Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

Greetings All!

Well for this week I thought we could choose between films which feature the iconic ship which originated from Shunro Oshikawa 's novel Undersea Warship. The most popular of these is of course the Toho 1963 film Atragon. However since that film won the last poll, I figured we could choose between other films (all of them Toho incidentally) which feature the ship. I will admit a couple of them may be difficult to track down if you don’t already own them, but all have been released in North America except one. I hope this is as fun for you all as it was for me. Also I know we don’t like to advertise other sites, but if anyone is interested in the history and naming conventions of Gotengo/Atragon etc.. I contributed a nice little article on another site which I can PM a link to if interested. Enjoy!

I voted Super Atragon. I've heard the title bandied about for years, but I've never actually seen the movie. Plus, I watched GFW fairly recently.

nothing can stop the G-efect

This is one of those movies that I like a bit more each time I watch it, but willl definitely *never* love it. When I first watched this, I absolutely *HATED* it, and that's putting it mildly. I sold the dvd off after one viewing, and only rebought it years later. This has kind of been discussed to death elsewhere on this forum, but what did I notice on this viewing?

I still love the intro credits. Coming from Atragon in last week's viewing thread, it was kind of neat in that this starts out with a Gotengo vs Manda battle, but it's also a reminder of what I really don't like about this movie. The monster battles are way too hyper-kinetic. I prefer the sloppy movement of the Showa puppet to the over-quick smooth cartoon movements of the CGI model. Because of this viewing thread experiment, I'm much more familiar with Gorath, so its mention here means a bit more to me now.

I still dislike the suits overall. They're *way* too anthropomorphic in appearance and especially in action, which I think is done on purpose. The soccer scene continues to be offputting to me for this very reason. The mutants repeatedly aiming their pistols sideways irks me even more each time I see this, and it happens quite a bit. You're not aiming if you're aiming like that! I don't care how "cool" it looks.


One of the very few scenes where I feel a sense of scale.

The irony is that there's a good Godzilla story in here with a nice Toho history. It's just told in an over-the-top manner and is in *DESPERATE* need of some editing as well as trimming. If the monster battles had some weight to them, the surrounding destruction had some actual meaning rather than being a backdrop, and if the mutant fights were trimmed back to a reasonable level, we'd have a good Millenium movie (or at least one I would like more).

"I knew that tuna-eating monster was useless!"

I still own the dvd, and didn't mind this viewing. So I guess that says enough.