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Godziban ゴジばん Mothra
InMovie Reviews

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)

December 2, 2019By

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.

Godziban ゴジばん Kamatte Godzilla
InMovie Reviews

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)

November 29, 2019By

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

Godziban ゴジばん
InMovie Reviews

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

November 27, 2019By

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.

Godziban GEMSTONE ゴジばん
InMovie Reviews

Godziban – ゴジばん【GEMSTONE ゴジラ 応募作品】 (Review)

November 25, 2019By

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!

Scooby-Doo Ghoul School
InMovie Reviews

Scooby-Doo And The Ghoul School (Review)

November 14, 2019By

March of Godzilla 2019

Scooby-Doo And The Ghoul School

Scooby-Doo Ghoul School
1988
Written by Glenn Leopold
Directed by Charles A. Nichols and Ray Patterson (supervising)
Scooby-Doo Ghoul School
I know what you are thinking. What does Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School have to do with Godzilla? Well, stick with me, dear reader, and you shall see that this is a fitting member of March of Godzilla 2019! Before we get to that, we got to get to just what the heck Scooby-Doo mystery we’ve gotten TarsTarkas.NET caught up in! Back in the day (the 1980s), Hannah-Barbera made a series of 10 animated films packaged for syndication starring some of their strongest brands, it was called the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series. Scooby-Doo And The Ghoul School is the eighth film in the series and the second of three Scooby-Doo features. All of them feature actual supernatural creatures instead of guys in masks scaring away people from abandoned theme parks to cover their crimes, which paint them closer to the then-current 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo series. Further cementing the connection, Shaggy is depicted here in a red shirt like he was in that series, and the entire group is just Shaggy, Scooby, and Scrappy-Doo.

Shaggy, Scooby-Doo, and Scrappy-Doo are driving on a dark and stormy night. Wait a second…

It was a dark and stormy night. Shaggy, Scooby-Doo, and Scrappy-Doo we driving to their new job as gym teachers at a Girl’s school. Normally I’d guess they don’t do background checks and just hire anyone, but as the school turns out to be full of monsters they must have hired the only applicant.
Scooby-Doo Ghoul School
Miss Grimwood’s Finishing School for Girls, but the “Girls” is perpetually replaced by spray-painted “Ghouls”. Miss Grimwood is a typical fussy boarding school headmistress except for the fact she is a witch and thus does witch stuff. She’s assisted mainly by a floating hand and her small pet dragon Matches. There is also an octopus butler who I don’t think is ever named. Most importantly, there is a two headed shark that lives in the moat outside the school! Scooby-Doo beat The Asylum to the punch by decades! A running gag in the film is all the food at the Ghoul School is gross and spooky (thus Shaggy and Scooby can’t pig out at all in this movie!), and much of it is cooked by Miss Grimwood. We got a whole garden of rotten fruit, fungus fudge, toadstool tea, poison ivy punch, caterpillar cookies, and swamp brownies (made from swamp water and mosquitoes!)
Scooby-Doo Ghoul School

Massacre Gun
InMovie Reviews

Massacre Gun (Review)

October 30, 2019By

Massacre Gun

aka みな殺しの拳銃 aka Minagoroshi no Kenjû aka Slaughter Gun aka Ruthless Gangster
Massacre Gun
1967
Written by Yasuharu Hasebe (as Takashi Fujii) and Ryûzô Nakanishi
Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe
Massacre Gun
A long time ago (2017!) I saw Massacre Gun at the Roxie, but despite it being some good stuff, I was far too busy to get a proper writeup completed. This is TarsTarkas.NET, after all, where the reviews are all made up and the deadlines don’t matter, so we thought we’d just watch it again and give a nice, nuanced review from multiple viewings. So thus bursts the review of Massacre Gun!

At this point the Nikkatsu borderless action films are becoming very well represented on TarsTarkas.NET, thanks in part to a large swatch of them getting wonderful restored and subtitled releases in the West, thus making watches easy. These films have a tone that make them very good watches even though too many at once can lead to bleak feelings due to the tone. Despite that, the films are largely high quality stories crafted with care, and have a clear evolution over time before the entire genre was just dropped in favor of the Roman Pornos. From the early youth/troubled youth films to the increasingly violent and dreary action pieces, the entire genre (and their inspirations and imitators) just create so many things to talk about. There is even the side journey with our slow but study dive through Seijun Suzuki’s filmography. The director here is Yasuharu Hasebe (the amazeballs Black Tight Killers!) and he might be one of the few Nikkatsu directors to give Suzuki a run for his money in regards to interesting shots and techniques (while still showing it straight enough to not anger the bosses enough to get fired!)
Massacre Gun
By now this is 1967, the genre is in full swing, Jo Shishido is owning the screen, and Yasuharu Hasebe is about to drop yet another required viewing film onto an eager audience with Massacre Gun! Three brothers get pushed too far by their Yakuza employers and decided to strike out on their own and strike back against the disrespect, but we all know things aren’t going to end happily for most of them. Ken Sanders crooning gives this film an amazing vibe (backed up by the ever-present boarderless action jazz, which seems to be extra juiced in this film. There are album collections of tracks from these films which are great to study or write movie articles too, trust me!) We also get a lot of gangsters feeling sorry for themselves sitting around smoking while he croons. If that doesn’t hammer the tragic life of the yakuza gangster into your brain then maybe Teletubbies is more your speed, leave the Nikkatsu flicks to us, thanks.
Massacre Gun

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