Godzilla And Friends Art Of Japanese Monsters

[Diabolik]

[king_ghidorah]

[RyanClark]

[kpa]

According to publisher Harper Collins the book has been renamed Killer Kaiju Monsters: Film's Most Frightening Creatures from Japan and the release date pushed back to December 1.

Here's the publisher listing...

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780 ... index.aspx

... and the product description from Amazon. This sounds like a really fun book!

Graphic full-colour illustrations of the most notable kaiju are featured in "Killer Kaiju Monsters", along with descriptions of their strengths, weaknesses and special powers. Also featured are the heroes and heroines who prevented kaiju attacks, the creators who designed these breathtaking beasts, and a breakdown of the central, defining plot and story structures of kaiju dramas and battle sequences. A kaiju research section that assembles data, charts, and figures - valuable scientific findings that will aid in the battle to save humankind is included, and artist Mark Nagata will render cross-sections of a kaiju to show the skeletal and muscular construction of these monsters. (These cross sections will be printed on vellum as a special feature to the book to recreate the anatomy drawings found in an encyclopedia.)

[RyanClark]

[william newell]

[mr.negativity]

[MekaGojira3k]

[gila-monster]

I'm pretty sure this is what that book is now:


Pretty interesting cover... although I wonder if Godzilla and friends are still included, what with copyrights/royalties etc to deal with.

[RyanClark]

[RyanClark]

The book was officially released yesterday, and I received notice last night Buy.com has sent mine, I'm hoping I'll have it by the end of the week. Looks like a good book!

[king_ghidorah]

Got mine today...not too bad...not too bad at all actually. There are alot of monsters left out but for a kid or anyone new to the genre it's a good buy...for everyone else there's some interesting pictures...

[canofhumdingers]

[king_ghidorah]

[RyanClark]

I got it in the mail today (from Buy.com, who I'm STILL waiting for Gamera The Giant Monster from!!). The book is very nice. I haven't read it yet but I've skimmed through it to check out the general contents. It gives biographies, as well as some large pictures/spreads of the most notable Toho monsters, Gamera and some other stuff. It reprints several of the cutaways that have been seen before, such as Gamera, Gyaos, and Gappa, though there's also a translation page. A lot of the second half appears to be original artwork including some original kaiju. I was actually surprised Guilala was nowhere to be seen in the book, I figured he'd get his own entry.

[gila-monster]

[mr.negativity]

From Fangoria:
[url=http://www.fangoria.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=932:editor-revisits-killer-kaiju-monsters&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=167]Editor revisits “KILLER KAIJU MONSTERSâ€

[jellydonut25]

[william newell]

[jellydonut25]

[gila-monster]

[TitanoGoji16]

I received Killer Kaiju Monsters in the mail today. I had ordered it for my birthday and was really looking forward to it. Now that I've read it, I must say, this is a strange little book. At its core, there's a really fun and interesting book here. But the finished product is... Weird. And not altogether satisfying.

First off, the book is deceptively short. It looks like it'll take a while to read the whole thing, but I actually read the entire book not long after taking it out of its box.

It starts off well, with an introduction chronicling the genre's origins, what the kaiju are metaphors are for, and the difference between kaiju, yokai and American monsters. Following the introduction is a tear-out page so you can make your own paper dinosaur plaything. Wait, what? Did I order Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film - Preschool Edition?

After that is a section called Kaiju Abilities, which lists some of the more noteworthy powers giant monsters often possess, such as flight, shapeshifting, burrowing underground and being radioactive. Bizarrely, energy projectiles (such as fire breath, heat rays, eye beams and lightning bolts) are nowhere on the list. Humorously, kaiju not dying when they're defeated, as well as enemy kaiju becoming allies, are listed as abilities.

Then came the main reason I was interested in the book, and also, the beginning of the book's problems: The kaiju bios (or as the book calls it, the Kaiju Dossier).

The main problem with the bios is that there are too few of them. I was under the impression that they made up a large portion of the book, when in actuality there are only ten: Godzilla, Anguirus, Mothra, Hedorah, King Ghidorah, Rodan, Megalon, Gigan, Minya and Gamera.

That's it. No King Kong, no Mechagodzilla, no Heisei or Millennium kaiju (or any non-Godzilla Toho kaiju), none of Gamera's foes, no Ultraman monsters and no random kaiju like Gappa, Guilala or Yongary. Now, obviously I wasn't expecting Vartanian to cover every single kaiju ever, but I was hoping for a little more variety than just nine Godzilla monsters and Gamera.

Aside from this, the bios have strange errors, omissions and inconsistencies throughout. In Hedorah's bio, it says "Origin: Irradiated Godzillasaurus from Sogell Island." Gigan's origin reads "Prehistoric turtle created by Atlantians." It says Anguirus hails from Seatopia and that both Megalon and Gamera are extraterrestrials. King Ghidorah's listed powers are the same as Godzilla's ("Atomic ray / Nuclear pulse / Super regeneration / Magnetic electricity force"). The power lists for Gigan and Megalon mention their abilities of teleportation and magnetic vortexes from the Pipeworks video games, which would be fine, except this isn't done for any of the other monsters.

Each kaiju has a filmography included, and these aren't exempt from errors, either. In Godzilla's, it even includes which kaiju appeared in which movies, but it fails to mention that Rodan, Zilla, Monster X and Keizer Ghidorah were in Godzilla Final Wars. It also omits Shockirus from Godzilla 1985, which normally would be reasonable, except that the filmography lists the giant lizard in King Kong vs. Godzilla. It also fails to mention that Ebirah, Kumonga and the Giant Condor were in Godzilla's Revenge or that Mecha-King Ghidorah was in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. In Megalon's filmography, his appearance in the Godzilla Island TV series is included. I was shocked to see such an obscure part of Godzilla's history acknowledged, but it's cool that Vartanian is being so thorough, right? Except that Godzilla Island isn't mentioned in the filmographies of any of the other kaiju that appeared in the series (not even Godzilla, oddly). Nor are Godzilla, Gigan and Ghidorah's appearances on Zone Fighter mentioned. And for some reason, Gamera doesn't even have a filmography.

On the plus side, though, the actual bios for the kaiju are accurate and each bio is accompanied by several nice pictures, both images from the movies and poster artwork (Godzilla's even includes a great close-up of the statue in front of Toho Studios). Included are a few that, amazingly, I'd never seen before.

Next are the Kaiju Cross Sections and while nothing is actually wrong with these, it again comes off as just weird. Included are great cutaways (by artist Shoji Ohtomo) of Telesdon, Gamera, Gappa, Gyaos, Bullton, Dodongo... and that's it. That's... random. That can't have been all of them. You're telling me Ohtomo never made any cutaways of Godzilla or Rodan or any Toho kaiju (Before anyone says anything: I know he did)?

Following immediately after this is a similar yet much more detailed (multi-page) cutaway of the monster Eyezon, apparently a fan creation of artist Mark Nagata, who also drew Eyezon's cutaways. There's one neat, full-page color piece of artwork featuring Eyezon zapping a tank with an eye beam, but really, this whole Eyezon thing just reeks of needing to pad the book out.

(Doing a quick Google image search, there seem to be toys of Eyezon, so he's apparently a little higher than "fan monster." But still, why the hell would we want a cutaway of Eyezon instead of, say, Godzilla?)

Next is a section on kaiju vinyl figures, which starts off revolving around Ultraman figures, but quickly starts featuring figures of monsters that I'm not even sure if they exist outside of their toyline.



(Seriously, does anyone know what the hell this thing is?)

The last 30-ish pages of the book revolve around various art styles that feature all sorts of kaiju, except they're not actually any famous ones (or at least ones that I recognize, correct me if I'm wrong).

For me, the book ends with the Kaiju Cross Sections... uh, section (before the Eyezon cutaways begin). The entire last half of the book feels like crap that was thrown in because someone thought the book was too short or something. And then there are the various errors throughout the Kaiju Dossier section. What's sad is that none of them seem to be mistakes made out of ignorance or not caring, but more like Vartanian got a little too trigger happy with the copy-and-pasting. As I said at the start of this review, there's a great book in here somewhere. But it feels like Vartanian wrote a really good first draft and meant to go back and finish it, but forgot to do it in time for publication. Even with what we got, a little more fine-tuning and proofreading would've gone a long way. Is it the worst book ever? Far from it. But the various errors in the Kaiju Dossier, combined with the puny number of monster bios as well as the entire second half of the book being absolutely uninteresting, I'm afraid I can't really give Killer Kaiju Monsters: Strange Beasts of Japanese Film anything higher than a B, and that's being generous.

[MouthForWar]

[TitanoGoji16]

[jellydonut25]