Another 31 Days, Another 31 Screams: Day 14 (Godzilla: The Series)

I TOLD YOU! MY BUILDING! MINE! 

Yeah. So this was a thing that existed! We are full on in a deep dive here. I remain confident that I'm one of the few people to ever talk about this semi-seriously, but I do remember seeing it on TV back in the day and liking it. So, I gave it a revisit and watched the first four episodes for the blog. I suppose this proves that, if nothing else, Godzilla 1998 had enough good will to get an animated series greenlit. What do we make of it, then? It's... interesting, to say the least. Entertaining on some base level. What strikes me as odd, though, is how much it follows from the movie. Yes, the series is a sequel but it basically picks up right then and there from Godzilla getting killed, only bothering to retell part of the final chase sequence... and abridge and change it slightly, but that's besides the point. If you hadn't seen the movie going into this, you'd be mighty confused. I mean, not even an animated Cliff Notes or anything. Point is, here's our new status quo: One of the Godzilla eggs hatches and imprints on Nick Tatopoulis, and thus becomes "good" and determined to protect him a
nd his pals. Together with some other characters from the movie and some new folks, they go around the world investigating other weird mutated monsters. Godzilla follows them around to protect Nick and ends up having fights with the big monsters while Nick and his team do science to try and figure out how to stop the big monsters and save the day. Holy hell. It's a kaiju movie mixed with a Saturday morning cartoon "monster of the week" mode of operation. This is actually genius.


It does, like the movie, almost work. The creature design is real inventive, from what I saw; in three episodes (not counting the opener which was the origin of the new Godzilla), we had giant squids, a big Cloverfield-looking fucker which fed on the giant squids and got pissed off when they died, a giant worm, and (my favorite) petrolum-consuming nanomachines which went haywire and formed a giant blob monster that grew the more petroleum it ate. There's some real inventiveness there, and I remember shit got even more bizarre from back in the day; eventually aliens got involved or something really silly like that. It's almost thrilling to throw on an episode and wonder what fucked-up monster Godzilla will fight today... and here's something wild! Godzilla has atomic breath! She just breathed fire a few times in the movie, but here the new Godzilla is breathing green-ass atomic breath. They actually got MORE faithful to the source material. Goddamn. I really am impressed here. Maybe easily so, but still. This didn't feel like a total waste of my time.


What doesn't work? Uhh, well... the way it handles the women? Particularly Audrey, the reporter from the movie. She went through a whole arc in the movie and now she's sort of just jealous that Nick is hanging around scientists all the time. The women in this show are constantly jealous towards each other and it really rubs me the wrong way. Then there's Nigel, the robot. He's this show's K9, I guess, in that he does scans and gives information... but he's also this show's Kenny McCormick. Yes, I said that. They have Godzilla or the monster of the week manage to trash the robot in every single episode. What in the hell? Some of the humor doesn't land, but it is a kid's show and I'm a grown adult so let's just say that a lot of it is swinging for someone half my height and leave it at that. I don't have much more to say. This was a fine way to spend 80 minutes. I'd binge more, but... well, you know. I've got an actual Godzilla movie I bought to talk about on the blog. No American stuff, this one's made in Japan, the real deal... and it's going to be very interesting. Who made this?


Ah Christ, the Evangelion guy? Oh, I'm really in for it now.