask Godman
Week of February 15 – 21, 1973

Look, let’s just all agree to never speak about Godman again once this series is over…

Godman returns with the third episode of his battle against Green-Mask, as we continue our journey through the Godman DVD. For more Godman information, feel free to stop by the Godman Splash Page!

Green-Mask is a creepy humanoid magician monster with a green mask that fits so well he has to hold it on while he runs. That’s some great kaiju design right there. Green-Mask speaks in almost entirely chicken clucks, which is a reoccurring motif for the more human monsters in the Godman series. He also steals children, which is another thing that the humanoid monsters do more of vs. the gigantic kaiju! What that says about the human monsters, or humanity in general, I will leave as an exercise to the reader to figure out. But if you cluck like a chicken, make sure you lay a dozen eggs each week or you get the chop!

The action starts with the third episode of Green-Mask, at this point Green-Mask is so beaten down by Godman that he’s worn out, falling down. Godman decides that humiliation is the key, and decides that it is spanking time! Remember all those times I said this show was disturbingly sexual? Add this one to the list!

Green-Mask gets spanked by Godman, and then Godman shoves Green-Mask’s face into the ground. This is one of the few occasions I won’t defend the monster Godman is beating on, because Green-Mask is actually bad. The final beatdown causes Green-Mask to use his magician skills to make the five children he kidnapped appear. Green-Mask also bows before Godman, worshiping his greatness. Shockingly, Godman lets Green-Mask live.

Let me repeat that. Godman, who regularly executes monsters for simply breathing the same air as him, lets a child-snatching guy in a mask live because he feigns worship of him. Good Lord, Godman is a menace!

This is the last episode on the DVD, so it’s final act is to let us see Godman let a real monster live. Also, the DVD doesn’t have the decency to have the episodes in order, so this is in no way the last entry of March of Godzilla: Godman’s Godman coverage. Will Godman break Jared from Subway out of prison while killing a puppy? Find out next time!
Green-Mask Godman

Gaira Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Gaira (ゴッドマン対ガイラ)

March of Godzilla Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Gaira

aka ゴッドマン対ガイラ その1 – その6 aka Goddoman Tai Gaira
Gaira Godman
Week of February 1 – 7, 1973

She’s my Gaira, she’s my Sanda!

After a week of Godman fighting the heroic brown Gargantua named Sanda, he now fights the cruel green Gargantua named Gaira! Gaira was also seen in The War of the Gargantuas, hence the sentence I wrote immediately before this one. Finally, Godman is attacking the right one. Maybe Godman is color blind? Or maybe he’s racist, and kills the brown-skinned one first. Either way, it’s awful, just like Godman! Similar to the Sanda suit, the Gaira suit is nearing the end of its lifespan.

Like all these single-entry Godman DVD episode slots, there is little to work with, and outside of the novelty of seeing Gaira fighting someone we know, this series would sink to the oblivion it deserves. But it is now rescued from the depths, to inflict a new round of pain and torture on us all. For more fun Godman fun, check out the Godman Splash Page.

Godman fights Gaira in a dirt pit. Gaira gets off a whirlwind punch. Godman gains the advantage by throwing Gaira around and standing up to Gaira’s counterattacks. But that’s all we see as the episode ends in tsuzuku. That sounds like a whole lot of nothing, and that’s what it is, and that’s what the whole Ike! Godman series is! March of Godzilla: Godman will return with more Godman beating up everyone!
Gaira Godman

Sanda Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Sanda (ゴッドマン対サンダ)

March of Godzilla Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Sanda

aka ゴッドマン対サンダ その1 – その6 aka Goddoman Tai Sanda
Sanda Godman
Week of January 25 – 31, 1973

Help! Help! Someone call Rorschach, someone is killing capes!!

Sanda is the brown Gargantua seen in The War of the Gargantuas. In the film he is heroic, so of course the blood-lusting Godman wants his head on a platter! March of Godzilla: Godman again presents another episode of Godman’s bloodbath across the world of Toho kaiju, as he slowly slaughters everyone and anyone he comes across.

The Sanda suit has seen better days, it’s half-rotted, but still together enough for Godman to kill Sanda without too many children losing interest and switching the channel to whatever was airing opposite this in 1973.

The DVD has only the fifth episode of Godman’s battle against this Gargantua. It begins with Godman punching Sanda around a bit. Sanda runs to the city, and Godman picks him up and spins around, then tosses Sanda down and punches him a lot.

Sanda gets up from this pummeling and beats his chest in defiance like he’s King Kong. Totally wrong monster, director!

Godman takes the taunt and jumps on a cliff and fires missiles at Sanda, but Sanda continues beating his chest to show Godman that he isn’t as cool as he thinks he is. No one owns Sanda but Sanda.

We end with a tsuzuku so we don’t get resolution whether Sanda just spends the last episode beating his chest of if more things happen and Godman kills him. But never fear, Godman can’t just murder one Gargantua, he’s got to go after the other one…
Sanda Godman

The Handmaiden

The Handmaiden (Review)

The Handmaiden

aka 아가씨 aka Agassi
The Handmaiden
2016
Written by Park Chan-wook & Chung Seo-kyung
Based on the novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Directed by Park Chan-wook

The Handmaiden
If you aren’t a fan of Park Chan-wook by now, I’m not sure what it will take to convince you to get out and see The Handmaiden. But if you are one of the millions of his fans around the globe, you know that Park Chan-wook is a force of awesomeness in the movie community, and The Handmaiden continues that tradition of awesome movies from an awesome guy. Basically, run, don’t walk, to the theaters and check out a wonderful psychological thriller. There is a trio of amazing performances by Kim Min-hee, Ha Jung-woo, and newcomer Kim Tae-ri. Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith is moved to 1930s occupied Korea, where it still manages to work in a culture of repression and male dominance.

Kim Min-hee is heiress Lady Hideko. Hideko is isolated and lorded over by her cruel uncle, Kouzuki, who covets her money and title. Her mother died in childbirth, and her aunt was found hanging in a tree when she was a child. Hideko never leaves the family estate and her only contact with outsiders is a weekly reading of erotic literature to exclusive guests. If you are familiar with the concept of that literature, some of it is ridiculous, basically the dime store erotic trash novels peppered with flowery poetry and filled with imagery that at times stretches believability that the writers have even interacted with people who have sex. Hideko’s Uncle Kouzuki has designs on becoming a Japanese nobleman despite being neither of those things and Hideko’s money and title his avenue to obtain them. Kouzuki rejects his Korean heritage in an admiration for the occupying Japanese, but his true passion is rare books, specifically the aforementioned erotic literature.

Kim Tae-ri plays Sook-hee, a gifted pickpocket and thief embedded as a handmaiden whose job it is to help convince Hideko to fall for the fake Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo — Assassination). Fujiwara has a knack for making forgeries and is just the thing Hideko’s creepy uncle needs, as he can’t bear to part with any of his rare books, but is perfectly fine with selling off faked replicas of them. This gives Fujiwara the access he needs to scope out Lady Hideko and enact his plan of seduction and asset seizure, enabled by Sook-hee as Hideko’s new handmaiden. And then it is seduction time.
The Handmaiden

Skeleton man Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Skeleton Man No.1 and Skeleton Man No.2 (ゴッドマン対スケルトマンNo.1・スケルトマンNo.2)

March of Godzilla Godman

Go! Godman: Godman vs. Skeleton Man No.1 and Skeleton Man No.2

aka ゴッドマン対スケルトマンNo.1・スケルトマンNo.2 その1 – その6 aka Goddoman Tai Sukerutoman No.1 – Sukerutoman No.2
Skeleton man Godman
Week of January 18 – 24, 1973
Skeleton man Godman
Wow, two skeleton men for the price of one! Must have been deal week at the Kaiju Bargain Basement Emporium! Or at least at the popup Spirit Halloween store…

The villains are Skeleton Man No.1 and Skeleton Man No.2, and because we are jerks, we’re calling them the Skeleton Man No.s instead of Skeleton Men. Don’t like it? Too bad! That’s how we roll at TarsTarkas.NET, blazing our own path of referring to obscure kaiju be technically correct but odd-sounding monikers.

The biggest mystery of this episode is who is Skeleton Man No.1 and who is Skeleton Man No.2. It is such a mystery that even the data cards included on the DVD aren’t even too clear about which is which. And thanks to this episode not being on the DVD and thus me getting it through a Chinese stream that has some amazingly low quality video, I can’t definitively identify the individual Skeleton Man No.s in each scene. If I blow the images up big, they just get all blocky, and we aren’t in a Minecraft horror reality, yet. So I’m just arbitrarily assigning the first one to show up as Skeleton Man No.1, and the second as Skeleton Man No.2, and not worrying about which pixelated image I use for which one. This isn’t rocket surgery, this is Godman!
Skeleton man Godman
A shortpantsed Kenny is fishing, when suddenly a wild Skeleton Man No. appears and puts him in a choke hold! “GODDOMAN!” the voiceless children cry! So these Skeleton Men No. are actually evil and not just misunderstood, unless they are some sort of defenders of fishes or just overly aggressive enforcers of having a fishing license. But probably just evil. It is a sad state of affairs that I have to judge these monsters before we know if Godman’s righteous justice is actually righteous. We can’t be too careful, Godman has a history of harassing innocents, but he’s probably in the clear here if he’s going to kill (rekill?) this Skeleton Man No..

Godman tosses his exploding disk at the Skeleton Man No. who is still holding the kid(!!), but it doesn’t blow up, it just knocks him away from the kid. The Skeleton Man No. (who we are going to assume is Skeleton Man No.1) has teleporting powers, and he and Godman fight with him occasionally beaming around. The fact the Skeleton Man No.1 is basically a fancy leotard with a skull mask allows for some more acrobatic fighting, so there is a lot more flipping going on than the usual drunk wrestling.

Tsuzuku!

The battle continues in Part 2 as the theme song blares, punctuated occasionally by the unearthly electronic chicken shrieks of Skeleton Man No.1. At one point Skeleton Man No.1 teleports away from the fight to chase after the shortpantsed Kenny again! Some pervs just got sick impulses, I guess. He’d clearly demonstrated that he’s a monster that needs to be taken out.

Skeleton Man No.1 can throw knives, because he does so at Godman, but they miss. It’s hard to aim when you only have sockets for eyes! Then Godman tosses his explosive disk back, but Skeleton Man No.1 catches it and tosses it aside before it blows up. Just then, Skeleton Man No.2 pops up where the disk exploded! The two Skeleton Men No.s give each other a cross-armed salute and then dance around each other celebrating as Godman looks on, confused. I am also confused on the logic of this, but let’s just go with it. because we don’t have any other choice. Godman reassures the kid while the Skeleton Men No.s continue to dance around and make arm motions beckoning Godman to attack them

Tsuzuku

Godman takes them both on, but is sort of confused on the “don’t let one of them grab you while the other beats you” rule of fighting two people at once. Luckily the Skeleton man No.s are dumb and soon are smacking each other because their punches at Godman miss and they accidentally connected on each other, and then they continue to brawl as Godman watches. It’s easy when your opponent do your job for you. Godman then beats them unconscious, but they teleport away.

Tsuzuku
Skeleton man Godman
The Skeleton No.s conduct a renewed assault on Godman, as this is only part 4 of six we got to fill it with plenty of scenes of Godman getting beat up before he turns the tide and finally wins. But it gives me time to write that these Skeleton No.s sure have a bone to pick with Godman!

Godman even kicks the Skeleton Men No.s in their junk, and I guess these Skeleton Man No.s are like Wolfman and have nards, because it works. Not that much of nards, because they easily recover and beat up Godman some more and toss him down a hill.

Tsuzuku

Godman breaks out the flail to tenderize up these skeletons. Time to grind the bones. Despite having a powerful weapon and fighting two morons, Godman can’t seal the deal and by the end of the episode they are both beating on him as he lies crumpled on the ground. You only got one more part to not lose to piles of bones, you dink! Remember what a wise man said, “Seize the bone!”

Tsuzuku

Godman prevails, not by doing any smart strategy, but by just fighting back instead of lying their and getting beaten up. And despite dropping his flail and getting beaten up more, he then picks up the flail and wallops the villains. First one Skeleton Man No. explodes into nothing, then the second is beaten and explodes into…a smaller skull with a tiny, child-sized skeleton! What the heck, are the Skeleton Men No.s actually Skeleton Babies No.s???? Did Godman just murder two infants? What in the world??? Godman IS a supervillain!!!! Find out more of his evil deeds at the Godman Splash Page!
Skeleton man Godman