Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (spoilers)

[lhb412]

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

^Sherlock is a series of TV movies, as is Columbo.

The Godzilla anime is a miniseries: single story split into movie length episodes. Of course, you could say the same for The Lord of the Rings (based on what was intended as a single book but split into three volumes), but since the individual episodes were so heavily promoted by themselves, coupled with their releases spaced a year apart, I'll concede their moviedom. Meanwhile, the Star Wars film's borrow the term 'episode' from serials, but are definitely movies and not episodes.

[eabaker]

[lhb412]

^ You don't wanna go down this rabitt hole with me.

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

^ I feel (and that's all it really is: a feeling) that if it wasn't always intended as a series to be presented in three chunks (likely intended to be released all at once) then it was to be a more traditional 13 or 10 episode series that was dramatically restructured when the mandate for three movies was implemented.

[klen7]

I know Polygon has a reputation for doing things fast and cheap, but it's hard for me to picture restructuring something as involved as animation

[lhb412]

^Oh, no. This change would have had to have happened in the writing or early planning stage. Just my feeling.

[canofhumdingers]

I finally had time to watch this last night. Like the first one, I watched the English dub (I just can’t see the point of watching animation subtitled...). I guess this was a little better than the first one, kinda? I dunno. I don’t hate either movie so far, but I don’t have much praise for them either.

I think I can best sum them up as this: there’s lots of really neat ideas that I think would make for great Godzilla movies, but the execution here is just terrible. The animation is crappy, the pacing is atrocious, and the unfathomable amounts of mind numbing expository dialogue just about kill these things.

I mean, really, I do quite like the premise of and events within each film quite a lot. All of the ideas from going 20,000 years into the future, the two alien races helping humans, Godzilla growing that entire time, the earth and all living things adapting to live with Godzilla, the Mothra people, mechagodzilla city, nano metal, etc. etc. It’s all really cool in theory and yet they manage to make it SOOOOOOO boring!

I was a bit frustrated that they had all this mechagodzilla build up and then the city DIDNT produce a surprise rebuilt mechagodzilla to combat Godzilla when the original plan failed. But that’s small potatoes compared to the real problems of this series.

I’ll watch the final installment to see how things turn out (and maybe actually see some monster fights? Maybe?) but I can’t see myself revisiting these films often, if at all.

[jellydonut25]

I can pretty confidently say I'll never watch these again. I'd have to be compensated. Not kidding.

[eabaker]

[canofhumdingers]

[GFan]

I'm been so excited for Godzilla: King of the Monsters since the trailer dropped I keep forgetting about how disappointing the Godzilla anime films were.

I wonder how they'll portray King Ghidorah. This Godzilla is easily the least expressive so we'll probably end up with some good ole beam wars (and plenty of coma-inducing talking scenes).

[lhb412]

[Benjamin Haines]

I've watched Planet of the Monsters four or five times since January. I like how it indicated that the Bilusaludo were based on the aliens from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, with their home planet having been swallowed by a black hole and the fact that their anti-Godzilla strategy was to create Mechagodzilla. I rewatched City on the Edge of Battle and I realized something else they have in common. The aliens in Terror of Mechagodzilla turn Katsura into a cyborg and, based on Dr. Mafune's own suggestion, they install the Mechagodzilla control system inside her. The Bilusaludo take that concept to another level by letting the nanometal of Mechagodzilla City absorb their bodies in an effort to defeat Godzilla.

When I had only seen PotM, I thought the Exif would turn out to be a lot like the Xians and Xilians before them. I figured that the Exif were secretly responsible for Earth's monster outbreak and they were deceiving humanity with promises of salvation to mask their plan of conquest. After CotEoB, now I think that the truth about the Exif might be much different. Just as his namesake Mephistopheles serves the Devil, maybe Metphies and the Exif are bound to serve Ghidorah. Their home planet was destroyed by Ghidorah tens of thousands of years ago and the Exif have been wandering the cosmos ever since, bearing witness to the destruction of countless other worlds by monsters. Maybe this version of Ghidorah is an otherworldly demon capable of communicating mentally/spiritually with other beings. Maybe the Exif who agreed to serve Ghidorah were spared while the rest of their world was destroyed, sending the survivors on an endless mission to find other populated planets and summon Ghidorah to them. That could be why they're so adamant about converting people to their religion, if their god actually is Ghidorah and he only spares those who serve him. The Exif might resent this indentured existence and could have been secretly trying to lure Ghidorah to planets that have giant monsters hoping they might defeat him. Maybe they saw in Godzilla their first real chance of bringing an end to Ghidorah's reign. That could be why the Exif joined humanity on their excursion into space in the first place. With their Gemmatron calculation system, their plan could have been to let Godzilla grow unchallenged for 20,000 years in a span of just 20 years from their perspective. Now they're back on Earth and Godzilla is bigger than ever, and Metphies used Bilusaludo technology to repair that mysterious amulet. He even whispered Ghidorah's name to Haruo after admitting that they avoid speaking his name because it's a bad omen and words have power. Maybe the Exif are ready to bring Ghidorah to Earth now in the hope that Godzilla will be the one who finally stops him and sets them free.

[lhb412]

^ Ooh, I like that theory.

Nice catch making the Terror of Mechagodzilla connection. The anime is stylistically very distinct from anything we've seen before in the genre, yet it is certainly pulling from very deep Godzilla lore.

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

[canofhumdingers]

Klen, that’s an eloquently succinct summation of the anime’s many shortcomings.

[eabaker]

[KaiserGhidorah]

Finally watched this last night.....the movie is abysmal. I've been totally underwhelmed by both films and honestly could care less about the third.

[Dai]

[mr.negativity]

They should have called the movie .

[tbeasley]