Excuse the crappy "scans" as they're just photos taken with my iphone as I don't have a scanner.
This book is one of the more unique Godzilla-related books I’ve seen in quite some time, because unlike most G books (which only cover either the Godzilla series along with TOHO’s other daikaiju and special effects films), this book also focuses on rarely covered TOHO-related tokusatsu superhero television series.
Now, unlike a lot of fans, I’ve never been a fan of tokusatsu super hero shows. People often believe that just because I love Godzilla and daikaiju flicks, they automatically think there is a link to Ultraman, Kamen Rider, etc. and that I probably like them as well….Nope. No disrespect to those who like those shows...they're just not my cup of tea. However, what interests be greatly about this book is the coverage of tokusatsu shows which have some connection to Godzilla via daikaiju from those films making appearances and cameos. Also, Tsuburaya produced tokusatsu shows and the likes of Kamen Rider have been covered infinite times in countless books/magazines/etc., but very little material exists on TOHO related tokusatsu such as Zone Fighter/Godman/Green Man/etc. This book makes an effort to fill that void.
The first half of the book focuses on the usual series (G54-GFW and every daikaiju/special effects movie in between), and there’s nothing all that special or groundbreaking in terms of info or photos/stills we haven’t seen before (although they do include the most recent 2014 film in their coverage as well. Alot of the new recent books are inexplicably only covering films up to
GFW with next to nothing on
G2014, so major props to this book for not overlooking it
)….it’s a little vanilla to be honest compared to most Shogakukan books which are reknowned for their comprehensive photo spreads and stills on each Godzilla film.....it's not bad by any means, but nothing special (Shogakukan’s
History of G: G54-99 still remains one of the best books in terms of interesting photos/stills of each film)...it's very streamlined, efficient, and straight to the point. An example are the two pages below devoted to
GvsMonster Zero:
Have no fear, however, as the second half of the book is where it begins to shine as it's loaded with stills and photos from rare TOHO Tokusatsu TV shows. A lot of them I’m not all that familiar with (others one here probably know far more than I do in regards to these shows), but I’ll post some small samples of the 3 that interest me the most:
A sample spread of
Go! Godman:
A sample spread of
Zone Fighter:
1 page spread of
Go! Green Man!Godzilla IslandThere's even a small tid bit on the Godman/Greenman crossover from 2008 feature Gaira:
There are many other series that I'm not familiar with covered in this book(I'm sure many on here are far more knowledgable when it comes to tokusatsu shows), such as
Guyferd,
Saiba-Koppu,
The Justirisers,
Granseizar,
SeizarX, quite frankly, they all run together in terms of style (Kamen Rider/Power Rangers clones) and I didn't find them all that interesting or original. Another is
Kawaii Jenny (Bronies may like this one, haha
) . However, the most interesting looking one is
Go! UshiWaka Kotaro which is a tokusatsu film set in fuedal Japan with Yokai-style demons and monsters instead of the usual robot super heros and what not. This looks very cool and seems like an interesting, original take on the tokusatsu. Anyone know anything more about it?
Overall, another steller work from Shogakukan that covers all the Godzilla and TOHO daikaiju/SFX films in a thorough manner while also tackling subject matters rarely explored in G-related books in the various TOHO tokusatsu films. I highly recommend it.