Gojira: Kaijû Wakusei

Its has an interesting approach on the Godzilla theme, and I like the story central idea. Yet I found the execution of it to frail, like if it was done in a rush without thinking it to much. The characters, the dialogues, the way the story unfolds, it´s not bad, yet it lacks some sense in it, leaving you the idea that it could have been easily improved, yet there was not much effort in doing so. Apart from that, The animation is not bad, it gets the point done, but leaves much to improve. The voice acting could be much better, at least in the Japanese version of it, but again, is not a deal breaker. Still, i enjoyed enough that I watch the rest of the trilogy, without regretting it.

The animation was fine, the Japanisms in full force. Protect, regain your honor and dignity, die in the name of God or against one, etc, but what annoyed the hell out of me was the sloppiness of the script. One moment an old guy says they have traveled for 20 years and can't take the trip back, the other the ship is taking a one minute jump and it's back where it started. One moment a guy is basically court marshaled, and people are telling him he's insane and asks for too much, the other he is commanding landing forces. There is an alien species that landed on Earth right before Godzilla messed everything up which has no real purpose. There is a scene where they land back on Earth and there is a guy in the leaves, and that's the only scene where we see any people on the planet. There is a conspiracy theory that gets announced, then never mentioned again.

And the characters. They have names and they do things, but you don't know why. There is no character development at all. Who is the shy girl? Why are people referring to her like I should know her. Is this an episode of something? No, it's a part of a trilogy, but it's the first part!

It's just... weird. I can't imagine going through the effort of drawing all of this on the basis of a stupid script. Who does that? I can only consider this a failure, because it is clearly not what was intended to be.

The start to a unique and "controversial" entries in the 65 year legacy of the atomic menace that is Godzilla, we at It Came from a Monster Movie had a very interesting review for this movie. While we highlight that this film's narrative has flaws, there are some interesting and if you go into without expectation, you might actually surprise yourself with this film!

For more, please check out episode 3 of IT CAME FROM A MONSTER MOVIE for the full review wherever you listen to podcasts.

You know, you'd think that since anime and Godzilla are so big in Japan that they'd combined the two a long time ago. Surprisingly, it took 60+ years to actually do so. Now, we have the first of a brand new animated trilogy called "Godzilla: Monster Planet", released not too long ago in Japan and more recently on Netflix (complete with English dub).

In this refreshing iteration, mankind lost the war for dominance over the Earth to the kaiju, chief among them Big G. With the help of two alien races, the survivors set off to the stars to colonize another planet, but it proved incompatible. Low on resources and options, they return to retake the Earth. However, it's been 20,000 years since they left and not only is there now an ecosystem of monsters but Godzilla, still alive after all this time, reigns supreme. Who will win, man or monster?

Right from the start, they show you of just how grim a situation humanity is in as hope and pride are barely holding on by a thread. In fact, it gets pretty dark at certain times. The humans are in such a sorry state that you sympathize with them but there are tiny hints that they as a species had it coming. There are also religious themes weaved into the story, including references to divine retribution. The cast is a mixed bag. The protagonist is Haruo, who is basically Ahab or Eren Jaeger from "Attack On Titan" (for anime fans reading this). He's passable I guess, though he tends to repeat himself from time to time, which gets old. Scientist Martin and commander Leland are a little more interesting as are two of the main aliens, but the rest are pretty bland and it's hard to say whether they'll get more development in the near future.

As for Godzilla, I love his design. He kind of resembles his 2014 look but with his body looking like a mix between muscle and tree bark and sporting new variations on his abilities. It's also the largest version yet and the animation emphasizes his immense size with slow, foreboding movements. He truly feels like a force of nature and he's got the power to boot; if he has you in his sights, you know you're screwed. New to the franchise are Servum, dragon-like beasties that are nice secondary threats to the humans. Most of the other kaiju are nothing more than cameos in the opening montage. Given the title "Monster Planet", having them show up more in the story would've provided more exploration of this ecosystem.

The overall story is good, though the first half is a touch slow. The reason is simply to establish this universe and provide exposition on the characters' plight and plan to reclaim Earth. This does provide decent suspense and once the monsters show up, it's mostly action. Speaking of which, the battles offer enough thrills to satisfy, pitting futuristic technology against beastly power and the animation allows for great visuals that you normally wouldn't get in live action. Expect a few good plot twists, one hell of a cliffhanger, and an after-credit scene.

Despite the aforementioned flaws, I'm still glad I saw this. The sequel expected to be released this May, this time featuring Mechagodzilla, which I look forward to. It's weird now seeing three separate Godzilla series happening at once, which is a first (Monsterverse, Shin, and Anime). Long live the King of the Monsters!

I know that this is the first entry in a series, but the entire thing seemed dull and underwhelming. The story seemed so rush to get to the end that none of the characters were developed enough for you to care about them. The main character Haruo was very one-note, displaying anger but nothing else. No attempt was made to flesh him out or give him any more depth than that. The plot about his parents being killed as the reason for him wanting revenge against Godzilla was nothing new. The angry human who wants to avenge a fallen loved one has been done in other kaiju films before (Godzilla x Megaguirus, Gamera 3), but those previous films conveyed it much better; here it seemed like a half hearted after thought. For having a title Planet of the Monsters, there were hardly any monsters, Godzilla doesn't show up until the end. Everything up until the climactic battle seems like run of the mill checkmarks just to get to that point. For it being an animated film, they had so much potential to be creative without the constraints that a live action film would pose, how they came up with such a wooden, lifeless story is kind of a shock. If their goal is to make a series then they should've put more time and energy into making the first entry more entertaining, as it stands, when it's over you're left not really caring enough to want to see any more of the story.