Godzilla

As my busy season starts to slow down finally (for those who don't remember, I quit farming in 2014/15, did odd jobs until the fall of 2017, and went to work for an agricultural implements and services dealer, so I'm back on farm schedules), I am finally able to start taking a few minutes for myself with increasing frequency.

On video games:

I got back to playing Dragon Quest 8 on PS2 last weekend and am currently grinding levels to get all party members at least ONE max-level skill. I must say I was quite disappointed by Hero's Lightning Storm, as it turns out it DOES NOT work on metal slimes like one person I read on one FAQ said it would (and it shouldn't, as it is technically a magic effect, to which metal slimes are immune). Angelo actually has TWO skills maxed out, Bows and Staves, because I only ever put points into three skill trees with him. Jessica just needs her Stave tree maxed, although she's still two or three levels from being able to do so; as with Hero, I spread her points across all but one tree, which I don't think I'll ever do again. The game just isn't built to support generalists. And Yangus, despite leveling faster than anyone else, is still three levels from getting his first max tree in Fisticuffs. He's the one I'm worried about, as I didn't know about the possible necessity of Stainless Steal Sickle for skill grinding until it was arguably too late. So, for this game, I may just finish the "first" ending, then leave off the optional ending and do it some time in the future. My daughter and I have already started acquiring the equipment and games we need to play every story line Dragon Quest game from 1 through...whatever the most recent one is. 11 or 12.

This "required" the purchase of a Hyperkin Retron V retro gaming console. I must say, it has been everything it was supposed to be, so far. You put a Gameboy Color cartridge in the Gameboy slot after you've started the system, it copies the ROM to memory, then runs it in an emulator upscaled to 720P and properly framed, no stretching or distortion. Out of the box, it did that. We've tried four games (three Game Boy Color, one Game Boy) and they've all worked. I was most surprised that my original copy of Link's Awakening worked fine after cleaning the contacts on the cartridge, that game has literally just been sitting around through multiple moves since I was 12 or 13, something like that.

In order to continue to the next set of games (the Retron 5 will play Game Boy through Game Boy Advance games), we have also purchased a used Wii U. While there are games on the Wii U we will be playing, the intention is to install the Homebrew channel in order to run a Nintendo DS emulator on the Wii U. This will give us the ability to play all DS games through the 3DS (although obviously without the 3D effect).

Following Dragon Quest, we will move on to either Final Fantasy games or Phantasy Star games, or possibly Shining Force games. Shining Force may be a problem at this point, as some significant titles were released on Sega CD or were Japanese-only releases. I haven't had much time to research it, yet. I don't really have a problem with emulation to solve the problem...the prerequisite is that the game must be playable on the big TV while sitting in a recliner. Ergo the Retron V and and the Wii U to solve all our Nintendo needs. The Retron will cover the two Genesis/Megadrive games that were released as Shining Force 1 and 2 in the U.S., although the story is poorly adapted in SF1 and SF2 is actually SF 3, while SF2 was actually a couple of games that weren't released in the U.S. until they were updated and put on the Sega CD.

Final Fantasy will be easy. I already own the PSOne/Classics releases of Final Fantasy 1 and 2, 4 - 6, and 7 - 9; as well as 10 and 10-2 and 12 for PS2. I also own all of those (through 10 and 10-2 Remastered) on PC, as well. Final Fantasy 3 will have to be purchased for GBA or PSP. 13, 13-2, and 15 will be determined at a later date. The PSP releases are arguably the best versions, at least in most cases, as they generally have the best script adaption and HD graphics, and natively support widescreen. A PSP GO can use a Dual Shock 3 controller, and you can use a mod to connect a controller to a PSP 3000.

Phantasy Star I haven't even looked at, yet. My memory is that the games started on the Master System, and have always been a bit unique in the turn-based role playing game world. Phantasy Star Online was a massive hit in Japan, and is basically the baseline for everything that has been done with Phantasy Star since it originally debuted on the Dreamcast. But I think there were at least 4 or 5 Phantasy Star games before that.

IN other video game news:

I quit playing World of Warcraft, probably for good; or at least until gameplay changes back to support solo players. I quit playing Lord of the Rings Online (again). When I went back to it last year or the year before, whenever that was, I was able to push forward another few areas with my Ranger, plus I leveled at least one of every other type of class to Level 10 or thereabouts. I really wanted to try to get to the Moria expansion, but I just couldn't do it. I understand gameplay in the most recent expansions has changed a bit, but in the earlier expansions the focus is still on party play, and I just wasn't interested in trying to get involved in finding a group that was primarily interested in taking a non-party player along for a tour of the parts of Middle Earth I couldn't get access to on my own. I'll keep an eye on the game; it's changed ownership to a group that's basically finishing out the main content releases and polishing the game, so new game modes and refreshes of early content for all the "other" players may be coming soon.

So, while I still have a bunch of MMORPGs installed on my computer, the only one I'm playing regularly is Star Wars The Old Republic. I'm on my last original character story, the Jedi Knight. Once that's done, it's time to go back; probably to my Sith Agent, and start working through expansions. And probably completely rebuild how I play the character now that I have the experiences I've gained with all the other classes under my belt. The Agent was still the best storyline I've had, although the utter inability to follow up with the character I created in the first bit of added content (where I basically am assumed to hold the opposite opinion on one of the fundamental issues facing the Sith Empire than I the one I actually HAVE) is BY FAR the single must frustrating story element I've faced. But I haven't started that storyline with any other character, yet...so we'll see.

*Basically, my Sith Agent followed the story options that resulted in her being highly dismissive of and opposed to the current Sith regime, and supportive of a powerful Rogue Sith who believed that the Sith Pureblood rejection of anyone who wasn't Sith Pureblood or Human weakened the Empire and doomed it to fail. He set out, during the story, to take out the current leadership and remake the Empire. I'll just say the my Sith Agent was a silent but active supporter. She's a big believer in the Imperial Bureaucracy, and everything she experiences in the story re-enforces that belief. THE FIRST NEW CONTENT AFTER THE MAIN STORY ENDS assumes you opposed this guy like all the other right-thinking Sith did and you're tasked with taking him out. NO YOU DON'T get the option to secretly support him anymore, YOU'RE A SERVANT OF THE EMPIRE DAMMIT AND SITH HATE THE FAHKING ALIENS AND ANYONE WHO BOOSTS THEM UP. I tore my fahking hair out during that story.

This ended up being a lot longer than I expected. I guess I'll talk about movies and anime in a separate post. I've got a review of the Godzilla: King of the Monsters to write, and both Isekai Quartet and One Punch Man Series 2 are almost done. Plus I've finally watched The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and Kantai Collection The Movie. Regarding the latter, I apparently zigged when most people zagged; I thought the movie was brilliant. I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I gather at this point that is NOT the more popular opinion of the movie. While "like" and "dislike" are certainly subjective and not worth arguing over, a quick google of reviews brings up the same phrase over and over "not the Kantai Collection I know and love." This is probably a fair assessment from many points of view. And while I liked Kantai Collection, the series, readers here or at Wonderduck's Pond may recall that I was extremely frustrated early on because the world didn't make sense to me. I finally just let it go and enjoyed what was presented. Well, The Movie just about answered all my questions, and made the world make sense. To me. And it was a good movie and story beyond that.



Anyway, there's another review coming for that. And I really want to write up Overlord Series 2 as I did with Series 1.

I haven't been this effing excited for a movie in YEARS.

Hey, guys! I was a special* guest on The Godzilla Podcast! We talked about Godzilla! I'll link the actual show when it gets posted. I want to thank Drew and Joe for putting on a great show about everyone's favorite King of Monsters, and deigning to have me appear with them to discuss the Big Guy! We talked about so much, and even then we didn't get into some amazing things like the Godzilla/Nagato theory, or the motivations behind why different movies were made the way they were.




*I bribed them

UPDATE: The podcast is now live at The Godzilla Podcast!

Also:

I never really finished up talking about Godzilla fan culture, but I think now might be a good time. Not in this post, this is here just because I need to get a thought out. Both American and Japanese Godzilla fans mostly liked Shin Godzilla, while Godzilla Monster Planet has been much less well received. And I don't get it. I found Shin Godzilla to be dated, out-of-step, lazily-made, a bit boring, and overall an unpleasant to watch and ill-conceived movie. By comparison, Godzilla Monster Planet comes off as a riff on the Legendary Godzilla. While the setting is transplanted, the Monster Planet Godzilla is a natural force, albeit grander in scope. Humans set out to defeat the King of Destruction, and even in success, discover their efforts are futile. Humans are fighting a force that seemingly exists specifically because humans believe they are capable of defeating entropy itself.

To me, that's a hell of a lot deeper than re-treading World War 2, or pollution. Godzilla has always been best when his raison d'etre is the hubris of mankind. That hubris can be tied to something specific *in the right context*; i.e. nuclear weapons tests in 1954 is topical and powerful, but making specific comments must be done with care.

On a more nit-picky level, I really don't understand people who praise Shin Godzilla for having Godzilla be/do something new, then criticize Monster Planet for having Godzilla be/do something new. Or people who praised the Legendary Godzilla for making the story more personal to humans, then complain that Monster Planet centered on the humans too much. Stuff like that I really don't get.

Anyway, I'll likely review Monster Planet episode 1 (yes, episode 1, supposedly) and contrast it with Shin Godzilla and Legendary Godzilla.

While the Millennium Series Godzilla movies were winding down, featuring good special effects but very little new or interesting stories; several independent filmmakers took up the call of making Kaiju movies. Going through what each of these movies brought to the genre is unnecessary. The important thing to learn from all of these movies is that a lot of these filmmakers loved giant monster movies, and knew the state of modern special effects would allow them to depict all that was necessary for an effective monster movie. Because almost all of them understood that the missing piece in all of the poorly performing, barely adequate movies made on skimpy budgets was the story. The 90's Gamera movies had the luxury of tremendous FX mated to very good, if simple, stories. As I mentioned previously; they were as much (traditional) superhero movies as much as they were monster movies; the formula for such has been well understood since the first two Superman movies.

Most of these movies functioned on two primary tenants: DON'T show the monster any more than you have too, and the people in the movie aren't out to watch the monster fight; they want to get AWAY from the monsters. Their story is about wanting to live, and accomplish their own goals. They aren't there as an excuse to show the monsters.

There are, of course, problems with both of these simple guidelines, even as they form an excellent bedrock for structuring the individual elements of the film. When applied to a Godzilla movie, people come to the movie to SEE GODZILLA; they don't come to the movie to NOT SEE GODZILLA. The second rule, of course, plays into this as well. We need to see Godzilla on the screen. That's the important part. The people are secondary.

If your monsters are anonymous space aliens taking over the Earth, it DOESN'T MATTER if you don't show the alien monsters very much. They're just the backdrop anyway; the important part is the people running away from them. This is the formula that launched the career of Gareth Edwards, the creator of the film Monsters, and the man tapped to make a second (published) attempt at an American Godzilla movie.

Part Four: Legendary Godzilla (and Legendary Kong); Shin Godzilla; Godzilla Monster World.

The actor who originally played Godzilla in 1954, and in many subsequent Godzilla movies, has passed away at the age of 88.

Now is a good time to discuss Godzilla fandom. There are several ways to enjoy Godzilla films, and some fans insist on keeping these various cliques separate while others are more open-minded.

The most common type of fan embraces everything Godzilla. The omni-fan tends to excuse the silly Godzilla movies as films for children, which is absolutely correct. They've usually read fairly extensively, although you tend to find a willingness to embrace apocryphal stories, and an insistence on clinging to bits of Godzilla folklore that have been disproven or explained. These fans tend to argue against any criticism from the angle that the end product is fine as long as you understand why the movie is the way it is.

Equally common are the fans that embrace Godzilla as hero while dismissing all of his villainous turns after the original movie, and the fans who only take to the serious Godzilla movies and reject anything silly. These groups, while not technically opposed to each other, tend to find themselves arguing opposite points frequently.

There is an increasing minority of fandom that analyzes each film according to it's own merit. These fans may or may not like the silly Godzilla movies, but they can still talk about the things that make those movies interesting or important. Same with the serious movies.

Because even the cheapest and silliest movies are still products of the Japanese film industry, the sentiments, intentions, and practices used to create those movies are very different from the equivalent American film project. Only a few specific issues in the "bad" Godzilla movies was the product of an attitude like "We're just creating B-Movie trash. It's good enough." By the same token, some of the "good" Godzilla movies were produced with similar budgets, and frequently using the same casts and crews, as the "bad" movies. When a "bad" Godzilla movie is "bad", it mostly was NOT because the intent and effort were lacking, it was because the final product was made to be exactly what it was. It is worth noting that some of the silliest, most bizarre special effects of the Godzilla movies in the '60's and the '90's were the effects used to make Godzilla or another monster do something absolutely absurd. Showing Godzilla slowly trudge through Tokyo, using overcranking to give his movement the illusion of weight and immensity, is much easier to do having a sixty-year old man in a silicon suit with an eight foot tail do a flying bicycle kick.

Stories are a bit different. Most of the '60's movies were written by Shinichi Sekizawa, who complained early on that he had no new ideas for monster movies. Which might explain why so many of these movies really do seem to be exactly the same. And even when different writers were brought in, the movies still invariably followed the same plot. But this mostly stemmed from directives by Toho studio heads, who considered Godzilla movies to be cheap, fast, reliable profits for children's movies. To be entirely honest, as even the Heisei Gamera movies demonstrated, there isn't a lot of leeway in establishing the basic outline of a Kaiju Eiga. When the third Gamera movie strayed from the tried and true path, the popular and critical reception wasn't quite as good. Interestingly, both the 2014 Legendary Godzilla and the 2016 Shin Godzilla actually do screw with the formula in different ways, and both movies find success doing so. As a counterpoint, the 1998 Devlin/Emmerich Godzilla mixed the structure of the original Godzilla with the sensibilities of a Michael Bay movie, and campy comedy of a bad English dub of a '60's Godzilla movie. When you look at it that way, it seems kind of obvious that the movie would never hold up.

The point, in the end, is that the different components of the Godzilla fan community tend to seek out certain things in each new Godzilla movie: a lot of fans want Godzilla to be a hero; a lot of fans want Godzilla to be a villain or at least an opponent of man; some fans want an acknowledgement of the '60's camp, but probably a larger number (and increasing) want serious Godzilla movies. Note that being a quality production isn't really on the list.

This is the context within which I'll look at the Legendary Godzilla and Shin Godzilla.

I've been sitting on a review of Shin Gojira (Godzilla Resurgence) for a few weeks, now. Honestly, I haven't really wanted to write anything up, because on top of my criticism of the new Star Wars movies, anything I had to say about Shin Godzilla would inevitably come off sounding like "Get off my lawn!" Because I didn't like Shin Gojira.

Yeah. The movie that won seven Japan Academy Prizes. The screenplay that won Director/Writer Hideaki Anno a Best Screenwriter award from Kinema Junpo; Japan's oldest film magazine; which publishes annual lists that are considered as important as the Academy Prize if not more so. I didn't like it.

Japan likes it, and that's what matters; of course. I've been a bit surprised to find that American Godzilla fans really like it...or do they? Everybody says they love it, and yet it's amazing how much more commendable they are toward the Legendary Godzilla film compared to Shin Godzilla. The Legendary Godzilla was generally approved of by American Godzilla fans, although praise was usually couched with caveats. I'm not seeing that as much these days. It seems the Legendary Godzilla is now perceived as a genuinely good film. And so, of course, is Shin Godzilla...but....

I really don't feel like really breaking Shin Godzilla down, so I guess we'll see where things are at the end of this post. What really prompted me to finally write about the movie was a giant turtle...

In 1995, Daiei Film, the company that created the original Gamera movies during the giant monster craze started by the Godzilla sequels, rebooted the giant turtle series. Improbably. Impossibly. Nobody thought it would work. The creative force behind these movies where director Shusuke Kaneko, writer Kazunori Ito, and FX Director Shinji Higuchi. If you're an anime fan, you're probably familiar with Ito...he also wrote some Dirty Pair, the first and second Patlabor movies, and the original Ghost in the Shell movie, among others.

If you are a fan of Godzilla, or monster movies in general, or Pacific Rim, or good anime for that matter, you owe it to yourself to see the three Gamera movies that comprise the Heisei Gamera Trilogy. I had not. Despite hearing for several years that these movies, largely ignored in the U.S., were some of the finish Kaiju movies ever made. In my defense, I had seen the original Gamera movies. I can sing "Gamera is full of meat!" with the best of them, as well. To me, they glorified and typified all of the things that made many of those 60's Godzilla movies cheap and laughable. I wasn't going to give Gamera re-imagined another try. I was wrong. I won't go into how I got started, but I had the opportunity to watch the first new Gamera movie, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. In the four years leading up to 1995, Toho had released the following Godzilla movies: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, the 1993 Godzilla vs. Mothra, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, and Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla. While the 90's Godzilla movies featured updated special effects and better filmography, they had continued from the 60's camp movies with un-serious stories, physically bizarre fights, and highly repetitive plot points. While the final 90's Godzilla film, Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (the first film since the 1984 re-launch to take the subject seriously) was in production, Daiei Film was looking at Godzilla's dwindling success and planning a new Kaiju Eiga done right.

It's almost amazing the degree to which Daiei Film succeeded. '60's Gamera is the friend of all children. '90's Gamera is, too. Surely they didn't spell it out nearly as explicitly as the early Gamera movies did, but the message is clear that Gamera has an affinity with children. '60's Gamera flies with something like rocket engines shooting out of it's shell. So does '90's Gamera. If you ever wanted to believe a giant turtle could fly, the new Gamera movies will make you believe. The new movies are definitely a bit more mature in tone and design, but it's a bit like comparing the original Superfriends cartoon to the Justice League cartoon of the 2000's. Throw out the camp, but embrace the spirit. Take it seriously. The result is astounding.

The first movie is a fairly standard Kaiju movie done to modern sensibilities. Gamera's origin is vaguely established: the main characters hypothesize that the meaning of a prophetic marker that refers to Gamera indicates that Gamera was a "man"-made biological weapon built by...Atlanteans, maybe? Muu-ians? Some ancient civilization that played with powers they ought nought. The civilization created a weapon to use on it's enemies; the two-chromosomed, highly adaptable, nearly perfect species Gyaos. As Gyaos ravaged the Earth, the Whovians put all of their knowledge into creating a being to stop Gyaos, and project the Earth for all eternity. Ito and Kaneko manage to balance the story perfectly; plausibly creating a real-life setting in which a giant fighting turtle invented by ancient Atlanteans makes just enough sense to be acceptable.

The second movie, Gamera 2: Attack of Legion, is probably about as good as a modern kaiju movie can get. Having said that, it's also done with a formula that works for Gamera but wouldn't work for almost any other monster. More on this in a minute. Gamera 2 has all of the beats of a kaiju movie, and like the first actually has the basic elements of horror that made the first Godzilla movie so effective. G2 also has all of the beats of a superhero movie. Unlike the Godzilla hero movies, Gamera and the Earthlings he protects can be hurt, even killed. While Godzilla gets knocked down, frequently gets knocked out; Gamera is pierced and bleeds. You actually feel sympathy for the monster hero, and fear the monster villain. If Legion isn't stopped, all life on Earth will end; because this is what Legion does. Lands on a planet, absorbs all life, and then explodes millions of copies of itself into space. It is here that Gamera truly becomes the defender of the Universe, as the entire Universe is at stake.

The third movie suffers from having huge shoes to fill, and for some people because Kaneko pursued a different angle. The villain monster is at the same time the largest and most glorious creation of possibly any Kaiju movie ever, and at the same time the smallest and most personal. This movie isn't about the villain monster; it's about how people feel about Gamera. It's also built largely to bring closure to all the different storylines presented over the course of the three movies, make the film feel a bit forced at times. The intention was to close out a trilogy of movies while exploring a particular set of themes, and that's what was done...even the story doesn't necessarily lend itself to resolving these ideas. The FX are stunning; the fights are turned up to eleven, but contrasted against a more personal, somewhat rushed story, you feel almost as if maybe the director actually had two movie's worth of material crammed into one.

Compare all of that to 1994's Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla; the campiest, silliest entry of the Heisei Godzilla series. The ongoing theme of the 90's Godzilla movies was Godzilla's DNA; and thanks to events from the previous movies, some of that DNA has made it into space, where it encountered some mysterious crystals and mutated into a super-Godzilla with crystals growing out of it's body. At least one scene of actual drama was cut to keep the tone more light-hearted. The new junior Godzilla, introduced in Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla II, which actually looked like a juvenile Godzilla, was re-designed to more closely mimic the goofy "Minilla" design from the 1960's. Another staple of the 90's movies, a psychic that can communicate with Godzilla, is the human focus of the story. It's just silly. And none of it is treated seriously. Despite the improved FX, which don't hold a candle to the Gamera movies of the same era, the 90's Godzilla movies were treated like cartoons by Toho.

That gets us to the 1998 Devlin/Emmerich Godzilla movie. The only thing important about it is that it prompted Toho to revitalize the Godzilla series yet again. 1999's Godzilla Millennium upped the ante in special effects, at least for Japanese films, and tried to adopt some of the mature tone of Kaneko's Gamera movies, the final film of which was just completing production. The final product is one of the better Godzilla efforts, with some truly excellent FX shots; but it still plays out like a light-hearted adventure. Seriousness is injected solely through lines of dialogue talking about how serious things are...we're never actually shown anything menacing. The follow-up film, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, belongs firmly in line with the '90's films: shiny metal sci-fi miniatures, a cartoonish enemy monster, and a Godzilla fight that uses silly, out-of-place and unrealistic moves and actions. The major upgrade from the '90's movies is an increased active role for women in these solidly action-adventure movies.

This set up the third Millennium series Godzilla movie. While Toho was actively considering ending the new movies after the disappointing performance and reception of Megaguirus, they remembered a director who had come to them in 1991 with a proposal for new Godzilla movies. Toho turned him down, and Shusuke Kaneko went on to re-invent the Kaiju Eiga with the Gamera trilogy. Now, with his Gamera movies completed, Toho turned to Kaneko for the next Godzilla movie. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack, despite an utterly preposterous title, went on to make over ten times it's budget; compared to the barely $1 million in profit returned by Megaguirus. As with the Gamera movies, people get hurt and killed. For the first time since the original movie (and Godzilla Raids Again, to a small extent), Godzilla is a true devil; a creature of evil mindlessly destroying the world. The Godzilla suit used for this movie is unique, with opaque, all white eyes and a furrowed, demonic countenance. The suit is more hunched over and bulkier, which helps remove the perpetual and obvious clue that there's a man inside a rubber suit. Godzilla kills just to kill; he targets humans intentionally. This is the only Godzilla film where the viewer feels that Godzilla is a threat to THEM specifically.

While the public loved the film and demanded more, long-time Godzilla fans of the time were decidedly mixed over this movie. There was very little camp; only the design of Baragon, a half-dog/half-dinosaur-like creature with expressive eyes and floppy ears displays the cartoon-like-vibe that had been persistent for decades. Yet even that may have been an intentional move by Kaneko; as Baragon is little more than a doormat to the new Godzilla. Still, reports of studio tampering surround the film. Kaneko's vision for the movie was, allegedly, considerably more horrific and serious-minded. But Toho refused to bow to those demands. They were furious that Kaneko had turned Godzilla into an evil monster, and were uncomfortable with the scenes of death and destruction. While the good returns prompted them to ask Kaneko back to direct a second film, the demands they put on the planned production drove Kaneko from the project; and the Godzilla films returned to retreads of the '90's movies until the delightfully campy Final Wars in 2004.

I'm scared of coincidences:



Flag from battleship Nagato, taken from the ship after it was manned by crew from Iowa, donated to National Park Service for Pearl Harbor.

Pursuent to my personal pet-theory regarding the origins of Godzilla and at least some of the method to his madness, I recently became aware, while stuck in New Orleans thanks to a Southwest Airlines computer crash, that some Battleship Nagato artifacts were being displayed at the National World War 2 Museum on Magazine Street. Namely, some battleship binoculars with mounting, an officer's sword (likely but not definitely taken from Nagato), and the Admiral's flag placed there while the ship sailed as a flagship.

Now I need art of Godzilla attacking the Big Easy, preferable with Nagato riding on his shoulders or head.