I would like to say that things are different now, that my survival is an obvious sign of my personal recovery, and that Godzilla in Hell and Higuchi's latest revival attempt are all signs that Godzilla's not going down without a fight, and there's still some hope left. These are the things I would like to believe, even though I know they aren't true. Watching gino 2 in that theater induced a severe amount of cognitive dissonance in me, it didn't even feel real, like I dreamed the whole thing. I woke up later the next day with an enormous hangover before finished my Day 7 post, taking a long hot shower, and just... I just didn't... do anything.
I was in denial, I eventually realized, because of how surreal the whole experience was, and how alien the concept of a world and a life without Godzilla is to me. My brain refused to accept what had happened, and so I wrapped myself in a cocoon of the past, rediscovering parts of Godzilla's story that had gone untold in English with surprisingly very little effort, writing articles about immense sweeping chronological intra-continuities, and even attempting to write an encyclopedia of every Toho monster myself, which hit a snag due to my limited resources.
My review of gino 2 brought out more hate in me than I had experienced in some time. I figured out, eventually, that I was kind of starting to turn into a monster. My focus on Godzilla's past took me to reading about the world wars (and I'm including the Cold War in that, of course), and from there I became re-acquainted with the very hard learned lessons of true modernism, the foundations of the society we live in today, which have their roots in the consequences of WWII, whose story Godzilla exists to tell. I kept reading, and I kept writing, and otherwise tried to carry on as usual, but I became more and more enraged at the violation of all the principals that made us modern people that I'd see every day.
I figured, then, that I had three options: write, kill, or die. I decided that the feelings that were stirring in me were useful, and I now knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, a break from the stasis of the past few years. In addition to this, killing one bigot, or Garth Edwards, would only result in me offing myself immediately after because there's nothing else really after that, and what difference will that really make? None, I thought, so it was both pointless and easily the most difficult option. And of course, with so many ideas, I didn't want to go yet, I feel like I still have things I need to do. So the choice became very clear.
But of course my changing attitude doesn't reflect changing circumstances. I'm still in the same situation I was last year, and in fact am even a little worse off. Despite having found goals, I didn't gain any extra time or resources. My hand will start blinking in two and a half years, and by then it will be far too late for me to start having a life of my own. There may still be a little hope now, but what I know that I definitely have is two and a half years. That's enough time for me to write what I want to write and get it out there. If nothing changes by time of Carousel and my "renewal," then at the very least I will have still finished something important to me. This is now what I live for, to record my thoughts about the things I care about, whether or not it matters to anyone else. It's all I have left now, but it gives me purpose and has kept me alive for a year now after Godzilla's death.
And what of Godzilla? Will he truly rise from the grave once again? Or is it for real this time? Realistically speaking, there is probably a fairly good chance that Godzilla can continue unhindered in some form under the radar, in much the same way "classic Transformers" still maintains a presence in our culture through a combination of throw-back merchandising such as comic books reviving old storylines, reissues of old toys, and convention booths catering to "older" fans. But will he ever be the same again? I can't say. Again, I want to believe everything will be fine, but in many ways I feel like the damage is already irreparable and not enough people are actively working to fix the problems. I attempted to try and spread the word about the Deathiversary traditions to various Godzilla forums, but after only the first two became filled with such an immense feeling of sadness, anger, and futility that I quickly remembered why I had this exact same ritual last year: because no one cares about Godzilla anymore, they just want to buy more products.
My theme this year will be attempting optimism. I want to try and look forward to the future, instead of dwelling on the tragedies of the past, but without forgetting why I'm doing this in the first place. This year I want to focus on not finality, but how I've survived over this past year, and how Godzilla hasn't quite given up yet, and neither should I. Consider this a prequel to Godzilla in Hell, call it Godzilla in the Dark Wood or Godzilla Crosses Acheron if you will, with Godzilla's contemplation over all the events of his life that led him here to this point, before he subsequently refuses to rest in peace and tears Hell a new asshole.
1. 1954 - ゴジラ • Godzilla
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - Any scene with the hand puppets
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
2 Drinks - When stop motion effects are used
For Godzilla I'll be drinking "Outer Darkness," which the label tells me is a "Russian-style Imperial Stout" but I will tell you is an extremely dark and powerful "beer" (can it still be called that at this point?) with that kind of kick-you-in-the-ass you want from something this dark and the alcohol to match: 10.5% ABV. It's fantastic.
So let's talk about Godzilla. Here are some things: the song played at the Odo Island ceremony sounds awfully familiar... isn't that the same song played at the Okinawan ceremony from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla? Also, how great is that jump cut when Emiko is getting up from the table? Here's something that I finally just caught: when Hagiwara is grilling Serizawa from information, he mentions rumors of him working with German associates, which Serizawa denies, and is probably just a ruse to get him to say something. Hagiwara was accusing a Japanese WWII veteran of fraternizing with Nazis in post-war Japan. Woah.
So recently human lead Akira Takarada has been something of a "face" of Godzilla. Actually, most of the players from the 50's and 60's aren't afraid to use or refer back to Godzilla for their own purposes and certainly enjoy the association, but Takarada seems to be attracting special attention as he makes the rounds at conventions in the west. That he speaks English is probably a factor. This is, on the one hand, kind of cool, especially when he pops up in tuuurrrrible fan films, but the other side to the story is that he's doing this all in the wake of gino 2, and indeed seems to be deep in hollywood's pockets. What's more, his association with gino 2 is based on a lie, as his supposed role, which was nothing more than a cameo, never even happened. Sure, Takarada walks around now like pokey mccoolguy, but where was he in that dark theater at the edge of the world? I don't know about this "Mr. One-Shot" guy... I just don't know.
When Emiko and Ogata are on their way to Odo Island on the boat, I got a few flashbacks of Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll on the Venture. Of course, the difference being they're actually having a serious conversation and not just fast-talking and flirting clumsily, and speaking of the romance sub-plot going on here, that's another thing, it barely is there at all. So in Kayama's story Emiko was just engaged to Ogata and Serizawa was their close friend, and the love triangle thing was added to put more at stake and make the whole thing more dramatic. But the thing is, it's clear that all of the characters, including Dr. Yamane and Dr. Serizawa, already know what's happening, and all just sort of waiting for the two to eventually get over their nerves and go public. I guess you could liken it to having a friend who's "in the closet" as they like to say, when a non-heterosexual person pretends otherwise because of various perceived or real prejudice, but who's close friends obviously know better, but there's this kinda just "let's not mention it and act like we don't know" sort of thing. The mild tension that is there does make things a little more bittersweet when Serizawa tells the two to be happy together, that's true, but for the most part at this stage in Emiko and Ogata's relationship this isn't a revelation and it honestly wouldn't change any tangible details of the story if it was removed. What I'm saying is that even though this dimension was added to the story to give the relationships a little more weight, there's no change in the actual story, and watching the film this time I often found myself thinking about how little of a difference this change made to the script.
When the Odo Island elder is chastised by the young for bringing up Godzilla, he replies "what do you know about the old days?" Now I of course realize that the United States isn't the only country in the universe, but there's something of an epidemic of stupidity on the rise in this supposedly first world country, and it alarms me greatly. You might well hear, if that question is asked of the youth of the U.S., that Abraham Lincoln was the first president, or that New Zealand is the country to the north of Australia, or that "Gojira" is a bastardization of the American monster Godzilla's name (not joking), or that a screenshot from Gamera the Brave is a photograph from 1892 (!) of a giant cryptid turtle discovered in the Amazon. These are the things the youth of today actually thinks, none of those are fabricated, they're all documented, too. When I was growing up I heard the phrase "those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it" so much it became kind of meaningless and corny, but of course the reason that was pushed into my head so hard was because it's true. The whole reason our species has computers and video games and all this other stupid bullshit is because over time our learning has increased exponentially as we take the lessons previous generations have prepared and we build from that. More and more it seems like we're headed in a direction of total cultural and educational dilapidation - which should be the opposite of true as the internet is supposed to allow us unfettered access to the records of the past - and the attitude that sweeping Godzilla under the rug and pretending he never existed and that only hollywood gets the final say is really only a small part of this phenomenon.
2. 1955 - ゴジラの逆襲 • Godzilla Raids Again
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - Any scene with the hand puppets
1 Drink - When the plot takes a pointless detour that could have been avoided with a second draft
1 Drink - When monsters suddenly move twice as fast
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
2 Drinks - When stop motion effects are used
I'm drinking the same thing, only not as much. I actually had to stop (well, severely cut down) in the middle of Godzilla's second attack on Tokyo because the combination of puppets + atomic ray + people dying was too much, and I was concerned the bottle would only last me one movie (it's a big bottle). So, this time I'll just keep it up until I run out, which probably won't take long.
When Gigantis, the Fire Monster was first released in the United States, アンギラス (AnGiRaSu) was converted to "Angurus" which is dumb, there's no "ur" in the name anywhere. Meanwhile, there seems to be some insistence that the monster's name was "Anzilla," I've seen this on Japanese Wikipedia as well as hearing it used by confused casual fans since as early as '95, but I've never once seen any sort of media that actually uses this name. "Angurus" ended up being something like a counterpart to "Gigantis" as the monster's real name, Angilas, became widespread in the dubs and press releases and... you know, is actually the monster's name. At some point in the late 90's the equally nonsensical name "Anguirus" started popping up everywhere. Over time the name has set a precedent for translating "gi" as "gui," which, again, doesn't make any sense because they sound nothing alike, but at least it's consistent. It wasn't until about '07 or '08 when I started using "Anguirus" myself, and that was only once I realized that this is actually the legally trademarked name, so it's technically the monster's name. Still, it was officially Angilas for so long that it's a hard habit to drop, although as of late I've only been using "Angilas" intentionally in context of the idea and concept of the creature itself rather than the identity or the proper noun referring to the individual. It's a pretty subtle and nitpicky thing, but if "Angilas" doesn't appear on this webzone then I feel like I'm being dishonest somehow.
Hey, so this story takes place after Godzilla, and in winter, so probably like January, right? Okay, so the Lucky Dragon #5 incident and the fish scare started in March, and Godzilla, the giant radioactive monster, was killed in Tokyo Bay by a super weapon no living person understands, in late summer or early fall, right? So how is this little fishery still open? I mean, idunno, I supposed with the two branches being in Kansai and Hokkaido they could have just not been affected by any of this, but as we're introduced to our happy-go-lucky fish-spotters I can't help but think about all the people who are still probably freaking the fuck out about radioactive fish.
Shigeru Kayama turned out a story in late December, and later (probably January) the screenplay was written. Either there was only one draft and a final, or the final is just the first draft with a bunch of alterations but never compiled into it's own beast, and three months later the movie was out the door. Naturally the story is very rusty and in many places seems long winded or poorly paced or has pointless scenes and plot points. The most obvious of these is that the battle between Godzilla and Anguirus which SHOULD be the climax and in any other Godzilla movie it would be, is instead the end of the second act and is just an "episode." Of course as a feature length movie this doesn't work because after the battle ends the tension is relieved and there's nothing to hold the audience's attention anymore. Kayama wanted to make sure not to kill Godzilla this time, but he wasn't under any obligation to find a permanent or semi-permanent solution in the first place, and having the story end with ending their fight with a... idunno, undersea volcano or something, would have done the job just as well. Meanwhile, the rest of the problems stem from this insistence of both having Godzilla appear in Osaka and be buried under the ice. Having the Osaka/Hokkaido location switch pretty hamfisted, as it takes the theme of perseverance in the face of disaster (rebuilding the Osaka branch) and throws it out the window. Since Tsukioka and Tajima's relationship is established, if you need something to take our protagonists to the frozen north, why can't the just volunteer? Then there's the scene where they fly back to regroup after Kobayashi's death which is 100% pointless even in the finished version of the film. The whole story just feels like a first draft still, and that's because it is.
Did you ever notice how uncomfortable Hidemi is around Tajima? If she's been engaged for so long you'd think maybe she knows a few of her husbands friends or maybe the fact that he was in the air force at one point, but all of this information leaves her with a really... upset look on her face. Her consternation as they joke around about the engagement makes her cringe even more, and its only remedied when Kobayashi drops by and she finally has someone to talk to. It's weird. Also, who the hell is that picture supposed to be of? I used to assume that it was the other radio operator from the opening sequence, but I guess I just kind of assumed the two groups of two friends were like a unit? But every time I've watched the film in recent memory, all I see is Hidemi. There's no fucking way Kobayashi would try to steal his best friend's fiance, but it does put all of that talk about his fruitless "bride searches" into perspective, and gives his death a little more "oomph." But maybe all Asian people just look the same... or it's some mystery character we never actually meet in the movie?Also in this film is the definitive answer to what it is girls want. Just to recap:
1. Lots of things
2. Handobagu
3. Watch (which is kind of expensive)
4. Stockings
...sounds about right. Especially handobagu. Bitches love handobagu.
1. 1956 - Godzilla, King of the Monsters • 怪獣王ゴジラ
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - Any scene with the hand puppets
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Raymond Burr talks to a character from a different movie
2 Drinks - When stop motion effects are used
This round I'm drinking root beer, because there are four more movies to get through today and I already took a nap earlier, so drinking a tub of dark beer isn't going to help any. Also I gotta pace myself some to avoid a gnarly hangover, all the rest. In addition, I toked up a little before hand, making this technically the first time I've seen a Godzilla movie high, except not really because it was barely anything. Also, this is kind of a shitty movie to watch while high anyhow, Hedorah is a much better idea.
The transition from Imperial to post-war Japan didn't occur overnight, and as even handed as the occupation was on the surface, it's not like the Americans were infallible or anything. I mean there was a ton of raping going on. The U.S. and Japan had been close for most of the 20th century during the Rising Sun's meteoric rise, and even after they picked the wrong side in WWII no one on either side was particularly eager to attack each other. Then you have your Pearl Harbor, which is just embarrassing for everyone involved. your Japanese-American internment camps, the Bomb, the occupation, Lucky Dragon #5, etc. They're not enemies, especially not the kind of ideological opposites you see in grudges between theocracies or might-as-well-be-theocracies-since-they're-so-maniacal-about-its, but circumstances have put the two nations at odds over and over again despite the best efforts of each to maintain peace with each other. In 1956 the post-war Japan the world is so enamored with was still in its infancy, and an entire generation of Americans had grown to despise the "Japs." Yet Godzilla was here now, and his message was an international one, and this seems to be something the creators of the Americanization of Godzilla were aware of. Godzilla was handled with respect, and edited in such a manner to best present its case to an audience of potentially unsympathetic idiots. Yet even then, the outrage over the Lucky Dragon made waves even in the U.S., and there were those who were very vocal about their solidarity with the Japanese people. Although Gigantis would later portray Japan as a "small nation" of rice farmers and fishermen, no one is talking down to anyone in King of the Monsters.
I've heard so many things from so many different sources with totally opposite ideas about the relationship between the two countries over the years, that I can't think the truth is just one way or the other. Instead I think, looking back at the path history took, King of the Monsters was something like a turning point that just happened to turn extremely slowly. There were those that moved forwards and those that didn't, which sounds remarkably like every other point in history, the world is a complicated place and there's all sorts of people. Another thing to consider is that a large part of my understanding of this topic comes from the lens I view it through most of the time - Godzilla - and so to me the long arc looks greyish in the 50's, in the black during the 60's, in the red in the 70's, and then once the 80's came around post-war Japan was such an indispensable part of world mythology that anti-Japanese attitudes simply wouldn't make any sense. It's also worth mentioning that I, probably like a lot of professional historians I've seen, have a bit of a habit of white-washing the opposing viewpoint when there's ample evidence to suggest there was vocal support for history's winning side. So maybe I'm lying to myself and King of the Monsters was actually released to an audience that still refused to eat sauerkraut, but from what I've heard, this movie really does seem to be an interesting little time capsule of a time when the relationship between Japan and the U.S. were in a major transitional phase, and there might be a lot to learn from that. Maybe. Or it's just a dumb Raymond Burr movie.
The timeline is hyper-condensed. Steve Martin (excuuuuuuuuse me) says the while film takes place over a "few days" and if you follow along with him he seems to be telling the audience that the giant electrical fence surrounding the entire Tokyo Bay was built within a single day, just like Rome. Something interesting though is that they cut around/don't subtitle the scene where the date the Eiko-Maru sank, meaning it may not be August at all like in the original and "Cozzilla," and could even be in April, at the time of this film's release. Another bit of evidence potentially supporting this is that the Eiko-Maru is sunk not just while Martin is on the plane, but the plane is suspected to have flown directly over the ship while it sank, which is why the customs officers ask the passengers if they saw anything. In this first day we can see the sun outside when Martin arrives in Japan, meaning the Eiko-Maru wasn't sunk in the evening, and if that detail was changed then all the chronology is suspect as well. I still think it's strange that the towers were built in a day. I mean they never mentioned how long it took in the original movie because they took that time out as a plot point, so there's not really a reason to specify it, but they never say it was built in a day. Then again, after this we'll see some incredible contraptions built under very tight time schedules, including a number of ingenious monster traps that never work.
3. 1962 - キングコング対ゴジラ • King Kong vs. Godzilla
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general
1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - Whenever Mr. Tako gets unreasonably upset about Godzilla
1 Drink - King Kong pounds his chest
1 Drink - When something happens that's so funny it's probably cut out of the Americanization
2 Drinks - When stop motion effects are used
A combination of me having to work on this post at the same time as watching the movies and me trying to avoid becoming drowsy by drinking too much all at once got me to basically ignoring all the drinking game stuff for now, and by now I mean the rest of the night. This might end up becoming a pattern where I only play with the first couple of films each day, but the rules I drew up for this film are still presented here for posterity. And prosperity. And... posthumously?
King Kong vs. Godzilla is of course a comedy, somewhat comparable to the Abbott and Costello Meets... type of shows, where the monster stuff is still mostly played straight (at least at first) with the human characters being totally ridiculous, although by the end of the film this is somewhat reversed where the humans are taking the threat the monsters pose seriously while Godzilla and King Kong just sort of goof around and have this weird slapstick fight. Even Mr. Taco, everyone's favroite Japanese Groucho impersonator seems willing to turn over a new leaf.
But how funny is this movie really? Of course lots of folks have varying senses of humor and we don't all laugh at the same thing. The kind of comedy I enjoy, just for reference, is typically the stuff that makes me laugh. If that sounds like a pointless statement, read on. See, here's a pretty shocking thing that might confuse some folks: laughing is involuntary. It isn't up to you when you laugh, in order to keep a straight face through something funny, you really have to, like, just put in the hours and work at it. You need to be a professional void of happiness, you can't just waltz into a Tim & Eric episode expecting to be deadfaced the whole time without a little practice, you need to really be a soulless, empty husk. Over time, as we adjust to things that we hear repeatedly, and all the other effects of aging, the things that are going to make us laugh will change subtly, or maybe not so subtly, and most well-adjusted people will find that the things they thought were hilarious as children (I like hippo hop!), in particular, haven't aged well. Sometimes it comes full circle and extremely shallow and obvious jokes become funny again just by the virtue of the absurdity of it. Scott Aukerman's jokes are terrible but that's why he's so damn funny, for instance. My "taste" in comedy, therefore, is simply that I don't have any pretensions about what I'm willing to laugh about, and if I'm not laughing it's not because I'm trying to express my disapproval, it's because I saw it coming or it didn't work or maybe I just don't get it. Sure, there's kinds of humor I find funnier than others, and there's certain styles I gravitate towards, but at the end of the day... you know, "motherfuckers wanna laugh."
King Kong vs. Godzilla may not be the funniest movie on Earth, it certainly can't hold a candle to things like Step-Brothers or any of those other Will Ferrel/John C. Reily joints, but it's successful because you don't see it coming. While the 60's Godzilla movies, especially these first three, all have their moments, KKvsG is really good at slipping things in when you're not expecting much. The fact that Tadao Takashima was later incorporated into the recurring cast of these films and one time even played a professor (!) shows how well he slips in unnoticed as a human lead in a Godzilla movie, when he's secretly an undercover salaryman comedy spy. Using subtle eccentricities they're able to push forward completely ridiculous ideas as if they were serious characterizations, the end result of which is when Sakurai's exaggerated, melodramatic, and fucking stupid reaction to Kong holding Fumi which is intentionally mimicking the Faro Islander's dance suddenly makes a lightbulb come on and "animal tranquilizers" (not even the Soma Berries specifically) come up as a solution which apparently no one has thought of yet, and everyone just moves on with the plan without a word on how contrived and silly this whole situation is. The BEST sequence of the entire film, though, is the one with the smoking. The islanders are juuuuuust stupid enough to be ridiculous without it being immediately apparent that they're just a joke, and their presentation is not too far out of line with a "serious" native culture of a mysterious island. This allows them to operate normally while they bring the explorers to the chief for questioning, and while they give their gifts and cause the natives to look like confused monkeys, the absurdity builds up steadily until, at last, we hit a genuine punchline that could only be approached by allowing the ridiculousness of the film to proceed unhindered by logic, getting shit past the "comedar," while at the same time restating the theme of the film: two advertising executives hand a native child who has absolutely no conception of what these strangers are bringing to his island, a cigarette.
That theme of course is rampant commercialism, you know, that thing that killed Godzilla? There are plenty of parallels between Mr. Taco and hollywood. Look at the fire in his eyes whenever Godzilla is even mentioned. His whole goal throughout the entire film is to be bigger than Godzilla, he wants his holdings to get more attention regardless of their value or even what it is that his holdings are. When he lucks into "possession" of a monster of his own, his ambition suddenly changes to getting Kong to wrestle with Godzilla. Now it's no longer a popularity contest, he wants to physically best Godzilla with his own monster. And what monster is Mr. Taco using to take down Godzilla? King Kong. An American monster. Coincidence? Of course not. Or do you also believe it's a coincidence that pizza is cut into triangles, the same shape used in the symbol of the all-seeing eye? Godzilla is the pizza, the illuminati, and Mr. Taco is the reptile men from the Hollow Earth. Wake up, the government is lying to you.
4. 1964 - モスラ対ゴジラ • Mothra vs. Godzilla
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general 1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
2 Drinks - When stop motion effects are used
Same drill, not drinking this time either, more for tomorrow. I couldn't think of anything to say about Mothra that I thought I hadn't covered already last year, although I suppose I've already retread a fair amount of ground. But in the interest of keeping these journal entries short so I have more time for drinking and watching movies, I'm trying to limit this to just a few unique thoughts per entry.
Hiroshi Koizumi is cool and I love him. In the commentary for Gigantis, the Fire Monster Steve Ryfle mentions that in interviews Koizumi has stated he feels as though he dropped the ball on Toho's monster, sci-fi, and fantasy films. He feels like he was given easy parts and he should have done more with them, to which Ryfle, after seeing him in a melodrama, agrees. I'd like to present a counter argument, with two main points, the first being that Koizumi is, like a great many others, especially artistic types, his own harshest critic. Jun Fukuda was famously hard on himself and truly believed that his legacy with the Godzilla series was that he ruined it, and his attitude towards Zone Fighter was even worse, he didn't even like to talk about it at all. But that's ridiculous, in the context the 70's Godzilla films were made they were fantastic, the problems that led to the 70's collapse of the film industry were bigger than one monster and were totally out of any of the crew's hands. Also, he directed both Gigan and Mechagodzilla, how in the hell are those considered "bad" movies by any stretch of the imagination? So Koizumi isn't the only one who's too hard on himself. Second, despite the typical "blandness" of his characters, they have more personality than meets the eye. See, Koizumi ended up becoming a go-to professor type when they wanted a younger character who could join up with the main ensemble cast. The ingenue (Yuriko Hoshi) is the young, brash, outspoken one who has a good heart but little sense. The "hot-headed cool guy" (Akira Takarada/Yosuke Natsuki) keeps Hoshi grounded while himself having his motives questioned by her, and he typically is there to finish what Hoshi starts when she can't do it herself.
In contrast to this, Koizumi (Miura/Murai/who are we kidding it's the same character) appears to have nothing other to do than echo the other's concerns and deposit exposition when one plot thread has exhausted itself. He's also an outsider, and his introduction into the story comes from a totally different angle which the other characters just kind of bumble into, and because of this he appears to be bland because he doesn't really have much to do. But another factor that's being overlooked here is that a professor character isn't out of place being polite and direct, he says what he needs to say without any overlaying attitude or inexperience to muddle his thoughts, so the reason he looks like an exposition button is because he's not busy fucking around being a whimsical goofball like Yuriko Hoshi. It's an artifact. Now while I don't think it's reasonable to accuse Professor Chujo of being "bland," in defense of Miura/Murai there's a really interesting moment that I think is being missed or ignored. While Takarada is whining about what to do about the egg, Koizumi makes a comment about having his own thoughts on how to deal with Kumayama, but unfortunately can't act on them for legal and ethical reasons. He, uh... that's a "bland professor" way of saying he wants to be the shit out of Kumayama, guys. Koizumi's characters are reserved but they're still people, and the fact that we usually only see this in a subtle way is a testament to Koizumi's ability to show emotion in a character without breaking their characterization. A lesser actor would have played this up. Probably. Look guys, Hiroshi Koizumi is awesome, okay?
The conversation the characters were having was one of many about the same problem: that policy over people as an infrastructure simply doesn't work. This is a key part of Honda's diagnosis of society, he wants to believe that people are innately good and that major threats will bring us together, but in order to work this kind of political bureaucracy needs to be bypassed. When things become lost in papers and forms and the obvious contrast between good and evil becomes obscured by red tape and lawyers, innocent people die and wars are started. It sounds utterly fantastic that any reasonable human being could taunt someone with "does Mothra have the power of attorney?" but Kumayama actually says this. Giant monsters don't need lawyers, you dip shit, they're not challenging you to a fucking custody dispute, they're telling you if you don't wake the fuck up Mothra is going to hatch and start tearing your entire complex to fucking pieces you incredible dipshit. Everything you own, all of your Earthly treasures are in mortal danger and you treat it like a fucking joke, like the direct threat of an unstoppable monster isn't as big of a deal as a contract. Policy over people transforms reality, it makes the real world into a set of arbitrary artificial constructs and the people who live in this nightmare world no longer have the ability to understand the difference between a contract and an immediate life-threatening disaster that's endangering millions of people. Throughout Honda's films we see a gradual transition of politicians being irrational and argumentative to throwing away pretensions when very real threats to all of Earth emerge, but lawyers and businessm'n are always the bad guys. It makes it seem as though the root of all evil is greed, since politicians and businessm'n deal with the same devil but businessm'n do it for completely selfish reasons, but Mothra vs. Godzilla makes it clear that, at least in Sekizawa's eyes, the infrastructure itself is highly flawed and no permanent path to world peace can exist so long as it does so behind the idea that Godzilla needs legal representation in order to destroy things.
5. 1964 - 三大怪獣 地球最大の決戦 • Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster
1 Drink - In case any chemical, geological, meteorological, or psychical, other than physical, sign of G's action is confirmed
2 Drinks - In case any physical sign of G's action such as voice and motion is confirmed
3 Drinks - In case G appears
4 Drinks - In case G's landing on any specific coast of Japan is positive
1 Drink - Godzilla uses his Atomic Ray
1 Drink - When the Godzilla Theme plays
1 Drink - During a conference scene
1 Drink - When direct casualties of monster attacks are shown
1 Drink - Appearance or arrival onto a mysterious or monster inhabited island
1 Drink - If Godzilla can't be located or reappears in a totally different place
1 Drink - When a Kenji Sahara character appears
1 Drink - Akihiko Hirata plays a scientist
1 Drink - Hiroshi Koizumi plays a scientist
1 Drink - Jun Tazaki plays an authority figure
2 Drinks - Jun Tazaki plays a general 1 Drink - If a fight ends with either the losers running away or the monsters falling off a cliff into the water
1 Drink - When Godzilla wins
1 Drink - Gratuitous English
1 Drink - If Godzilla stops taking a fight seriously
1 Drink - Godzilla uses terrible language
1 Drink - King Ghidorah appears out of a burst of flame
1 Drink - Venusian doomsaying
1 Drink - If the Mothra fairies sing her theme song
2 Drinks - If the Mothra fairies sing a different song
That drinking game thing is starting to puff up, maybe it's getting angry that I'm not playing it right now? So for Ghidorah this year my thoughts began to turn to following Godzilla's path and reputation, as it did last year, but this year the result of it was more about noting how the addition of other monsters is perceived over time. Now I'm not watching Rodan or any of the other non-Godzilla Tohoverse flicks of course so the impression I'm getting is going to be skewed from that, but here's some observations I've made:
Godzilla is always the priority. This just makes sense, as he was the first of his kind, and has consistently shown himself to be a bigger threat, and is apparently unkillable. When Anguirus was discovered it sounded sort of like he was an afterthought but it's more like people are more justifiably shocked that Godzilla can still exist, and if there's two then there could be three, etc. But the appearance of a second unique monster is treated as a serious concern with the acknowledgement that we don't really have any experience with Anguirus yet so we don't quite know how it stacks up. Anguirus is defeated by Godzilla and from here on out it's obvious who the bigger threat is. King Kong basically comes out of nowhere but he does so in a world that's already familiar with and now regularly deals with giant monsters. Kong is also treated as a serious concern... when he arrives on land, but before then the Japanese attitude when confronting Tako about smuggling in another giant monster to Japan is really lax, almost like... like they were in a comedy or something. With the knowledge that putting Godzilla in a room with another monster seems to solve both problems, the match-up is made (but they don't pay royalties to Mr. Tako who, as you'll recall, bought that idea from one of his employees), and by the end of the film I'm starting to see a trend here, and I think that by 1962 the JSDF's standard strategy for any subsequent monster attacks is to get the two geographically closest monsters and alter their path to get them to fight each other. Conventional weapons are a means to an end, but the end itself is always going to have to involve another monster, and if there's just one, and that one is Godzilla, then they might be fucked. The plan to use Mothra, although coming from a newspaper writer, would have inevitably come from someone in the military sooner or later, especially once the egg had hatched.
So in Ghidorah we see at first the nigh-simultaneous reappearance of Godzilla and Rodan. Circumstances were such that both would have a role to play in a greater drama, but let's say for a minute King Ghidorah never showed up. What I've seen over the past three movies indicates that if it weren't for KG, this would be Rodan vs. Godzilla and would have concluded shortly after the fight between the two that happens in the film, with Rodan knocking Godzilla off a cliff into the water and the two going their own ways. In fact, if we weren't shown implicitly that Godzilla was following Rodan, I'd suspect the JSDF actually had a hand in getting the two monster's paths to intersect. Furthermore, based on the observations I made about the second Godzilla's development as a character last year, noting his general ambivalence towards humanity rather than hatred and his interactions with other monsters after Anguirus to be how shall we say "less than hostile," I would even go so far as to draw out the timeline of this alternate reality to a logical conclusion of the monster problem always solving itself and Godzilla's eventual tolerance and friendship with humanity still happens even without the threat of King Ghidorah to bring them together. When he sees that humans have a healthy respect for his power and just want him to leave them alone, both sides will live happily ever after with Godzilla dorking around with other monsters out in the islands somewhere.
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