Kaiju Transmissions Interview: Michiru Oshima

As you likely know, Kaiju Transmissions is a remarkable podcast that regularly brings us detailed discussions of frequently under-represented topics related to kaiju and tokusatsu filmmaking (and if if you didn’t know, check it out; you’re about to have a new favorite show). Hosts Matt and Byrd got to interview a number of guests at last month’s G-Fest XXIV, but due to technical difficulties, the audio came out sounding not quite up to broadcast standards. Rather than just chuck the interviews, they figured folks would get a kick out of reading the transcriptions, and offered to let me post them here. Kudos to their efforts, and enjoy the interviews!
-Kevin

G-Fest 2017: Michiru Oshima Interview
for the Kaiju Transmissions Podcast

Kyle Byrd: We are here at G-Fest 2017 and we are interviewing some of the special guests.  And right now for the podcast we have Michiru Oshima, who you know as the composer of many Godzilla films as well as various soundtracks, anime such as Full Metal Alchemist, and she has been generous enough to give us some of her time today.

Matt Parmley:  So thank you very much for being here.

Michiru Oshima: Thank you.

MP: And we also have our esteemed interpreter and I will let you introduce yourself…

Keiko:  Keiko.

KB:  What got you interested in film music and how did you break into that industry?

MO:  When I finished music school, I started composing for commercials.  After that, I got offers for TV dramas, then movies.

KB:  Was doing Godzilla music something that you wanted to do or was it something that was just offered?  Were Akira Ifukube’s scores an influence at all?

MO:  The director offered me the job.  I’m a woman, so I didn’t really know about Godzilla before getting the job, including the previous music.

MP:  How did you come up with your Godzilla theme?  His theme is very big and booming.  What inspired your Godzilla theme?

MO:  The director, Mr. Tezuka wanted Godzilla to be very strong and sound very powerful.  I wanted to make Godzilla seem big.

KB:  As far as film scores go, are there any movie composers that you listened to growing up that may have influenced your work?

MO:  I love Kurosawa’s movies, and I always wanted to work with him before he died.  I really love Masaru Sato’s music for those films.  I also really love Jerry Goldsmith, who is a very famous composer in America.  I love him.

KB: Ah, yes!  Alien, Gremlins, Planet of the Apes!  His work is great.

MO: Yes, yes.  The Omen, etc.

MP: There’s an animated American fan project called Godzilla Total Destruction.  Are you familiar with the project?

MO:  Yes, yes.  About two years ago, I visited America and I met the director [Chris Mirjahangir], who asked me to do the music and I started working on it.

Godzilla: Total Destruction

KB:  Ok, so he just asked?  That’s very cool.  I’m looking forward to hearing more kaiju music from you!

MP:  So we’ll be hearing music for this particular project?

MO:  Yes, maybe.

KB: What is your general process for having to score a film?  Do you have to see the movie first or some of the footage or do you just get a script?

MO:  For TV dramas, all I really see is the script.  But for movies, I see footage and I get to see a lot more of the movie.

Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is one of Ms. Oshima’s many popular TV show soundtracks.

KB:  How is scoring for animation any different than scoring live action film?

MO:  Well, animation has a lot of action and quick movements and editing, so you have to score around that.  Animated characters also can’t physically express their feelings as much as real actors, so it takes extra effort to convey those things sometimes.

MP: Do you have a favorite score that you’ve composed or one that you’re especially proud of?

MO:  I always try my best and work really hard, so I always say my most recent work is my best work.

KB:  Did you watch any of the old Godzilla movies when you started writing for Tezuka’s Godzilla films?

MO:  I didn’t.  I didn’t want to get any influence from the old movies.  I wanted to have my own fresh approach.  So I tried not to watch the old movies.

KB: Do you have a favorite movie from the Godzilla movies you scored?

MO:  Probably Godzilla x MechaGodzilla.

MP:  When you compose music do you typically work from piano or do you use digital mock-ups?

MO:  I use keyboards, but I also use a lot of computer software.

KB:  You’ve done a lot of video game music also.  How is that different from doing television or movie music?

MO:  When I do game music, the games aren’t done yet.  It is very difficult to get what the directors want.  It is very hard to imagine how everything will move and look.  It is hard to know how it should feel since games are interactive.   I also don’t play games (laughs).

KB:  One particular film I want to ask you about is Princess Raccoon from 2005 directed by Seijun Suzuki.  Were you familiar with his work prior to working on that?  And what was it like working with him on the film?

MO:  Yes, of course.  So is Seijun Suzuki famous in America?

KB:  He has a strong fan base here.  He isn’t as famous as Kurosawa or anything, but there are a lot of people here who really love his films and know the difficulty he had making films as well.

MO:  Ok.  Well I enjoyed working with Suzuki a lot.  He made very special movies and he was a very special director.  One time I asked him what a scene was going to look like and he just said “a dock in the fall time.”  Then when I saw the movie, the scene didn’t even have a dock!  So what I’m trying to say is that he had a very special and unique way of doing things and thinking of things.

Princess Raccoon (2005)

MP:  Were you familiar with his visual style before you worked with him?

MO:  He’s very well known in Japan, so I was familiar with his work already.

KB:  Princess Raccoon was a musical.  Was the music for that movie composed to the lyrics and dialogue?

MO:  Yes, well I made the music that they are actually singing to!  So it was all my music, then the lyrics and singing came after.

KB:  You mentioned Masaru Sato earlier.  Were you familiar with the music he did for several Godzilla films as well?

MO:  I never heard his Godzilla music.  I was more interested in his Kurosawa scores.  Sanjuro made a big impression on me.

KB:  Is Sanjuro your favorite Kurosawa film?

MO:  Yes!

KB:  After you did the Godzilla films, did you go back and listen to the music for any of the older movies at all?

MO:  Toho sent me a box of all the movies, so sometimes I’ll watch some of the movies.  So I’m more familiar with the music for them now.

KB: So between animation, live action, and video games, does she have a favorite medium to write music for?  And why?

MO:  I enjoy doing all of them for different reasons.  Everything is different.  But I definitely like doing live action the most.

MP:  What is the most difficult kind of scene to compose for?

MO:  Probably scenes where there isn’t much going on.  No action or anything.  Scenes that are kind of just people sitting and doing nothing (laughs).

MP:  (laughs) Oh, ok.  That makes a lot of sense actually.  Well we have some other people waiting to talk to you, so thank you very much for everything.  Thank you for being on our show and we’re big fans of your music.

KB:  Yes, thank you for coming!  And thank you talking with us and for coming out here.  Are you enjoying G-Fest so far?

MO:  Yes, of course!

KB:  Well hopefully you’ll come back one day.  We’d love to have you back some day.

MP:  Your Godzilla theme is awesome, by the way.

KB:  Yes!  One of my favorite Godzilla themes!

MO: Thank you for that!

KB:  Yes, thank you again for talking with us.

MO: Thank you very much.

Matt Parmley, Michiru Oshima, Kyle Byrd, and Keiko

Kaiju Transmissions Interview: Kazuhiro Nakagawa

As you likely know, Kaiju Transmissions is a remarkable podcast that regularly brings us detailed discussions of frequently under-represented topics related to kaiju and tokusatsu filmmaking (and if if you didn’t know, check it out; you’re about to have a new favorite show). Hosts Matt and Byrd got to interview a number of guests at last month’s G-Fest XXIV, but due to technical difficulties, the audio came out sounding not quite up to broadcast standards. Rather than just chuck the interviews, they figured folks would get a kick out of reading the transcriptions, and offered to let me post them here. Kudos to their efforts, and enjoy the interviews!
-Kevin

G-Fest 2017: Kazuhiro Nakagawa Interview
for the Kaiju Transmissions Podcast

Kyle Byrd:  We’ve been interviewing some of the guests who have been very generous in giving us some of their time.  Today joining us is Kazuhiro Nakagawa, who is an assistant director.  Kaiju fans may know him as being Shinji Higuchi’s assistant director on the Attack on Titan films and Shin Godzilla.  He is also the director of the short film Day of the Kaiju as well.  So first off, thank you for sitting down with us today.

Kazuhiro Nakagawa:  Nice to meet you.  I’m Kazuhiro Nakagawa (laughs).

Matt Parmley:  With us as well interpreting for us is Mike Field.  So thank you for doing that for us Mike, we appreciate it.

Mike Field:  You’re welcome, thank you for having me.

KB: So how did you get involved in working on tokusatsu films, especially since it seems like there are less and less of them?  How did you break into that industry?

KN: I worked originally on TV dramas that didn’t have any effects and weren’t tokusatsu related.  I got into the tokusatsu world because of Shinji Higuchi, so that’s how I got involved with Attack on Titan and Shin Godzilla.

KB:  How did you first meet Higuchi and get on board with those projects?

KN: I first met Higuchi-san in 2006 on Sinking of Japan.  I really loved the 90s Gamera series and when I met him, I was so stars truck, I was thinking “Higuchi!  He really exists!”  I was blown away!

KB:  So I want to talk about your short film Day of the Kaiju.  What gave you the idea to make that film?

KN:  When I made it, I was thinking about the effects of the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster.  I wanted to make a movie that would incorporate that type of disaster.   I wanted to make a movie where the kaiju was a metaphor for things you couldn’t see.  The disaster with the nuclear power plant, you couldn’t see that danger.  It was something you couldn’t grasp, so the kaiju is the metaphor for those dangers you couldn’t see to understand.

Day of the Kaiju (2014)

KB:  Was the movie born out of a particular frustration with how the government was handling those disasters?  Because in the movie, the government very much doesn’t want to listen to the experts and because of that, a lot of people pay with their lives.  Was that something you were feeling a particular frustration with at the time?

KN:  Yes, of course.  I felt like if I do nothing, nothing would change.  So my way of doing something was to make a film.

KB: The actual kaiju we don’t see much of in the movie.  But how did you come up with the design for that monster?

KN:  Well it was based on a whale, but the big tusks were something I took from Gamera!

Day of the Kaiju

MP:  So lets talk about Attack on Titan.  What was your role on that film?

KN: Assistant director.

MP: What did you handle as assistant director?

KN:  I was in charge of the props.

MP: Did you work with the big Colossal Titan puppet?

KN:  Yes.  (Mr. Nakagawa pulls out his phone and starts looking through his pictures).

KB:  He’s got his phone out.  It looks like he’s going to share an image with us, which we will describe.

KN:  Keep talking (laughs).

MP:  As far as the props go, what other props were you working with besides the Colossal Titan?  Oh, he might be showing us!

KN: (Shows photo on his phone)

KB: So we’re looking at a behind the scenes photo.  We have the Armored Titan, the Colossal Titan, and Ehren.  That was great work on those puppets and suits.

KN:  As far as other props, I was mainly working on the solider props, so their costumes and their weapons and those things.

KB: Were there any scenes in particular that you had a heavy hand in?

KN:  I feel like the scene I remember the most and that I had the biggest part of was the first big Titan attack in Part One.

MP:  Ah, that’s my favorite scene in the movie!

KN: I remember working on the timing of blowing up all the figures and models and those things.  I really liked that.

MP:  Was there difficulty filming those scenes?  Are there any stories you could share about any hardships you had while filming?

KN:  There weren’t any real Titans in that scene, they were added later.  So when we were filming without having them there, that was very difficult.  So we had to have a long pole for the actors to look at to act out the scene.  That was pretty difficult.

KB:  Shifting to Shin Godzilla, what was your general job on the set there?

KN:  I was the assistant director on that too.  For that one, one of my big jobs was researching and looking up information about politics and politicians and what they do.

MP:  That’s a very difficult job (laughs).

KN: (laughs).  So with the screenplay, I kept thinking about becoming a politician and how difficult it is.

MP:  So you got to work on the actual screenplay itself?

KN:  I worked on editing and re-wording the screenplay.

KB: With Shin Godzilla, did you get to work with Anno directly at all?

KN:  Yes, but Anno wasn’t very direct, so I kind of had to work around the bush and go to different people to get a better understanding of what Anno wanted.

KB:  Was Higuchi kind of your middle man for those things?

KN: (laughs).  Well Anno-san would say something and I would go to Higuchi-san and try to explain to him what Anno was trying to say or what type of scene to film.  The most frustrating part would be when Anno and Higuchi would be talking to each other and I would just be standing there on the side, not saying anything, just waiting for them to work things out.  So I was actually kind of a middle-man sometimes!

MP: Going back to the politics portion, the movie talks about Article 9 a lot.  Was that something else you were in charge of researching?

KN:   Right, I did some research on Article 9, which involves the use of military force.  A lot of people don’t know if that would be good or not, so that was very difficult.  It is something that is argued about a lot in real life.

MP:  Would you say that was the theme of the movie itself?

KN:  It wasn’t really the main focus of the film even though it’s a part of it.  The thing was, it isn’t really about the article itself.  It is more how Japan would react, that was the focus.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

KB:  Foreigners are not as up to speed with what goes on in the Japanese government.  Would you say the movie says anything about international affairs?

KN:  I personally never really thought about it on a global or international perspective.  We really made it for a Japanese perspective.

MP:  So this is unrelated to that.  But at the end of the movie, everyone wants to know what those things coming out of the tail are.  Did they have a specific purpose?  Are they the next part of Godzilla’s evolution, or are they just there for imagery?

KN:  Um.  Only Anno knows!    (all laughing)

MP:  That’s the best answer!

KB:  Of course, of course (laughs).  On Shin Godzilla, were there any scenes you liked the most in the movie or any you enjoyed working on the most?

KN:  I really enjoyed the scene where the helicopters are flying through the building and approaching Godzilla.

MP: Ok, that is a cool scene.

KB:  Like us here, you have a passion for miniature effects and tokusatsu.  Recently, we’ve had a lot of major kaiju movies using all CG.  Shin Godzilla was one of those.  I understand there was a giant Godzilla puppet built that was never used in the film.  I understand there was some difficulty with it.  Can you maybe be more specific as to why that puppet didn’t make it into the movie?

KN:  This answer is pretty on the nose.  Anno would know better than anyone, but from what I can tell, I feel that the puppet and the way the CGI Godzilla looked were just too different, so they just stuck with the CGI instead.

MP:  So was the puppet in the movie or not?  I can’t really tell and from what Higuchi was saying earlier, it sounds like it may not have been.  Were there any shots you know it was in the film at all or was it all CG?

KN:  All CG.  Actually, except for one.  The last shot of the tail, that was a miniature tail, not CGI.

MP:  The things coming out of the tail, yeah, did they make a full prop of that?  I saw some pictures in the Making Of book.  It looks kind of like the Giant God Warrior.

KN:  Yes, they made that, but we just used the tail part for the last scene.

Shin Godzilla

KB:  Going back to CGI, here we are doing the Godzilla and Kong films with CG.  What did you think of the 2014 Godzilla film and the recent Kong: Skull Island film?

KN:  I love them!  I really think they are very Toho-like, they have a very “kaiju pro wrestling” vibe.  They feel like they are the classic Showa films, but made with larger Hollywood budgets.  Hollywood Showa.

KB:  So going back a bit, I really like Day of the Kaiju.  Do you have any plans to do any other short films or anything else at this point?  Maybe another indie film?

KN:   Yes, I do.  Right now I am putting together a plan to submit it to the Japanese government, and if they like it, they will give me funding.

KB: Ok, well good luck, that’s something we’d all like to see.  Are you trying or do you have any aspirations to direct a full feature film of your own?

KN:  Yes, for sure.  And if the Japanese government fund what I’m working for now, I’ll be directing that.  So I’d love to make it and come back here and show it to everyone at another G-Fest!

KB: That would be awesome.

MP:  That would be great.

MP:  So I think we’re about out of time, so thanks again for doing this with us.

KB: Yeah, thank you again.  And we look forward to whatever you do.  Hopefully the government will let you make your film and you can show it to us!

KN:  So you’ve seen Day of the Kaiju?

KB:  Yes, I’m a big fan.  I like it a lot.

KN: Oh, that makes me so happy! (laughs)  Thank you.

KB:  Yeah, that’s why I want you to do more!

MP: Thanks again for joining us.

KN: Thank you!

Left to right: Matt Parmley, Kazuhiro Nakagawa, Kyle Byrd, and Mike Field

Quick news recap

The last podcast sucked up a lot of time this week, so this weekend news recap is a little late. On the other hand, there’s not that much to report!

• Discotek license rescued the 2001 version of Cyborg 009. Despite being excellent, the show bombed stateside, only getting half released on TV and only a few episodes ever made it to DVD. With a new version incoming, I eagerly anticipate being able to throw my Hong Kong bootleg set into the garbage.

• A PV for Full Metal Panic: Invisible Victory. Yep, it looks like FMP.

• The folks behind Eagle Talon are doing a new gag anime based on Yokai Ningen Bem for the franchise’s 50th anniversary.

• We have a creepy teaser image for the anime anthology based on Junji Ito stories:

• Universal Studios Japan is doing attractions based on Sadako and School of Ghosts from September 9 to November 5.

• A dub trailer for Space Patrol Luluco:

• With Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters out this November, it seems like a good time for Kong on the Planet of the Apes. I guess that’s what Boom is thinking, because otherwise this (like any PotA crossover) is sort of weird.

That’s a wrap, I think. Let us know what all may be missing!

Maser Patrol podcast episode 33D: Cthulhu Mythos in Japan (Part 4)

With the first of of Gou Tanabe’s HP Lovecraft manga adaptations, The Hound & Other Stories, fresh on US bookstore shelves, it seems like a good time to get a crash course on the impact of Lovecraft on Japanese genre fiction, and, of course, kaiju. Justin previously wrote the articles “The Cthulhu Mythos in Japan” and “Robot Lords of Tokyo: Lovecraftian Anime” for the Lovecraft ezine, so we sat down for a chat… which wound up taking eight hours! It sounds like folks prefer bite-sized recordings, so that’s been split up into four chapters for convenience.

Direct download

Covered in Part 4:

• Demonbane
• Song of Saya
• Nyaruko: Crawling With Love
• Project Nemesis
• Kaijumax
• Gou Tanabe’s adaptations

Of course, there’s plenty else out there that we neglected to mention.

• the upcoming Force of Will movie
• the claymation HP Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror and Other Stories
• the hentai Mystery of the Necronomicon
• the Moe Moe Cthulhu Mythos Dictionary
• Princess Resurrection, whose opening credits starts with “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange eons even death may die.”
• Bungo Stray Dogs, which has a character named after Lovecraft, who can turn into a tentacle monster

The list goes on, but after eight hours it does get a little exhausting! The main point is, there’s quite a lot of influence to have, and like Nyarlathotep, it takes many forms.

Maser Patrol podcast episode 33C: Cthulhu Mythos in Japan (Part 3)

With the first of of Gou Tanabe’s HP Lovecraft manga adaptations, The Hound & Other Stories, fresh on US bookstore shelves, it seems like a good time to get a crash course on the impact of Lovecraft on Japanese genre fiction, and, of course, kaiju. Justin previously wrote the articles “The Cthulhu Mythos in Japan” and “Robot Lords of Tokyo: Lovecraftian Anime” for the Lovecraft ezine, so we sat down for a chat… which wound up taking eight hours! It sounds like folks prefer bite-sized recordings, so that’s been split up into four chapters for convenience.

Direct download

Covered in Part 3:

• Necronomicon
• Godzilla at World’s End
• Godzilla vs. Cthulhu in Famous Monsters of Filmland
• Is Pacific Rim a Lovecraftian movie?
• Archangel Thunderbird
• Junji Ito – Uzumaki and The Thing that Drifted Ashore
• Ken Asamatsu
• Queen of K’n-Yan
• Lairs of the Hidden Gods
• Daimajin Adventure

Maser Patrol podcast episode 33B: Cthulhu Mythos in Japan (Part 2)

With the first of of Gou Tanabe’s HP Lovecraft manga adaptations, The Hound & Other Stories, fresh on US bookstore shelves, it seems like a good time to get a crash course on the impact of Lovecraft on Japanese genre fiction, and, of course, kaiju. Justin previously wrote the articles “The Cthulhu Mythos in Japan” and “Robot Lords of Tokyo: Lovecraftian Anime” for the Lovecraft ezine, so we sat down for a chat… which wound up taking eight hours! It sounds like folks prefer bite-sized recordings, so that’s been split up into four chapters for convenience.

Direct download

Covered in Part 2:

• Masumune Shirow’s Orion
• Chiaki J Konaka’s works: Terror Rate, Shadow over Innsmouth, Marebito, Big O, Digimon Tamers, Armitage III
• Midnight Meat Train
• Lovecraft in Ultraman

Shinji Nishikawa’s “Cthul Fight” is a parody of Ultra Fight.

Maser Patrol podcast episode 33A: Cthulhu Mythos in Japan (Part 1)

With the first of of Gou Tanabe’s HP Lovecraft manga adaptations, The Hound & Other Stories, fresh on US bookstore shelves, it seems like a good time to get a crash course on the impact of Lovecraft on Japanese genre fiction, and, of course, kaiju. Justin previously wrote the articles “The Cthulhu Mythos in Japan” and “Robot Lords of Tokyo: Lovecraftian Anime” for the Lovecraft ezine, so we sat down for a chat… which wound up taking eight hours! It sounds like folks prefer bite-sized recordings, so that’s been split up into four chapters for convenience.

Direct download

Covered in Part 1:

• Who was HP Lovecraft? What is Cthulhu Mythos?
• When was the mythos introduced to Japan, and why would it resonate?
• Footsteps of the Underground
• Matango
• Yokai Hunter
• Eko Eko Azarak
• Iczer 1
• The Challenger to Great Old Ones
• Megami Tensei

Check out a whole series of Lovecraft-inspired ukyoe prints here!

RIP Haruo Nakajima (1929-2017)

Celebrity Icons reported the passing of Haruo Nakajima this morning. It’s not entirely unexpected; he was 88 and had been ill for some time, and lost his wife in January of this year. However, in our minds he will always remain a totem of strength and exuberance.

For lack of a better term, Nakajima was a badass. Monster costumes are hundreds of pounds of wire and latex, suffocating under regular circumstances, but under hot studio lights, with dust and smoke all around, they’re veritable death traps. The tone with which Nakajima would cheerfully reminisce about when he plummeted to the floor after the wires snapped during Rodan, the scars he took to the stomach from pyrotechnics during Varan the Unbelievable, and all the times he nearly drowned in a waterlogged kaiju suit would chill even the hardest stunt men. Bin Furuya recalls being terrified of him, and Hurricane Ryu went so far as to make him the antagonist in his suit acting manga.

He’s always been quite forthcoming about his roles, and thus has taken on a celebrity role unparalleled among suit actors. He did photo ops throughout his 20-year career, had multiple figures made of him, and even played a pastiche of himself on an episode of the 1967 show He of the Sun. In recent years, in spite of declining health, he made a concerted effort to travel the world and meet fans across it, and we as enthusiasts of his work truly appreciate it.

Nakajima was one of the last lynchpins remaining from the creation of the 1954 Godzilla, and continued playing the monster for 12 movies. He defined the role and played it more than anyone else; he was Godzilla. He was also Rodan, Gaira, Baragon (Pagos, Gabora, and Neronga included), Kiyla, King Kong, Mogera, Matango, Gezora, Ganimes, Kroiga, U-tom, the Invisible Man, the H-man, Magma, larval Mothra, the Meganuron, the Kemur alien, bat men, giant rats, and, of course, Jirass and Gomess. That’s on top of other bit parts and regular stunt work, where you can see him pop up in everything from Submersion of Japan to The Seven Samurai. For playing so many wonderful roles and serving to establish an entire medium of suit acting, we thank him, and his boundless energy and joy that he brought to every interaction with his fans will be sorely missed.

Weekly news recap: Netflix whets our appetite

With a new batch of Voltron: Legendary Defender episodes hitting this weekend and a Death Note film in three weeks, it’s a good time for otaku to pay attention to Netflix. Evidently they concur, since a lot of new projects were announced last Wednesday:

• A new trailer for Devilman crybaby, giving us a first glimpse at how the human characters will be rendered.

• Just when we all assumed it had been quietly cancelled, Sword Gai has been confirmed for spring, simulcast via Netflix. Anything Keita Amemiya is a cause for excitement, and I hope this also prompts Viz to release the manga stateside.

• A 12-episode CG series based on Saint Seiya is also on the way. The Legend of Sanctuary movie was alright, so there’s some potential here, but I also sort of think they should just show the original.

• Netflix also picked up Cannon Busters (thankfully that’s getting a full series), and the new Baki adaptation. This is going to keep us busy!

Other news:

• Pacific Rim: Uprising has been delayed a month to March 23. That’s sort of a bummer, but hopefully it means more time to work on the end product.
• The City Shrouded in Shadow confirmed Ultraman Tiga, Kyrieloid, Shamshel, Gyaos, Mothra, and Battra. No huge surprises there.

That’s really it for this week; it’s been a short one!

News recap for 7/30

It’s a relatively short-&-sweet news recap this week!

• Congratulations to Shin Godzilla for winning best presentation at the Seiun Awards! This is the first time anything Godzilla has won (though Gamera movies won back-to-back in 1996 and 1997). Another pleasant surprise, Yasumi Kobayashi’s Ultraman F won for best novel, the second Seiun win for the Ultraman franchise (after Ultraman Tiga won in 1998), hopefully this raises interest in getting it localized!

• Toku has picked up three more Ultra shows for streaming in August: Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle, and Neo Ultra Q, and Ultraman Zero: The Chronicles. It’s great that they’re bringing this stuff out, but I am a little concerned about lack of QA: Notice how they call Gomora “Gamora” in the trailer? Also, I’ve seen no less than three outlets refer to Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle as “Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster”, which says to me that they screwed up the press release. The shows themselves are great, though, and this will probably beat HK bootleg subs, if nothing else.

• A trailer for Takashi Yamazaki’s Destiny: Kamakura Story. It’s based on Ryohei Saigan’s manga from 2000, basically a yokai mystery. I guess Yamazaki had such a good time with Sunset on Third Street that he decided to keep the Saigan adaptation train rolling.

• A PV for the upcoming Thunderbolt Fantasy: Shoshi Ikken side story. No release date, yet, but we can’t wait.

• After years of radio silence, a crude poster was posted for the final Evangelion rebuild movie. Moyocco Anno also provided story for a video explaining the ten-year history of Studio Khara leading up to the present, which is a pretty amusing watch.

• Wonder Festival was this weekend. Plenty of figure prototypes were on display, but the highlights that really stuck out to us were the Nendoroid Lina Inverse, X-Plus King Kong, Max Gokin manga version of Zeorymer, and a whole line of kyodai hero toys.

• The Digimon Adventure tri stage play has a new form of Vamdemon. I sort of hope they don’t have him return in the actual show; he’s a great mid-level villain who suffers from constant later attempts to make him the ultimate antagonist.

• Remember that Kamata-kun cell phone case that was an April Fools’ prank? This one is real.

• Toyota’s M78x86 has an appropriate spokesman:

• A new Infini T Force poster. Hope this turns out well!

• Apparently BraveStorm is still in need of funding, with only a couple months before its theatrical run. Crowdfunding is going now; donate if you want your name in the credits!

That’s a wrap for now! Back to watching silly shark movies on Syfy….

Thoughts on Monster Attack Team #12 (1st Edition)

Monster Attack Team is the best English-language magazine on the subject of tokusatsu, so it’s always an event when a new issue comes out. Thus, as soon as I heard about the twelfth installment hitting at a release party earlier in the month, I was on a mission to procure it.

It turns out, the version printed for said party is a preliminary edition, and changes are still being made to the final version. Nevertheless, being the impatient soul that I am, I reached out to Ed Holland and got him to send me his very last copy (so, sorry to anyone else who wants it immediately!). As this is a preliminary version, I don’t know what may change with the updated edition that goes to mass distribution, but one can guess. For example, this issue has completely clean cover art, while previous ones tend to have more text about the content of the issue splashing the cover:

Now, about the contents!

• Kevin Grays has an article about Triple Fighter, a show that’s long stuck in the Goldilocks zone of obscurity by being better than Redman but worse than Ultraman. This may be the most ever written about the show in English.
• Ed Holland wrote about Katokutai, who are, of course, awesome. It’s not a long article, but the full-page photos of the band in concert are gorgeous.
• Roger Snider wrote about artistic customization of trucks in Japan, a subject that I likely would not have heard about elsewhere.
• Mark Jaramillo wrote a piece about Katto Pro’s Atragon 2 fanfilm with lots of great images and background. One of the highlights of the issue, that’s the sort of stuff you won’t find anywhere else!
• A look at some of the female-targeted kaiju crafts that Adrian’s Attic is concocting.
• J.L. Carrozza’s review of the woefully-banned Prophecies of Nostradamus, complete with a rundown of every incarnation ever made officially available.
• A photo set from the Yokohama Broadcast Museum’s Ultraman exhibition. Photography was prohibited when I went, so I’m betting these photos in MAT are one of the best looks at what all was inside!
• A similar photo set for Kaiju Sakaba. This issue is certainly heavy on the full-page photographs!
• Marc Walkow gives blurbs about Wolf Guy and Doberman Cop, since Arrow is releasing both this year on Blu-ray.
• Montse Avila gives a brief review of Shin Godzilla from the perspective of someone who has never seen a Godzilla movie before. It’s an interesting choice for an editorial, but an important reminder for those of us so immersed in the fandom: this is the most successful Godzilla movie in five decades, therefore for a lot of people this likely is their first exposure to the franchise.
• David McRobie gives a lengthy review of Kamen Rider Hibiki. Likely the most this show has been discussed in an English-language magazine as well.
• A photo tour of Toho. I imagine these may be moved around a little for the final version, since in this edition it’s all one photo per page.
• A look at the Big Godzilla Special Effects Kingdom exhibit in Yokohama. It looks pretty similar to the Hiroshima one.
• Beautiful artwork from Hiroshi Kanatani and Ellis Luu. I want them to publish art books!

Overall, my first impression is that this is a little more image-heavy than prior issues, but that’s not a bad thing; there’s still educational content to be found even for the seasoned tokusatsu veteran. I’m curious to see how the next edition of issue 12 compares, and will keep an eye on the Monster Attack Team Facebook page to see when it’s available!

Two-week news recap, plus G-Fest and SDCC!

There was no news recap last weekend because of G-Fest, which means we’ve got a doozy for this week, especially with SDCC ongoing. First I want to give a quick recap of some of the G-Fest highlights:

• My two panels went relatively well, the first one was the better of the two (my laptop started, plus I wasn’t sleep-deprived for that one!). Both are up on YouTube now (check episodes 31 and 32 under the “Podcast” tab of this page), so you can get a decent recreation (apologies for some of the audio getting drowned out while clips play). Of course, there was plenty I intended to say but forgot (like how Shin Godzilla uses imagery from The Little Prince and the Eight Headed Dragon, or the Nautilus in Nadia looks like the Moonlight SY3), but generally they hit the big notes. Also, thanks to Kyle at Kaijucast and Matt & Byrd at Kaiju Transmissions for the on-air shout-outs, and everyone reposting links the videos!
• It was great to see Shinji Higuchi’s talk, especially since, for the sake of comparison, he’s giving a talk at the show in Nagoya this weekend that you had to get lottery tickets a month ago for the *chance* to attend. G-Fest makes it much, much easier. Anyway, he talked a lot about his involvement in Return of Godzilla, gave some anecdotes about Orochi’s Counterattack, and then leapt straight into Shin Godzilla (he only had an hour, he probably needed three).
  He started off by talking about how no American military characters were killed in the movie (I guess he’d heard buzz about the movie being interpreted as anti-American?), but the big bombshell (despite him already mentioning this at Famous Monsters Con in Dallas earlier) was that Toho can’t make Godzilla movies while Legendary has one in development, hence Shin Godzilla getting rushed to a summer 2016 release. (Whether the anime movies are a loophole because they are animated, or because Legendary pushed back their sequel a year remains unclear.) Also, Legendary’s rights expire in 2020, which is some interesting inside-baseball.
• Kiyotaka Taguchi’s panel was great, especially the two Tetsudon: Kaiju Dream Match shorts he debuted there. He did start the show with an entire episode of Ultraman X, which might have been overboard since it really ate into Q-&-A time, presumably because he didn’t know that the show is simulcast here.

• I didn’t get to see Yuji Kaida present, but he had a booth in the dealers’ room, so it was great to go up and attempt some compliments in my garbage-level Japanese (Amanda wasn’t able to attend this year). Kaida is a hero, and my first exposure to Ultra Q was actually from looking through his art books.
• Lots of good finds in Artists’ Alley, including Hiroshi Kanatani’s print of the convention getting destroyed and Matt Frank’s Gamera doujinshi!

• Kaiju Gaiden is always a good time, but this year had some extra-special treats: screenings of Koichi Kawakita’s final projects (including The God of Clay!), and a trailer for the long-awaited Kaiju Gaiden documentary (which may have a different final English title, it sounds like). A slightly different version of the trailer will be shown at SDCC at 1 today!

• As always, there were lots of other great panels, and one’s primary problem at G-Fest is picking between them. Ed Godziszewski and Steve Ryfle had a great one on their Ishiro Honda biography (learning that Honda’s in-laws were initially hostile makes a lot of sense considering the recurring theme of women going against family in his films), John Lemay gave an excellent rundown of some of the unmade projects covered in his new book, Tony Isabella talked at length about Marvel and Syfy monsters, Joyce Boss did a riveting presentation on yokai in Japanese culture, the Kaiju Transmissions crew did a bang-up job talking about Gamera vs. Gyaos. Matt Greenfield even showed up and did a presentation on Garo, completely unannounced, and I’m super stoked to see that show finally getting some promotion stateside. I’m sure there are others that I’m forgetting, but it’s a whirlwind of a weekend!

And of course, the real joy of the con is getting to meet and shoot the breeze with fellow fans; hope to see you all next year as well!

And then we get to SDCC, going on right now. Andy’s out at that one, sending a steady feed of info my way!

• We got a teaser for Pacific Rim: Uprising! It’s certainly a tease; no kaiju in sight.

On that note, the Robot Spirits figures for the film were also on display at the show [pic swiped from Matt Frank]:

• The third season of Voltron: Legendary Defender is hitting Netflix August 4, but the fourth season is fast to follow in October!

• Legendary is going out of their way to push Kong: Skull Island, with a large display of Kong bones, among other things. I guess the idea is to keep it fresh in people’s minds, since it’s already out on home video. On a side note, the Monarch Twitter page posted this today:

• No hints at Leopardon, Kiryu, or Ultraman in this Ready Player One trailer, but it’s promising from what is included. If nothing else, expect an Akira Easter egg…

• Shout Factory confirmed their release of Gingaman for some time after Megaranger.

• Hasbro is making an Optimus Prime that the designer says will take 40 minutes to transform. That’s got to test one’s patience, but dang if they’re not putting work into it!
• Square has a toyline based on Xenogears in the works.

Other news:

• A full trailer for Albatross’s Red Baron/Silver Mask reimagining BraveStorm has been posted! A teaser went up a few months back and got taken down pretty quickly, but since this one is still up (and it’s due for a fall theatrical run) I guess they sorted out whatever the issue was there. Anyway, it looks awesome; hope it’s made available widely! (On that note, does Mill Creek still have the rights to Silver Mask? If so, they should make that happen.)

• A Chinese movie title Dragon Force: So Long Ultraman, presumably part of a larger “Dragon Force” franchise that I know nothing about, debuted a trailer recently featuring its own heroes interacting with our favorite red-&-silver icon, and even had an awkward talk show promotion by a dude in body paint. One problem: The producers, Blue Arc, got the rights from Chaiyo, so predictably Tsuburaya was not happy about the whole thing. The trailer has since been removed (it also used some music from Fist of the North Star, so there could be other rights issues there), but the internet will always remember. Sort of a shame that the project got this far along before crashing, but maybe it’ll make a good chapter in a future lost films book.

• Kamen Rider Build has been revealed from toy catalogs, and it seems to be riffing on a motif from Kamen Rider W: change out one of two components at a time. This time, they seem to be themed as animal+device (see Rabbit Tank below), so I really hope we get Gorilla Guillotine at some point.

• This poster for Garo: Kami no Kiba has some returning faces that we’ve been anxiously awaiting!

• Takeshi Obata did art for the American Death Note movie, reviews of which should be materializing soon since it screened at SDCC.

• The 2017 version of The Mummy has inspired a four-part manga anthology from various artists titled The Mummy: Dark Stories. Being based on a Hollywood property (albeit sort of a flop), it’d be great if it eventually got a US release as well!

• If you’ve ever wanted to crowdfund a life-size balloon version of Mazinger Z, here’s the campaign for you. I sort of imagine Koji sitting in a bouncy-house version of a cockpit, now.
• Tomorrow Studios is allegedly working on an American live-action TV series based on One Piece. I’ll believe it when I see it, but skepticism is running high.
• Another Fullmetal Alchemist trailer:

• Toku has started streaming Ultraman Neos via Amazon.
• Kyuuranger is getting a four episode spinoff miniseries titled High School Wars, pretty much an excuse to see the cast in school uniforms.
• A new anime for Basilisk is in the works, taking place ten years after the original… almost in real time!

• William Winckler is doing English dubs for the Ultraman Zero trilogy. Again, mostly hoping this leads to a home video release.
• Planet-G is developing a turn-based monster RPG for PC: Daikaiju Daikessen. The designs look neat; good luck to them!

• A French live-action movie of City Hunter is in the works, directed by and starring  Philippe Lacheau. Given what radical departures the Hong Kong and Korean versions were, who knows what France may bring to it?
• Kotobukiya has a bishoujo statue of Ask from Evil Dead 2 in production. Their other horror character revisionings have been a little hard to swallow, but this one…works really well. When can we get a full series with girl Ash?

Whew! That’s a lot! Anyway, as always leave a comment if something got left out. Otherwise, look forward to some special coverage of something else mentioned in this recap, coming soon….

Maser Patrol podcast episode 32: “Kaiju Manga Raids Again” at G-Fest XXIV

This is a sequel to last year’s manga presentation at G-Fest; it might be a good idea to watch that one first.

The slides don’t quite match the audio because of some technical difficulties, so this is a reconstruction of sorts.

As for other issues…well, it was the first panel on Sunday morning. I was a little frazzled and mangled some Japanese here and there. I promise the other ones are better. I said to watch the other manga one first, right?

Maser Patrol podcast episode 31: “Kaiju Anime” at G-Fest XXIV

G-Fest was last weekend, and I got to give two talks! This is the better of the two, being less sleep-deprived and less plagued by technical difficulties, but the other one should also be showing up online within a few days as well!

Oh, and for the record, yes, Michiru Oshima did the music for M78: Love & Peace (good catch, audience!), the 31st episode of Digimon Adventure has the Godzilla vs. Hedorah sequence in it, and I need to learn to say “GunBot” instead of “GunBorg”.

Japlanet of the Apes

2017 is a great year for fans of Hollywood cinema who also happen to be Japanese pop culture junkies, as the two industries intersect quite a lot. There are plenty of obvious crossover points (Rings, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Power Rangers, Midnight Sun), as well as less-obvious huge, iconic multimedia franchises that straddle the Pacific (Transformers: the Last Knight, Valerian and the City of 1000 Planets, the thus-far untitled Cloverfield sequel, the myriad Marvel and DC adaptations). As we’ve done with King Kong and with Star Wars, I thought it might be fun to look at the footprint one of these pop-culture juggernauts left on the land of the rising sun: Planet of the Apes. If you’ve never seen any of the movies, check them out, ’cause here be spoilers.

For personal giggles, I put a Dragonball Z scouter on my DVD-set/bust of Caesar from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It’s a good nerd cred litmus test: the tech is introduced in the DBZ as equipment used by the Saiyans, a group of savage simian aliens who overthrew the more advanced species that used to rule their planet. I’m not sure if Akira Toriyama was drawing on the PotA saga for that backstory (the heyday of its mania had long passed), but when the movies first got released in Japan they certainly made a splash.

The first movie hit Japan less than two months after its US premiere, and some were surprised that the film made it that far. The original novel is by Pierre Boulle, most famous for The Bridge on the River Kwai, who, while not a POW himself, possibly harbored some resentment about the way the Japanese treated their captives during the second world war (though the Planet of the Apes novel is much more a spoof of French society). As a result, the original Planet of the Apes is often read as an allegory for Japanese prison camps, but if the intent was to make something anti-Japanese, perhaps the production wouldn’t have hired Fuminori Ohashi (who’d worked on previous Japanese King Kong flicks) as a makeup consultant. ¹ At any rate, the film’s release was also a generation removed from wartime, so the relatively young target audience would be ignorant of such symbolism, even if it was intentional. They saw a fun, gripping sci-fi adventure with a cautionary twist ending (which would become a big theme in the decade of cinema to follow), and they loved it.

The movie had two separate manga adaptations: a 63-page treatment by Johji Enami in Bohken Oh (often listed as the “Adventure King” version), simultaneous with the film’s release, and a 250 page graphic novel by Minoru Kuroda for Manga Tengoku released in 1971. Enami had a background in adapting Tsuburaya’s Ultra works, and interestingly enough would go on to adapt Saru no Gundan into manga form. Possibly to avoid spoiling the impact of the then-current movie, the film’s iconic final shot is omitted, and the story ends with our protagonists riding into the sunset on horseback.

Kuroda, on the other hand, was a horror mangaka by trade, and his manga adaptation includes some grotesque embellishments, such as two human heads sewn together onto the same topless torso in a cruel medical experiment by the apes (NSFW, obviously).

The four sequel films each hit Japan within two months of their respective US debuts, and the live-action TV series hit Fuji TV the spring after its US finale. The various English-language novelizations were translated into Japanese as well, but the only other Japan-original work I’m aware of is Mitsuru Sugaya’s manga adaptation of Battle for Planet of the Apes, the final entry in the original series and the one that most directly catered to Japanese audiences. ²  I particularly love how Caesar’s hair comes to a point in the back in this manga, it’s very much in line with manga heroes like Koji Kabuto and Cyborg 009. (No surprise there that Sugaya was one of Shotaro Ishinomori’s disciples.)

Of course, to really gauge how popular something is, one has to look at its imitators. The first of these is Space Apeman Gori, a 1971 giant hero show generally regarded as the first of the “henshin” boom of transforming superhero dramas, also known as the second kaiju boom. Unlike similar hero shows, Space Apeman Gori‘s title character is the villain, a mad scientist from planet E, along with Gori’s henchman Lla. (This proved an awkward move, so after episode 20 the hero character was incorporated into the title as Space Apeman Gori vs. Spectreman, and after episode 40 it was simply retitled to Spectreman.) The primate invaders were notably not part of the original concept for the show (in the pilot version called “Jaguarman“), but were specifically added by Souji Ushio in response to Planet of the Apes. Gori has an iconic look to him, as his gorilla face clashes brilliantly with well-kept blonde locks and a pink jumpsuit, memorable enough to grace the cover of Tokusatsu Hihou‘s second issue as recently as 2015.

The show was a success in Japan and abroad, as one of the big four kaiju shows aired in the US (along with Johnny Sokko, Space Giants, and Ultraman), and along with Super Sentai inspired a parody in France called Léguman. The duo of Gori and Lla (without Spectreman) also made a significant appearance at the end of Yudai Yamaguchi’s Cromartie High School movie in 2005. Finally, it would be negligent not to mention that Gori was the inspiration for The Powerpuff Girls‘ chief antagonist, Mojo Jojo.

Japan wasn’t done with apish aliens after Spectreman wrapped, though. 1974’s Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla introduced one in a long line of nefarious invaders to that franchise, and, like the cockroach aliens in Godzilla vs. Gigan, the aliens from “the Third Planet from the Black Hole” revert to their true form upon receiving injury. Not content with a single invasion, these baddies return in 1975’s Terror of Mechagodzilla, the Dark Horse Godzilla comics run in 1995 (again with a giant robot, making them and Shokirus the only returning characters from the films), and in IDW’s Godzilla Legends in 2012.

The most transparent attempt to exploit PotA imagery, though, came in the form of Tsuburaya’s 1974 TV series Saru no Gundan (“Army of the Apes”), which ran in Japan roughly concurrently with the US broadcast of the Planet of the Apes TV series. Tsuburaya was no stranger to ape aliens (Ultraseven had one back in 1967, after all), but this show goes with the straight-up super-evolved earthling variety, with a group of humans going into cryogenic suspended animation and awakening to the world run by chimps (this show has violent chimpanzees and chill gorillas, which is more biologically accurate). While the outrageous fashion that the apes don dates the show firmly to the 1970s, it did okay for itself on release, especially since it was up against Heidi and Space Battleship Yamato in the same time slot. Toys, manga, sonorama, board games, and more were produced, and the show squeaked out a respectable 26 episodes, but never did Ultraman numbers. It’d be nice if it got picked up by Crunchyroll or Toku just to add some variety to the available Tsuburaya programming; the only English translation is a messy compilation film from Sandy Frank titled Time of the Apes, never released on DVD and best known for its treatment on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Shotaro Ishinomori’s 1977 manga Jun (which is quite a trip) has a potential visual nod to the first movie, but it’s in a vague, artsy enough context that it *could* have been arrived at independently. Other stories with time-slips to post-human futures, such as The Drifting Classroom and Prime Rose, are sometimes presented in relation to Planet of the Apes, but honestly that’s a stretch, since even H.G. Wells was laying the groundwork for that template well beforehand.

Speaking on Ishinomori, his 1978 show Message from Space: Galaxy Wars had an ape-man in the primary cast, though that was quite possibly also influenced by Chewbacca from Star Wars.

Without new movies coming from Hollywood, it seems the Apes’ popularity had run its course. The only further influenced work I can think of is the 1989 anime movie Garaga (which is a little hard to search for since it uses the same spelling in Japanese as the popular video game Galaga). The movie has astronauts crash on a planet filled with dinosaurs, psychics, and ape men in distinctly medieval-looking armor. It was made by some of the same animation staff that worked on Thundercats, which one can sort of see in the aesthetics. It’s… well, it’s not that great of a film, to be honest.

Nowadays, we have an entire new series of Planet of the Apes films, and it’s hard to say quite what their eventual impact will be. (If nothing else, Asian Kung-Fu Generation released a song called “Planet of the Apes” in 2015.) It’s neat to watch the franchise evolve on the western front, but I hope we see some Japanese-made manga adaptations, spin-offs, and imitators in the future. It’s tradition, after all!

…by the way, why are you all telling me to watch Kemono Friends?

________________________________________________________

¹ It might also be worth noting that director Franklin J. Schaffner was a veteran of the Pacific side of the war, but he was also born in Tokyo and lived there for a good chunk of his childhood. Meanwhile, screenwriter Rod Serling had contributed to a banned Twilight Zone episode about the plight of Japanese Americans, and by all accounts was much more concerned with allegories for domestic race relations and nuclear proliferation within the Apes script.

² For nearly a decade, importing the Japanese laserdisc was *the* best way to watch the series, as deleted scenes such as bomb bits of Battle for the Planet of the Apes were only viewable that way. Battle also had scenes filmed specifically for the Japanese audience, upping the violence to suit the tastes of 1970s audiences, for a total of about 10 extra minutes of footage. Conquest of Planet of the Apes also had more bloody scenes for Japanese audiences, and thankfully those versions are now available in the west.

Weekly news recap: Planet of the Monsters trailer, City Shrouded in Patlabor, Gridman anime, and more!

It’ll be a major news recap this week, as a greater-than-average number of exciting Japanese-related genre fiction tidbits have materialized in the past seven days!

• Not to bury the lead, we now have a trailer for Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters!

The avian creature in the trailer is a “Servum”, a creature mutated from Godzilla’s DNA. Since there are the bird-type and worm-type Servums (or would the plural be Serva?) in official descriptions, I’m guessing this will be a catch-all term like “MUTO”. A non-Godzilla-like Godzilla spawn is causing some consternation in fan circles, but it doesn’t seem that different from Biollante and others. Here’s hoping it makes an impression in the film itself!

• Crunchyroll waited to announce this until less than an hour before the stream went live, but they picked up Ultraman Geed! Whew, Tsuburaya’s recent dealings with Toku were making me a little nervous about this one. Anyway, the first episode is great.

• Remember how most folks were interpreted the “highly mobile” addition to The City Shrouded in Shadow as Mobile Suit Gundam? Nope, it was Mobile Police Patlabor! In retrospect, that shouldn’t be as surprising, given the recent revival of Patlabor in both anime and live action, but since Gundam is still top dog (and has had previous video games crossing over with Ultraman and Godzilla), this is still a bit of a pleasant shock. Also, we have a trailer.

• Seven Seas continues to do virtual magic tricks: this time they licensed Getter Robo Devolution by Ultraman duo Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi! I wonder if they’ll pull a Devilman and bring over the original manga as well? Either way, it’s cool to get the first official English Getter manga release since the Venger Robo days.

• After the awesome Gridman short as part of the Japan Animator Expo, Trigger has announced it as an entire series! If it holds the same quality as the short, it’ll be fantastic, and hopefully also lead to a translation of the original. Also, the Kill La Kill team of Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kazuki Nakashima are doing a new series called Promare.

• A new Garo movie, Kami no Kiba, has been announced for a 2018 release. This one again features Ryuga… is that movie with Raiga as the lead still happening?

• A trailer for Toonami’s new FLCL sequels:

• Gainax announced a trilogy of movies based on Leiji Matsumoto properties at Japan Expo in Paris. Very crafty of them to promote this Zero Century project in the land of Albator.

• We got our first trailer for the live-action Bleach movie. The anime and manga suffer from getting re-written to suit the tastes of character polls, so maybe a movie would hold up better?

• A batch of new jaeger designs, in Chogokin form, for Pacific Rim: Uprising, from Tamashii Nations:

• To go along with Gaira, Bandai has a Sanda figure on the way. Again, a webshop exclusive for 4000 yen.

• A little more info about the Kamen Rider W sequel: it’s titled Futo Detectives, and is a manga published in Big Comic Spirits (called it!), with art by Masaki Satou.

• Yusuke Murata can make anything look good, as evidenced by this Power Rangers poster:

• Stan Winston School has a course in making kaiju suits and miniature buildings. Let’s hope it facilitates an entire new generation of practical effects giant monster movies!

• An ad for DC Super Heroes vs. Eagle Talon, which is sure to usurp Wonder Woman as the best DC movie in years:

• One more Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure trailer. Last one until the next movie, I promise.

• The Megazone 23 Sin crowdfunding campaign is underway… not looking too promising so far.

• Another reboot of The Grudge is in the works. For these Americanized kaidan franchises, is there really any difference between a sequel and a reboot?

Whew! That’s a lot! As always, leave a comment if there are any glaring omissions.

Also: No update next weekend due to G-Fest. Anyone going, hope to see you at the anime/manga panels; otherwise just stop us anywhere to say hi!

Maser Patrol podcast episode 30: The Fantastic Films of Nobuhiko Obayashi

In this episode, Kevin and Benji have a chat about the wild genre filmography of the mad genius behind some iconic (yet under-represented stateside) Japanese fantasy flicks. If you read those A Space Godzilla translations (parts 1 & 2) and wondered what was up with its creator, here you can hear about a few of his works and get a taste for his eccentric style.

Download link

Weekend news recap: Book recommendations, Blu-ray preorders, movie trailers, and more!

Back to the weekend for the news recap once again; there shouldn’t be another interruption like that until… Oh, gosh, G-Fest is in less than two weeks! Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of neat Japanese science fiction happenings from the past 10 days:

• John Lemay’s new book, The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: The Lost Films, was released this week. The newly-covered (in English-language publications) material and attention to detail in this volume is a remarkable step above the two previous volumes (which were already pretty informative), making this the most exciting English-accessible informational tome on kaiju eiga to come out in several years, and a hearty recommendation to above-cursory fans of Japanese giant monsters.
  (In full disclosure, several contributors to the book are friends of this ‘blog, and we get cited as one of the copious sources within it.)

• Speaking of publications, the 12th issue of Monster Attack Team is only a week away. They’re having a release party in San Diego on the 7th.

• And while we’re at it, I’ll also go ahead and mention that the essay collection Giant Creatures in Our World is likewise up for preorder, for release November 1. Frequent Maser Patrol contributor Justin Mullis has a section on some of the loftier thematics of Ultraman!

• Continuing the list of stuff to buy, Dragon Dentist is getting a US home video release on Halloween day. It looks like the original Animator Expo short isn’t included, which is sort of a bummer.

• The first half of the first season of Garo is finally up for preorder, with a release date of October 17. If you can’t wait, it’s currently streaming on HIDIVE as well.

• Speaking of unexpected streams, Aoi Honoh is now legally streaming on Viki, under the pun-less title “Blue Fire”. It’s one of the best comedy shows of the decade, so hopefully this brings it to a few more viewers.

• A proper trailer is out for Adam Wingard’s Death Note movie. It’s already getting flack for deviations from the source material, but it looks pretty faithful to the spirit of Death Note to me.

• The Ajin movie looks much better than the anime.

• Here’s a trailer for Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Before We Vanish, which is at least nominally about alien body-snatchers.

• This PV for Symphogear AXZ showcases the new opening theme:

• Riku Sanjo is working on a Kamen Rider W sequel, likely in the form of a novel or manga. It’s probably be difficult to get the actors back for something on-screen, but my money’s on this being serialized by Shogakukan.

• Something of Junji Ito’s is soon getting an anime adaptation. He’s been weirdly underrepresented in animation, aside from Gyo, and I guess part of Steven Universe.

• Finally, here’s Redking and Zetton selling washing machines:

That’s a wrap for this week; I better get back to preparing for panels!

Scanlation: Miss Kano’s Disgrace (1992, Shinji Nishikawa)

With G-Fest on the horizon once again, Amanda has outdone herself and provided another translation of an overlooked Godzilla manga! This time it’s Godzilla-artist-extraordinaire Shinji Nishikawa‘s short story “Miss Kano’s Disgrace” from the anthology Gigantis the Fire Comic. It’s a comedic take on our favorite Futurians.

Download Link

Again, we’re presenting this story here since the source anthology is long out of print (a few used copies are still available), and highly unlikely to ever get picked up for English-language distribution. Still, if IDW, Viz, or another company does decide to do an official English translation, please toss these and support the official release! As with the other translation, there were numerous other stories in this anthology worth checking out as well.

Like the previous manga scanlations, the chapter is presented in its original right-to-left reading format.

Translation notes are included in the actual file this time, but here they are as well:

• The title is a pun on the L’umiliazione di Canossa, or “The Humiliation of Canossa”. We thought that “The Humiliation of Kano-san” sounded awkward (and a little porny) in English, so we went with “Miss Kano’s Disgrace” instead.

This is obviously a parody of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, but there are some other pop-cultural references throughout as well. Needless to say, if you haven’t seen Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah and Godzilla vs. Biollante, watch those first.

• Page 2: Cameos from MechaniKong from King Kong Escapes and a guy that looks like Sanda from War of the Gargantuas.
• Page 8: The Futurians popping out of a drawer is a reference to Japan’s favorite robot cat from the future, Doraemon. Doraemon has a variety of high-tech gadgets, such as the “Anywhere Door” alluded to on the page.
• Page 9: The “Time Furoshiki” is another one of Doraemon’s gadgets.
• Page 10: If you haven’t seen Invasion of Astro Monster, stop reading and go watch it.
• Page 15: Wilson and Grenchko say “Arahora Saucer”, a nonsense phrase which is how Boyacky and Tonzler respond to orders in Yatterman. We went with “One Two Yes Sir” because existing Yatterman translations use it.
• Page 15: Satellite FAHPs are a reference to the Markalite FAHPs from The Mysterians.
• Page 18: Moonlight SY-3 is from Destroy All Monsters.
• Page 30: 110 is the Japanese equivalent of 911.

Itching for more? This isn’t the last “Miss Kano” story that Nishikawa did; it was followed up in 1993 with “Godzilla Raids Again – Miss Kano’s Vindication”. It looks pretty amusing as well.

Another midweek news recap

I’ve got some downtime now, and since the last news recap was during the middle of the week, this seems like an appropriate time to summarize.

As you maybe recall from last week, Annecy was going on, hence an addendum within a couple hours to show off the Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters title monster silhouette. That was far from the only neat animation stuff to hit around that time, however:

• The Genco booth at Annecy gave us a confirmation of the existence of and first look at Patlabor EZY. The visual is certainly evocative of the poster for the first Patlabor movie! Kazunori Ito is writing for it, but it sounds like it’s a ways off.

• Also at the Genco booth: A poster for an anime version of Pluto, Naoki Urasawa’s awesome revisionist take on the classic Astro Boy story arc. People have been clamoring for this for a while, especially with the Atom the Beginning anime coming out now.

• The show also had a new trailer for the Mazinger Z movie. Mazinger looks weird in CGI.

For the less anime-inclined, there was a little video game show called E3. Highlights that caught our eye include:

• A Shadow of the Colossus remake for PS4. If I understand, this is a full remake, unlike the PS3 version, which was just re-skinned for HD?

• Metroid: Samus Returns and Metroid Prime 4 (whose trailer was too boring to post):

• And a Dragonball game from the Guilty Gear people:

Returning to the subject of anime:

• In a move nobody anticipated, Irresponsible Captain Tylor is getting a sequel starting July 11 in the form of TV anime shorts, titled Irresponsible Galaxy☆ Tylor. The protagonists appear to be descendants of the original ones (our lead is named “Banjo”), and it may take some getting used to the modern character designs… this is almost giving a Space Dandy vibe.

• Another visual for Devilman Crybaby:

• We’ve already got teasers for Attack on Titan season 3?

On that note, let’s take it full circle and bring the topic back to kaiju:

• A full trailer for Ultraman Geed. With July 8 approaching, here’s hoping that Crunchyroll or Toku pick it up.

• Somewhat shockingly, War of the Gargantuas’ (and Godman‘s) Gaira has never had a Bandai figure...until now. This webshop figure, at 18 cm, is awkwardly sized in between the ~6 inch Movie Monsters/Godzilla Island line and the 8 inch traditional figures, but here’s hoping they keep it up with unconventional monster selections!

• Finally, official synopses confirmed what we were already expecting- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2018) will have Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. Hopefully they each get their due (I’ve been much more concerned about how Mothra and Ghidorah are portrayed than I ever was about Godzilla), but they seem to be in good hands.

I think that’s a wrap for this week. Sure, I could post about the new Wonder Woman manga or the Sailor Moon teddy bears that Steiff is doing or the new Honda commercial with a kaiju battle, but this seems like enough for the time being. As always, please leave a comment if there have been any egregious omissions, though!

Slightly late weekly news recap

This week’s news recap is a little late, but odds are I won’t be able to post one next weekend, so that may be for the best. Plenty to discuss this time around, though!

Kaiju news:

• Toku is streaming Henge via Amazon Prime, which I believe is its first official English release. They should be adding some Ultraman shows in the coming months, according to SciFi Japan.

• Speaking of Hajime Ohata projects, Shingo Honda’s Hakaijuu manga is ending. Hopefully it gets picked up for US distribution at some point; it’s always been a winner for creepy monster designs.

• A Pacific Rim board game is coming (we’ll see how well it scales with the Heroclix?), along with Mini-mates and some other stuff.
• Zhang Ziyi joined the cast of Godzilla: King of the Monsters. I wonder if she’ll be playing a Japanese person, as she tends to do (TMNT, Princess Raccoon, Memoirs of a Geisha).
• The short Welsh giant monster spoof Congaaargh!, which will play at G-Fest, got a nice little write-up. It looks like the folks behind it want to make a feature.

• Footage is online for Godzilla the Real (the theme park ride at Universal Osaka):

• There will be a Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters presentation Wednesday at Annecy. Rampant speculation leads us to expect an actual design or trailer to leak shortly thereafter.

Hero news:

• An ad for the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid/Kyuranger movie:

Looks like Kamen Rider Build is the next series? Huh.

• Yoji Shinkawa did a new dust jacket for Wonder Woman Anthology. Does she have a perm?

• Infini-T Force will have its premiere at Anime Expo. Guess they want to sell this one to Americans; hopefully it winds up streaming on a good service.

• Astro Boy: Edge of Time is coming to Steam! I’m pretty meh on CCGs, but this has great designs and it’s free.

Other news:

• The latest Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure trailer shows us the stands. They look about how one would expect.

• This visual for Megazone 23 XI seems pretty spot on, but it just feels wacky to hold out any hope for Megazone 23 ever becoming a TV series.

• Genocidal Organ will play in US theaters on July 12 and 13. It’s the least exciting of the Project Itoh movies, but glad that it got completed.

• Sunrise claims an American live-action Cowboy Bebop is in the works. They’ve been claiming this since 2009, so I’ll believe it when I see it.
• Apparently a skin-care clinic in Vietnam accidentally put the Resident Evil Umbrella logo on…well, everything. The mistake is so awkward that it feels like viral marketing (no pun intended), but there’s not really anything major coming up for the franchise.

That’s a wrap for this week. As always, please leave a comment if something is missing!

Addendum:

Naturally, less than an hour after this recap was posted, a new poster showed up on the Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters twitter. Sounds like the plan is to make this Godzilla bigger than the previous one (for the fourth film in a row), and this one is certainly evocative of the 2014 design, though it’s still fairly shadowy in the poster (remember the first reveal for Shin?). “Despair is evolving” is one heck of a great tagline, at any rate!

Weekly news recap: Not much to report edition

We had a special edition this week for the announcement that Adam Wingard would be directing Godzilla vs Kong, and not a whole lot has happened since. A few things of note:

• The City Shrouded in Darkness is adding Gamera and a certain mobile (*cough*Gundam*cough*) franchise to the roster.

• The weekend of G-Fest, The Music Box will be doing a 70mm screening of Kong: Skull Island with Jordan Vogt-Roberts in attendance. I assume that’ll sell out fast!
  Speaking of G-Fest, the schedule is up now. As a reminder, your humble Maser Patrol admin will be doing the panels “Kaiju Anime” and “Kaiju Manga Raids Again”.

• Katokutai’s latest music video. It looks like their new album is mostly repeats of stuff from previous ones, but the Ultraseven cover is rad.

• An ad for the 5th Digimon Adventure tri movie, out in August:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5omudr_digimon-adventure-tri-5-kyousei-teaser-pv_tv

• A Totoro-themed theme park is planned near Nagoya.

So… yeah, that’s all we noticed this week; it’s been quiet. (Maybe that’ll jinx it, and a Monster Planet trailer will drop as soon as this gets posted. Hint.)

Special edition: Godzilla vs Kong to be directed by Adam Wingard

Adam Wingard has been a rising star in the horror world for a few years now (Horror Etc did an episode about him that was pretty good), but fans have noticed a trend with him lately: remakes of Asian properties (Death Note hits Netflix soon, I Saw the Devil is in the works). On top of that, he’s been very vocally broken up on Twitter about the passing of Yoshimitsu Banno. This all starts to click together with the reveal that he’ll be the director of 2020’s Godzilla vs Kong.

It’s an interesting choice. As far as we’ve seen, Wingard is definitely a horror guy more than a monster guy (as opposed to Michael Dougherty), but his work is generally solid, gripping, and often inspired. Legendary’s outside-the-box director selection paid off big time with Kong: Skull Island, so overall we’re pretty optimistic about this one as well. Or who knows, maybe they’re taking the franchise in a progressively more horrific direction? Either way, looking forward to it!

…how surreal is it that we know this much about the movie after the one that’s not done shooting yet?

Two-week news recap: Seven Seas on a roll, Ultraman Neos MV,

There wasn’t a weekly news recap last weekend due to ACen (though we got that panel up), so we’re playing catch-up this week. There wasn’t as much cool industry news at the con as there was last year, but I did learn:

• Contrary to previous reports, Funimation does not have the Parasyte duology license.
• Somebody has the US license to Kodoku Meatball Machine. (Incidentally, Midori-Impuls just announced that and The Ninja War of Torakage for German release.)
• In case you somehow missed it, the North American street date for Shin Godzilla is August 1.

On to other stuff:

• Seven Seas has upped the ante again with a batch of manga licenses for stuff that we never would have imagined coming stateside.
  This includes Go Nagai’s original Devilman, a seminal work that’s been long-neglected stateside (though it was released in Japan in a long out-of-print English bilingual edition) – it’s compulsary reading for manga fans, and will also inform Seven Seas’ releases of Devilman G, and (their related new license) Devilman vs. Hades.
  Similarly, with their impending release of Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage, they picked up Leiji Matsumoto’s original Captain Harlock.
  Despite Americans’ general disinterest in the Saint Seiya franchise, they picked up the female (*gasp*)-lead spinoff Saintia Sho, presumably because it has an anime version in the works… how’s that going to work if most of the audience here doesn’t know the source material?
  And on that note, the most awesomely unexpected acquisition: the Ultra Kaiju Anthropomorphic Project!!! I mentioned that this could be a possibility in the past, but I still sort of can’t believe it. Then again, Viz is somehow getting their Ultraman manga into stores without much perplexity.
  Lastly, they got a post-apocalyptic slice-of-life manga about a girl and her giant spider, Giant Spider and Me.

• Speaking of Saint Seiya, a live-action Hollywood version is in production. Honestly, I don’t know why they’d bother with an English-version; they should cut out the middleman and film in Spanish or Portuguese.
• Taiwanese band Mayday has a music video featuring Ultraman Neos:

• The Kaiju Club website has a trailer now, which is good seeing as it starts next week.

• Kyuranger‘s 18th episode will have Gavan and Dekaranger show up, to promote the Space Squad movie. The Kikaider episode of Kamen Rider Gaim was better than the actual movie, so this could be great.

• Based on this trailer for Noboru Iguchi’s Ghost Squad, I assume at this point his scripts are just getting written through some sort of Mad Libs generator.

• Mamoru Hosoda has announced his next film will be titled Mirai, and has a theme of family (big surprise there). It’s about a four-year-old boy time traveling and seeing his parents/siblings across different time periods.
• Figuarts is planning a figure of Dan Morobashi, which is cool (despite all of the Anne Yuri figures I’ve acquired, I haven’t ever gotten a Dan). Hopefully this leads to other Ultras in human form, but since the Takeshi Hongo figure they showed off last year never got released, I won’t hold my breath.

• Science Patrol cosplay uniforms could be yours for the low price of 12800 yen.
• A trailer for Netflix’s Castlevania, starting July 7. The trailer is determined to remind you it’s based on a video game:

• Speaking of Netflix, a trailer for Joon Ho Bong’s Okja, hitting June 28:

• Overwatch just introduced a “Sentai” skin, perpetuating an incorrect definition of the word to an entirely new audience. Thanks for that, Blizzard.

• Lastly, Tom Woodruff Jr. is working effects on Godzilla: King of the Monsters. We know there are some practical effects planned, so that could be cool.

I think that’s it for those two weeks, but it was a bit of a whirlwind, so as always, please leave a comment if we left something out. In the meantime, we’ll be checking out Blame on Netflix.

Maser Patrol podcast episode 29: “Godzilla vs. Anime” at Anime Central

For those who missed the “Godzilla vs. Anime” panel at Anime Central, here’s a handy upload.

A couple slips of the tongue:

• At one point I say that The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms had done well in Japan; I meant that it had done well in America and was soon to release in Japan.
• When asked if the new Godzilla movie would get a dub, I said they all did. Actually, the 1954 original technically does not have a dub. Conversely, King Kong vs. Godzilla hasn’t ever officially been made available subtitled (fansubs abound).

News recap: “Kaiju Club” show, Toku teases more Ultraman

We’ve got to start on a downer this week, lamenting the passing of Yoshimitsu Banno. In addition to his work with the likes of Kurosawa, Banno’s Godzilla vs Hedorah remains a game-changing standout in the Godzilla franchise that was never quite matched, and while his proposed Godzilla 3-D to the MAX woefully never came to pass, it remains one of the most interesting what-ifs, and it led directly to the 2014 revival. The Prophecies of Nostradamus, while officially banned, remains a chilling and grim portent as relevant now as it was four decades ago. And while his anime project Techno Police 21C didn’t have the success initially hoped for, it was reworked into Bubblegum Crisis, one of the most beloved and formative anime series of the ’80s. Banno’s career was met with much adversity, as revolutionaries often are, yet history has shown him on the side of the classics. RIP.

On to happier things:

• Actor Kanata Hongo (Attack on Titan, Gantz) has the lead in a four-episode TV series titled Kaiju Club starting June 6. The show, set in the 1970s, is about (obviously) a club of kaiju otaku, and being produced with Tsuburaya, will have Metron, Guts, Zetton, and Ghos show up. The directors have some experience through Ultra Zone, and the writer did the live-action Yowamushi Pedal and that Final Fantasy: Dad of Light show that Netflix picked up.
• I’ve probably watched the opening movie to the Symphogear XD Unlimited mobile game half a dozen times. You get a lot of aspects of the show crammed into under 2 minutes.

• Toku will be airing Ultraseven X June 5-12. That’s another Ultra show that’s not available subtitled anywhere else (including Crunchyroll)! I’ve often found that late-night tokusatsu series to be unfairly maligned, possibly due to its focus on scifi/mystery plots over traditional kyodai hero action, so hopefully this helps it find a wider (more receptive) audience.
  Toku’s youtube banner also has images of The☆Ultraman (that anime with Ultraman Joneas), a series which has a few episodes dubbed, but otherwise isn’t even fansubbed, and Ultraman Cosmos, which is only subbed in cruddy bootlegs. Time to move somewhere that Toku is available!

• Blade of the Immortal is getting a North American theatrical release thanks to Magnet!

• Neo Parasyte F must have sold well for Kodansha USA, because they’ll also be releasing Neo Parasyte M. This anthology has Parasyte stories from the likes of Moto Hagio, Peach Pit, Takeyuki Takeya, and Hiro Mashima, so it’s even more exciting than the first collection.

• The sequel to Edge of Tomorrow will be titled Live Die Repeat, which is hella confusing if you remember how they marketed the prior film.

That’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for reading, and look forward to the ACen panel!

Quick news recap: Some disks to buy

It’s a slow news week. Here’s a trailer for the Satria Heroes: Revenge of Darkness crossover movie, since I missed it earlier:

Oh, and the Godzilla vs. Kong release date in 2020 moved by one week. Other than that, it’s a lot of home video news.

• The Famous Monsters website briefly mentioned an August home video release date for Shin Godzilla, but it’s been removed.
• Kong: Skull Island hits home video on July 18th.
• Shout Factory is releasing The Manster on Blu Ray on August 29.

• Discotek just license-rescued Nightwalker, a severely underrated vampire detective show.

• Norman England’s movie New Neighbor is coming out on German DVD later this month. The Idol will also be on the disc, the first home video release anywhere! The first trailer is rather work unsafe, BTW.

Short and sweet this week, but that just means more time for marathoning Carranger. Seeya next time!

Weekly news recap: it’s all monsters this time

Everything that caught our eye this week was monster-related, varying from kaiju to vampires to the evil dead. Let’s get to it!

• After last week’s round of toy catalog solicitations, now we have videos for Ultraman Geed. We also now know that Geed’s human form will be Riku Asakura, played by the 16 year-old Tatsuomi Hamada. Based on the character’s outfit, I think we can assume we’ve got another case of the hero not being in a science patrol team, though weirder things have happened age-wise (e.g. Hoshino in the original show). Oh, BTW: Koichi Sakamoto will be directing the series, and it’s written by horror novelist Otsuichi (Zoo, Goth).

• Kaijumax season 3 starts in July.

• The board game Smash Up has an expansion coming titled “Big in Japan”.

• My inner Dance Dance Revolution aficionado is already addicted to free-to-play rhythm game Super Kaiju Dunk City.

• Sion Sono’s Amazon Prime series Tokyo Vampire Hotel looks pretty awesome. Seriously, when are we going to get some of the Japanese Amazon shows brought over?

• Here’s a trailer for the live-action Ajin movie. Or, should I say “Demi-Human”?

• Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell, AKA Japanese Evil Dead, is out on home video in the UK now. It’s a very long time coming, so I might have to import it soon.

• Yusaku Kitano, author of the surreal scifi novel Mr. Turtle, has a new monster novel out in Japan, descriptively titled Daikaijuuki, or “Daikaiju Chronicle”.

• I wasn’t paying close attention to the latest Digital Manga kickstarter campaign, for Wonder 3, even though it is one of Osamu Tezuka’s sci-fi manga classics and all. Good news, it was funded, but it also had a bunch of reward titles, including Ambassador Magma, Metamorphose, and Say Hello to Bookila! Hopefully these will be available in some other format later, since the campaign is closed now.

That’s a wrap for this week; please leave a comment if we left anything out!

Weekly news recap: Ultraman Geed, plus panel announcements!

Time for the news recap of the week!

• The big thing this week is the reveal (through toy catalogs, of course) of Ultraman Geed (we’d all been assuming is was “Zeed” or “Xead”, but Geed it says), from this July’s new show.
  Our weird-looking hero is the son of Ultraman Belial… he sort of reminds me of Chaiyo’s Ultraman Elite, though, doesn’t he?
  
  Anyway, Geed’s gimmick appears to continue Orb’s by fusing disparate Ultramen together to gain new forms. Not only that, but classic kaiju will also be fusing:

Is it cynical that I suspect we’re only getting a new Zandrias because she was in Kaiju Girls?

• Ultraman Neos is starting on Toku in May. Unlike the other shows they’ve aired, Neos has never been on Crunchyroll, so this is the first legit English version of the show.

Speaking of US broadcasts, TV Japan is airing Kamen Rider Wizard. My understanding is that that’s not subtitled, though, and I don’t feel like shelling out $25 per month to try it out.

• Shin Godzilla is getting an English-subtitled home video release through Madman in Australia, hitting July 19th. Looks like it’s got behind the scenes stuff, which is more than I’d expect from the Funimation release. It also comes out April 22 in Hong Kong.
  .
• Gun Calibur has a limited Blu Ray release (100 units) up for purchase now. Or, VHS.

• Seven Seas licensed ToLOVEru. The manga is a major hit in Japan, but it’s understandable that it hasn’t come stateside, being a Shonen Jump title that flies in the face of the much more wholesome image that Viz has built for the brand. As a service-heavy monster girl property, though, it’s right up Seven Seas’ alley. It’s a divisive manga, even in my own mind: on one hand it has great art and callbacks to Black Cat, on the other it shamelessly steals from Urusei Yatsura and borders on pornography in the most literal sense of the word.

• Kiyotaka Taguchi is now listed as a guest on the G-Fest website. Between him and Shinji Higuchi, we’re pretty much gathering the best living special effects technicians who work in tokusatsu. Speaking of which….

We may just have a panel or two at that con; stop by Friday July 14th for “Anime for Kaiju Fans”, and Sunday for a repeat of last year’s “All Manga Attack” (or, just watch last year’s on youtube).

But that’s not all! There’s also “Godzilla vs. Anime” on Saturday, May 20th at Anime Central. There’ll be a little overlap with the talks, but since they’re for different crowds they won’t quite be the same; for example the ACen talk will be exclusively Godzilla/Gamera and go into production background, while the G-Fest one will have more unconventional titles like Dragon Dentist and Dinosaur War Izenborg. (Comprehensive from Kyoju Wakusei to Kaiju Wakusei!)

Weekly news recap (+ a couple quick reviews)

Long time, no post! Monsterpalooza was a blast, making new friends and getting to meet a few of my favorite artists, especially getting a commission from Keita Amemiya. Apologies for this terrible photo of Amemiya and Mizuho Yoshida where you can’t see either of their faces:

Being out in the LA area, I took advantage of the limited releases they get to check out a couple of films. First, Colossal was a pretty solid little indy flick about giant monsters and the irresponsible alcoholics who can control them. The usher who introduced the film made a rather grievous faux pas by claiming this was “the first kaiju movie written by somebody with a brain”, but crappy hipster fans aside the movie was entertaining enough. Not sure if it’s quite good enough to justify buying one of those expensive statues, though.

Also, Your Name, best known for making several gazillion yen and *still* playing in Japanese movies theaters, is actually really, really good. It reminds me a bit of older pictures like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Exchange Students, but also taps into some of the same contemporary Japanese angst that drove Shin Godzilla‘s success. It kept me on the edge of my seat, so if you haven’t gotten to check it out, do so (the other members of the Maser Patrol crew echo the sentiment; Amanda’s even read the novel).

I also saw Shallow Water… meh, that’s outside this blog’s scope. But, one thing that’s hit this week is in scope: the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix. On top of Reptillicus, they’re also riffing on Yongary and The Beast of Hollow Mountain, and they’re nailing it.

On top of the likes of Atom the Beginning, Kamen Rider Amazons season 2, Attack on Titan season 2, and more… it’s a busy time for a TV watcher. Anyway, on to the news of the week:

• A trailer for Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall, full of mermaid-y drama:

• Another Fullmetal Alchemist trailer:

• A teaser for Tokyo Ghoul:

• If nothing else, the new Hollywood Ghost in the Shell movie has inspired Production IG to make a new anime. (For the record, our thoughts on the live-action film generally ranged from “meh” to “okay” to “alright”, though it really should have tried to either do its own thing entirely or be a shot-for-shot remake, not both….I don’t think there was quite enough enthusiasm there for a podcast review.)

• Kaiju Sakaba has a crossover promotion with the Yuichi Fukuda superhero comedy TV series Super Salaryman Mr. Sanae (based on the Fujiko Fujio manga). Read here for more details.

• Nigh-forgotten 70s super robot shows Ginguiser, Daiapolon, Blocker Corps, and Mechander Robo are getting re-released in Japan, along with a promotional project Miracle Robot Force crossing them all over.

• Seiun Award nominees were announced; I bet either Shin Godzilla or Your Name takes the prize, but it’s cool to see Concrete Revolutio nominated, and I guess I should check out Kuromukuro. Erased might take the comic category, but we’ll see.

• Carranger isn’t even out yet, but Shout just announced Megaranger hitting August 15! Things are speeding up, and I’m along for this ride!

• Discotek just license rescued Midnight Eye Goku (good stuff) and Psybuster (not so much), and got the rights to underrated super robot show Dancouga!

• Seven Seas licensed the original Perfect Blue novels. It makes sense that the two movies were actually based on different volumes.

• There’s apparently a King Kong TV series in the works from Bye Bye Man director Stacey Title. With both the show on Netflix and the film series, I’ve got to wonder where that will fit in.

• Here’s a cute Cartoon Network short about the pressures facing kaiju children in predominantly human school districts:

• Well, this cracked me up:

That’s a wrap for the news, as always, leave a comment if there’s a glaring omission. Seeya later!

 

Weekly news recap: No foolin’

There was some great stuff to come out of various Japanese studios this April Fools’ Day, including:

• A crossover between Thunderbolt Fantasy and Touken Ranbu, scheduled for 2205:

• A Rascal the Raccoon and Gaogaigar mash-up titled Gaogaraigar:

• There was a Super Sonico video titled “UltraSonico”, featuring Sonico as a giant fighting Eleking. Nitro yoinked it from Youtube after a day, sadly. Were they afraid that claims of it coming out in 2106 were true, or was there some sort of rights issue?

• The Kamata-kun phone case has a page well-worth viewing, as it’s got some great in-jokes (e.g. the instruction manual comes as origami).

Okay, on to non-joke stories:

• Katokutai has a new album Ultraman the Rock, with a whopping 25 Ultraman song covers!

• Based on this tourism ad, I guess Ultraman is core to the Tokyo experience:

• Another tourism ad, this one for the Kanmon strights:

• A behind-the-scenes promo for Godzilla: Monster Planet. Be prepared to freeze-frame and read little text in the corners for ambiguous and mind-blowing details. Speaking of the movie, Anime Now has some details from a Q&A the director did at AnimeJapan.

• The Asylum is working on Atlantic Rim 2. Did they forget that they had to rename the first Atlantic Rim when they released it?

• The fourth Symphogear season, Symphogear AXZ, is hitting in July. This is a show that literally shoots for the moon, so it’s exciting news.

• Also, a trailer for the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection movie:

• A prequel to Thunderbolt Fantasy focusing on Sha Wu Sheng (or Setsumushou.. or “Screaming Phoenix Executioner”) is in the works. It’s based in part on the gaiden novel coming out this week.

• Inagi City is getting a two-meter Yatter Wan statue.

That’s a wrap for this week! Expect next week’s recap to be delayed due to MonsterPalooza.

Weekly news recap: A whole lotta Monster Planet news; a whole lotta other news

If this were a typical week, the highlight of Godzilla-related discussion might have been the two new sculpts coming out for the Bandai Movie Monsters series. The frozen Godzilla is the first real merch we have for Godzilla’s fifth form, after all.

Or, y’know, the Japanese Blu-Ray release of Shin Godzilla. They tweaked some scenes from the theatrical version, and there was also copious behind the scenes stuff and deleted scenes. (Dear Funimation: I know you’re going to skip on extras, but we’d be happier if you didn’t.)

But all of that went out the window with Anime Japan’s booth reveals for the new Godzilla anime.

As we previously noted, the film will be titled Godzilla: Kaijuu Wakusei (from here on, I’ll just say “Monster Planet”), but that’s just the start; it’ll be released in November and be the first film in a trilogy! Right away this is exciting and somewhat concerning – do they have all the scripts written? What sort of release cycle are they shooting for? Hopefully we don’t wind up in a Rebuild of Evangelion scenario, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

There was a lot of neat stuff at Anime Japan, including a human-sized model of one of the anime’s mecha suits. Visitors were also given a file with a history of the world in-universe, which is certainly intriguing, listing various monster attacks throughout the early 21st century (there’s Godzilla, Rodan, and Anguirus, but also some deeper cuts like Orga, Dagahra, Dogora, and Kamacuras. Also, “Operation Hedorah” involving biological and chemical weapons, which sounds like a great idea), and first contact with two(!) different alien races, the Birsard and the Exif. Wondering what the Exif look like? We’ve got one in the released character profiles:

The whole planet gets evacuated by 2048, but 20 space-years (20,000 earth years) later, humanity returns to reclaim the Earth from the monsters when their target world winds up being pretty inhospitable as well. The whole thing gives me shades of World Without End, Gunbuster, Planet of the Apes, and more, but it’s definitely taking the Godzilla franchise into unexplored territory. Here’s looking forward to November!

There was also a lot of non-Godzilla stuff this week!

• We have a trailer for Adam Wingard’s Death Note movie. I think Light looks a little gothy as opposed to the pretty boy of the source material, but we’ll see how it turns out.

• A trailer for the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, complete with Reptilicus and an Inframan nod.

• Netflix is also getting a live-action show based on Blazing Transfer Student, AKA “that Kazuhiko Shimamoto manga adapted into one to the greatest OVAs never commercially available stateside”. My mind is sort of blown; posting the anime OP since there’s no trailer or anything yet for the live-action one.

• A teaser for the new Mazinger Z movie:

• The trailer for the live-action Blood C movie could use more monsters:

• The Astro Boy prequel Atom the Beginning continues to look like a show to watch next season.

• Toku will be airing Ultraman 80 in the US starting tomorrow (for the handful of people who actually get the channel).

• Sentai Filmworks licensed Gatchaman Fighter. They just need to get the live-action movie to complete the franchise now, right?

• Speaking of Gatchaman, we’ve got a new trailer for the Tatsunoko mash-up Infini-T Force.

• I guess the Eagle Talon crossover ads for Suicide Squad must have gone over well, because now a whole DC Super Heroes vs. Eagle Talon movie is in the works. It looks amazing.

• Want to see Stan Lee in full hype mode? See the latest trailer for The Reflection:

• Mamoru Oshii got interviewed about the Hollywood Ghost in the Shell flick (I keep wanting to say “the new movie”, then remembering that’s actually the title of a different GitS picture), and pretty much had only good things to say. Then he tried to pitch his other famous cops-&-mecha opus Patlabor, so here’s hoping Hollywood is listening.

• A pretty fun fan film for Chroma Squad:

Whew, that’s a lot of cool stuff. Let’s call it a wrap for this week; as always leave a comment if we missed something and seeya next time!

Update: sure enough, something slipped by – Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewsky’s biography of Ishiro Honda is up for preorder!

Happy 50th to Guilala, Japan’s ridiculous kaiju icon

While we may be in a new kaiju boom, it’s dwarfed by the one half a century ago. 1967 was the zenith, with the televised conclusions of the original Ultraman, Space Giants, Akuma-kun, and Booska, with the debuts of Ultraseven, Giant Robo, Akakage, Monster Prince, Captain Ultra, Esper, The King Kong Show, Chibi Monster Yadamon, Oraa Guzura Dado, and the retooling of Ninja Hattori-kun into Ninja Hattori-kun+Ninja Monster Jippou. On the more theatrical side, we had cinematic releases from the big studios: Son of Godzilla and King Kong Escapes from Toho, Gamera vs. Gyaos from Daiei, Gappa the Triphibian Monster from Nikkatsu, Cyborg 009: Monster War and (the South Korean co-production) Yongary from Toei. Into that fray Shochiku submitted their one major kaiju feature (of the golden age, at least, since they did eventually go on to works like Moon Over Tao and Higanjima), Uchuu Daikaiju Guilala (Space Giant Monster Guilala), better known stateside as The X from Outer Space. (It’s not a great retitle, but at least we didn’t rename the monster “Itoka” like they did in France, or, as Germany always does, bring in Frankenstein.)

I won’t attempt posts for the anniversaries of all of the properties mentioned above, but I thought Guilala deserved a shoutout for having a career so strangely prolific and prolifically strange. While the monster’s debut film is a little silly, it hardly stands out for over-the-top in ludicrousness when you remember that the genre was dominated by a turtle that turns into a flying saucer. Yet, as the only (and therefor flagship) giant monster creation of the studio, Guilala became a stand-in for the genre as a whole in their productions, and thus had a storied career after his debut film in the world of comedy.

If you haven’t had a chance to catch the original film, by all means, check it out, along with the other Shochiku genre flicks available in a nice collection from Criterion. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s got a relatively high budget and decent production values (heck, Akira Watanabe worked on it!), an international cast, and plenty of scifi gadgetry, clearly aping the Toho formula. Better still, the monster’s design is quite memorable, even if its name (which basically boils down to “gi” from “gigas” and “la” from “largus”…we get it, it’s big) is a little generic.

Where it might have been too little, too late for launching a franchise in its own right, though, is that it feels more classically Toho, with a single monster rather than a wrestling match, and a love story that would bore the progressively younger audiences that the monster movies were attracting, on top of audience dilution and diminishing returns across the board. So, this was doomed to become Guilala’s only outing…almost.

Right off the bat, I’ll briefly mention that there was a manga adaptation of the movie that ran in Shonen King, by Takeshi Koshiro. I haven’t been able to track it down, but Koshiro’s  forte was adaptations, including the likes of Ultra Q, Terror of Mechagodzilla, Fight Dragon, Zone Fighter, Battle Fever J, Gaiking, Macross, and more. I’m particularly quite fond of his Godzilla vs. Gigan manga, but that’s a movie made to be a comic book.

I’ve been told that Guilala’s next appearance was a cameo the next year in the 1968 musical Chiisana Snack, though I haven’t tracked it down to confirm this, nor found much corroborating. The film gets its name from the biggest hit song of the group Purple Shadows, who star in the film, and also features future Kamen Rider star Hiroshi Fujioka (who you can also see in The X From Outer Space!). It doesn’t quite seem like the sort of thing a monster would fit into, but stranger things have happened.

A decade later Guilala got broad international exposure, in disguised form, with the 1978 US picture The Bad News Bears Go to Japan. There’s a sequence in the movie featuring a commercial for baseball bats, where a little leaguer uses one to smack down a rampaging kaiju. Eagle-eyed viewers will recognized the feet that are shown stomping through buildings at the start of the scene as belonging to Guilala, probably not done so much as a commentary on the use of stock footage as a simple employment thereof.

Guilala’s next outing was a little more high-profile, but still relegated to a comedy cameo. The 1984 film Tora-san’s Forbidden Love (the 34th in the series of comedies about the lovable loser Tora-san….and people think Godzilla has a lot of movies!) opens with a dream sequence (they all open with some dream sequence or another) where our protagonist must battle Guilala. It’s relatively short, and the rest of the film is just about our hero developing a crush on a married woman, so this would be more of a recommendation for completists or intersectional cinephiles, but it was the first new footage of the monster in quite a while (spoilers, what’s not stock footage is a cheap-looking model). The subject of the dream sequence here was definitely a play on the 1984 reboot of Godzilla (they even mistake Guilala for Godzilla as a joke), but I wonder if it influenced Godzilla’s own similar cameo in Always: Sunset on Third Street 2.

In the mid-1990s there were rumors of a revival, including an article about a Guilala vs. Gappa movie that was printed in G-Fan, which makes sense considering how the characters are frequently marketed together, but it doesn’t seem like that film was ever seriously considered by the studios involved. A super deformed version of Guilala did show up in 1998 as a mascot at the Kamakura Cinema World theme park, but the attraction shut down shortly thereafter.

The most significant revival to date was 2008, though. Director Minoru Kawasaki was no stranger to tokusatsu comedies, having hit international stardom with titles like The Calamari Wrestler and The World Sinks Except for Japan, so he made a natural fit for the new film, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit, which was essentially an extended political cartoon about the actual G8 conference going on in Japan at the time. The movie goes full parody of the kaiju genre (even the Japanese title “Guilala no Gyakushu” plays on what a cliche that verbiage is in monster movies, like “Return of X” or “Bride of X” would be in English). This time, stock footage is used deliberately for comedic effect, and while debatable,  I have an inkling that Kawasaki deliberately uses gaijin with poor line delivery because he thinks it’s funny… he’s just done it too many times in too many films to feel like a coincidence (I mean, come on, the French PM is played by an Iranian dude who flat-out admits to not knowing any French).

The end result is a mixed bag that’s generally not terribly well-received, but even detractors generally admit to a chuckle in the scene where a precocious child is kicked out of the war room. The fact that the Russian politician quickly suggested killing Guilala with Polonium 210 was my personal favorite gag (dark and tasteless it may be, at least it was topical), followed by the fact that the US president is literally named Burger, and the…end…reveal…well, it must be seen to be believed. However, the battle between Guilala and Take-Majin, who’s a giant Beat Takeshi, is the biggest highlight of the picture for sure.

This wasn’t Guilala’s only clash with another giant, though, as Kawasaki’s signature hero (aside from Iko-chan) Den Ace, the goofy, beer-powered jerk of the genre, also met the creature in a direct-to-video special Zettai Yaseru Den Ace (which would translate to something like “The Den Ace Who’s Definitely Going to Lose Weight”) at the same time. I still haven’t quite gotten around to plopping down $25 on this one, but based on the other Den-Ace stuff I’ve seen, I expect some very low-rent but amusing short episodes, most of which would not have Guilala involved.

One last, even stranger hurrah in 2008, Guilala was selected for a commercial for job hunting site the Ladders. It’s not entirely clear if he was the company’s number one choice, but the character was licensed, and the suit was flown to South Africa to film a commercial for American television. That same advertising company had previously done an awesome kyodai hero commercial for Garmin, so I guess it’s just in their DNA.

As of March 25th, Guilala is 50 years old. I can’t think of another character who’s had a track record so consistently off-beat, but hopefully the future holds some more surprises for this spore-born, x-shaped, radioactive space lizard.

Godzilla (disambiguation)

Along with the Japanese home video release of Shin Godzilla came news of the title for the next film in the franchise (the Polygon Pictures anime release due out this year): Godzilla – 怪獣惑星, (“Godzilla – Kaiju Wakusei”) or “Godzilla – Monster Planet”. Immediately comments sections lit up with comparisons to a 1994 Sanrio theme park ride (yes, Godzilla did meet Hello Kitty) 怪獣プラネットゴジラ (“Kaijuu Planet Godzilla”), whose official English name is “Monster Planet of Godzilla“. Some would call this confusing, but I, for one, am sighing in relief, and that goes to show just how difficult naming conventions get with this franchise.

So, right off the bat, we can assuage our fears about this anime film just being named “Godzilla”, and that’s already a win. Andy and I make a game out of how obtuse we can be when it comes to that being the title:

Andy: I’m watching Godzilla tonight.

Me: Which one?

Andy: The movie.

Me: Which one?

Andy: The one just called “Godzilla”.

Me: Which one?

Andy: The reboot.

Me: Which one?

Andy: The American one.

Me: Which one?

This is usually caused by Josh’s bemusement at how anyone can keep straight Destroy All Planets, Destroy All Monsters, All Monsters Attack, Giant Monsters All-out Attack, Attack of the Monsters, Attack of the Super Monsters, etc. Alternate titles can simplify or confuse things as well. To help you out with your own “Who’s on First” routine, here’s a handy guide.

There are arguably four films titled Godzilla: 1954, 1984, 1998, and 2014. That’s the English title for the 1954 film (we’ll get back to the Americanization), the 1998 film, and the 2014 film, while in Japan those four films are known as ゴジラ (“Godzilla”), ゴジラ (“Godzilla”),  the redundantゴジラ GODZILLA, and  GODZILLA ゴジラ (though I assume nobody actually says “Godzilla Godzilla”, many of the US posters use this as well ). The 1984 film is officially named Return of Godzilla in English (the official Blu Ray also uses “Godzilla 1984″, after the Americanization Godzilla 1985, though as Matt Frank noted, that title is mostly used by “weeaboo garbage children”), and should not be confused with the novel Godzilla Returns, or Godzilla Raids Again, even though the Japanese title (ゴジラの逆襲) might make you think that based on the translation of 大魔神逆襲 to “Return of Daimajin” (that whole series has some real title confusion, btw). The comic adaptation of the 1984 film still uses the Godzilla title, rather than Return of Godzilla, except when it was reprinted as Terror of Godzilla, which is coincidentally an alternate title for the prior film Terror of Mechagodzilla. Godzilla is also the title of a Hanna Barbera cartoon that was part of “The Godzilla Power Hour”, the title of multiple video games (in 1983, 1993, and 2015, the last of which is also known as “Godzilla Vs“), and the title of IDW’s second ongoing Godzilla comic, later retitled Godzilla: History’s Greatest Monster. Oh, and don’t confuse the Godzilla comic with The Godzilla Comic.

The first Godzilla movie was originally heavily altered when it came to the US, and released as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! in 1956. This is also sort of the title of the upcoming 2019 movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters, as well as the Marvel comic series from 1977, the Dark Horse comic series from 1995, and Scott Ciencin’s first Godzilla novel. The Americanized movie was released in Japan as 怪獣王ゴジラ (“Kaiju-oh Godzilla”), which is also the title of a Gameboy game and Hiroshi Kawamoto’s manga series. Then there was the 1977 Italian colorized version of the 1956 Americanization, titled Godzilla: Il Re dei Monstri, which is also sometimes used for the non-colorized version as well, and gets super confusing when you remember that the Italian title for Godzilla Raids Again is just Il Re dei Monstri. It’s sort of like how we have an SNK game titled King of the Monsters that’s about kaiju but unrelated to Godzilla.

But there’s plenty more potential for confusion:

• An intuitive translation for the Japanese title of Godzilla Raids Again would be “Godzilla’s Revenge”, but that title is weirdly actually used for the US cut of All Monsters Attack.

• It’s easy to mix up Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) with Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992), especially when Mothra vs. Godzilla was re-released stateside as “Godzilla vs. Mothra” numerous times. You could refer to them as Godzilla vs. The Thing and Godzilla and Mothra: Battle for Earth, respectively, but those titles are dumb (needless to say, no relation to the movie The Thing). While we’re at it, there’s no “Return of” on the Japanese titles of the Return of Mothra trilogy, so Mothra (1961) and Mothra (1996) have certainly been mixed up in the past.

• Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is how you romanize ゴジラ対メカゴジラ. You’d think that would go to ゴジラvsメカゴジラ, but that gets labeled Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, despite it not being a sequel to Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla and not having Mechagodzilla II in it (there is a Mechagodzilla II in Terror of Mechagodzilla, though, which is the sequel to the prior movie). You might want to translate that first film as “Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla” instead, but that title is already taken by ゴジラXメカゴジラ, which never actually refers to the enemy monster as Mechagodzilla at all.

• Destroy All Monsters is the 1968 movie. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters is a fighting game for SNES. Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee is a fighting game for Gamecube and X-Box. The Japanese title of the movie, 怪獣総進撃 (“Kaiju Soshingeki”) is also the title of the first episode of Return of Ultraman.

• All Kaiju Daishingeki (All Monsters Attack) is the 1969 movie, Godzilla: Kaiju no Daishingeki is a Game Gear game.

• Godzilla on Monster Island is the US title for Godzilla vs. Gigan, a children’s picture book, and a slot machine game. Not to be confused with show Godzilla Island, anime Godzilland, book Godzilla: Journey to Monster Island, or the game Godzilla: Heart-pounding Monster Island.

• A lot of the fandom refers to Giant Monsters All-out Attack as “GMK”, since Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah are the headliners. However, when Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster was re-released in 1971, its title also included “Godzilla Mothra King Ghidorah“, so “GMK” could really mean either film.

• Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah is the 1991 film, King Ghidorah vs. Godzilla is the abbreviated re-release of Invasion of Astro Monster.

• The Monster X from Godzilla Final Wars is not the same one from Gamera vs. Monster X, and neither is the same as the one in Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit.

• War of the Monsters (the game) is unrelated to the Gamera movie War of the Monsters (another title for Gamera vs. Barugon), which is unrelated to the game Godzilla 2: War of the Monsters, Godzilla the Series‘ arc “Monster Wars”, or the board game Godzilla: Kaiju World Wars.

• The novel Godzilla 2000 is unrelated to the movie Godzilla 2000 – Millennium, otherwise known as Godzilla 2000. Neither work came out in the year 2000, but Godzilla x Megaguirus did.

I feel like I should remark that Godzilla vs. The Space Monster, Godzilla vs. The Cosmic Monster, Godzilla vs Space Godzilla, A Space Godzilla, and Star Godzilla are different things as well, and somehow cleverly tie this all back to the Monster Planet thing. But anyway, you should now feel adequately armed to go confuse people outside the fandom!

Maser Patrol podcast episode 28: Kong – Skull Island

After that extensive countdown earlier in the year, we got to go see the new King Kong movie, Kong: Skull Island. In this episode, Kevin, Josh, Andy and Justin talk for longer than the movie’s run time, and mostly on the topic of the film, but veering into some general Kong-related (and tangentially, loosely related) topics as well.

Direct download

Show notes:

• Hollywood Reporter’s article on Thomas Tull’s Universal/Warner dealings for Kong
• Sonic’s “King Gong”:

• The statue that scandalized Paris:

• Some reading: Apes of Wrath, Kong: King of Skull Island, All Yesterdays, Dinomania
• King Caesar’s head:

• Van-Pires (watch at your own peril)

Weekly news recap for 3/19

Not a whole lot to cover this week, but there were certainly a couple of note-worthy developments:

• Here’s a look at the new Devilman for Netflix: Devilman crybaby. (Between this and Cutie Honey Tears, I wonder if that’ll be a theme? Like, will we get “Mazinger Wept” or “Dororon Enma-kun Lacrimation”?) It’ll be directed by the ever-stylish Masaaki Yuasa, and based on the stark black-on-red in this trailer, I’m sort of getting a Samurai Jack vibe.

• Speaking of Netflix, they have worldwide rights to this year’s Godzilla anime film. Not much of a surprise, considering their past dealings with Polygon Pictures.

• The Hollywood Reporter has a piece about Brave Storm. While the author doesn’t appear to recognize the project’s relation to Silver Kamen or Super Robot Red Baron, it’s cool to see it getting international press. If only Ronin Entertainment were still around to license it stateside!

• The monster tavern Kaiju Sakaba has done well enough in Kawasaki that it’s getting a convenient new location in Shinbashi as well.

• The musical monster comic Kaiju Epic reached its crowdfunding goal.

• We’ve got two trailers for different scifi comedies based on Shonen Jump manga titles, both directed by Yuichi Fukuda: Gintama and The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

• The upcoming TV drama Frankenstein’s Love is apparently set in modern times, but you wouldn’t know if from looking at the main character’s fashion. The show (starting in April) will be a romance between the monster and a lady scientist, and presumably contains no battles against Baragon.

• This year’s 17th and 18th issues of Shonen Sunday have a new Rumiko Takahashi miniseries, Millennium Innocence. It’s cool to see her doing shorts again (honestly, Rinne would have worked better as one).

That’s a wrap for this week, but as always, let us know if something got left out!

Weekly news recap: This time with kaiju

There wasn’t any kaiju coverage last week, but this time we can make up for that!

• Terry Rossio, writer of the abandoned 1994 Hollywood Godzilla flick, is getting another chance, this time for Godzilla vs Kong! Here’s to another try!

• Looks like Chofu will be hosting the 8th Amateur Kaiju Movie Contest on April 1. It’s cool to see how Kiyotaka Taguchi is still quite active in the independent kaiju scene.

• Speaking of Taguchi, his segment Female Weapon 701 (what, no “Scorpion”?) will be one of the 28 segments in the upcoming anthology Tetsudon: Kaiju Dream Match. It has a giant Haruka Momokawa, who, presumably, actually could go on a date with Eleking.

• A little more concept art for the Godzilla anime movie. Can’t it just be Anime Japan already? Do we really have to wait two weeks?

Non-kaiju stuff:

• Kyoryuger is getting a Korean sequel series, Kyoryuger Brave….while I’m not sure how it’ll stack up against the Japanese series, at least it looks better than Zaido. Koichi Sakamoto (no stranger to hopping overseas to work on Power Rangers) is set to direct, so if nothing else it should maintain some tonal consistency with the original. If this is successful, I wonder if we’ll see similar cases like this in the future with other Sentai shows around the world; I’d much rather see an internationally-made sequel than an actor-replacement edit like we get in the US.

• We have a trailer for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable Part 1! They actually changed the color of the sky to make it look like the manga, and I’ve got a lot of questions about how well that works.

• You can get Garo armor in the new Monster Hunter XX game:

• A trailer for the pro-wrestling movie Dynamite Wolf. This one skews more realism than superhero-type wrestlers, but it may still be of interest.

That’s a wrap for this week; as always, leave a comment if we missed something!

Kong count #1 – Honorable mentions

Well, after counting down all year, Kong: Skull Island is finally out! The Maser Patrol crew will be assembling a full review in coming days, but if you want a short version: “Go see it!”

Hope you’ve enjoyed the series! As a final hurrah, here are a handful of titles that we didn’t  quite get to during the Kong Count, for some reason or another, but we very easily could have (maybe the series should have been 100 posts long instead?):

• The Asylum’s mockbuster King of the Lost World, probably the highest-profile thing not covered here.

• The Italian movie Eve the Wild Woman, which was re-titled King of Kong Island in the US, despite having only normal-sized gorillas. Best watched in the Rifftrax version.

• The low-budget flick The Abominable, which as far as I know, isn’t available in its country of origin, but it is on DVD in Japan as Ice Kong.

• The Abbot & Costello flick Africa Screams, which has a giant gorilla:

• The X-rated parody Supersimian, which actually does have some decent stop-motion animation.

• The 1945 film The White Gorilla, an edit of the 1927 serial Perils of the Jungle with an ape named “Konga”

• The storied fan-film made at Toho, Wolf-man vs. Godzilla clearly draws on King Kong vs. Godzilla.

• The artsiest Kong exploitation, 1978’s Bye Bye Monkey, which has someone adopt a chimp he finds in Kong’s corpse.

• Multiple people have told me to watch the comedy King Kung Fu…

• The “Kong” episode of Alvin & the Chipmunks Go to the Movies

• Great Watchuka from the Hanna Barbera’s Godzilla:

• Hiroshi Kawamoto’s Monster King Godzilla, which brings back MechaniKong.

• Shigeru Mizuki’s manga Kind Kong, about a giant Kinichi Hagimoto fighting a mole monster.

     

While we’re at it, how about Mizuki’s manga Mr. Primitive?

• The Disney comic strip Gorilla Gorilla

• Numerous short stories, like “Desperate” from Dark Horse Presents or Phillip Jose Farmer’s “After Kong Fell”.

• The 2013 stage musical

• The uncompleted 1934 puppet movie The Lost Island

And we haven’t even touched all of the works that inspired Kong, such as

• The Lost World
• Creation
• The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, A Prehistoric Tragedy
• Heu-heu, or the Monster
• Isle of Sunken Gold
• Paul de Chailu’s travel guides
• Along the Moonbeam Trail
• The Ghost of Slumber Mountain

There may be some other as-of-yet unrevealed titles to get to eventually as well. Good thing there’s already another King Kong movie planned for 2020!

Kong count #2 – King Kong (1933)

The original King Kong is a tremendous film. That it’s a classic, that it’s one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time, that it directly inspired an entire generation of movie makers, that it still holds up incredibly 84 years later… all of this should be self-evident, and I feel foolish even writing it down. But, if somehow you missed it, if you only watch Japanese monsters, or you’re put off by black-&-white, or you’re afraid of it based on something someone else has said: give this movie a shot. It’s engrossing. It’s witty. It’s energetic. Whenever I intend to only watch a scene I wind up sitting through the whole thing. It’s just that good.

So pick up the DVD or Blu Ray; this is a movie worth a place in anyone’s collection. Watch the special features; they’ll cover the making, nuance, and influence better than I could in a brief blog post, and there is certainly a lot to cover. If you can’t appreciate it after that… I honestly dunno, maybe adventure movies just aren’t your thing?

I think I’ll just go watch it again rather than writing any more….I wonder what tomorrow’s post could be?

Kong count #3 – King Kong (1976)

Given the rushed nature of the production (to beat Universal to the punch), I can forgive a lot of problematic aspects of the 1976 King Kong remake. Sure, there are no dinosaurs, and that cuts down the spectacle staggeringly, which is objectively the movie’s greatest sin. The modernizing twist of the expedition being a fossil-fuel survey, while interesting in theory, gets very confused (the CO2 isn’t from oil, it’s from animal respiration! Also, there is oil on the island after all. But we can’t use it so we’ll capture a gorilla using all of the tools an oil tanker has handy?). Dwan is a rube, and there’s no getting around that, even if her more sympathetic view of Kong informed later versions of Ann. Still, all of those things could be overlooked, but there’s one small thing in this movie that breaks it for me.

There’s a lot of stupid humor, including one throwaway line of comic relief that slaps the fourth wall, where Jack says something along the lines of “Who the hell do you think went through there, some guy in an ape suit?” This line could be forgiven in context of the movie, since we do see the natives dressed as gorillas earlier… but he doesn’t say “costume” or “mask”, he says “suit”, and that’s a direct dig at the film’s own suitmation, one of the few aspects (along with the music) that it *doesn’t* have to be ashamed of. This is particularly harsh considering the way the production went down.

Rick Baker’s Kong suit isn’t his best work, but it’s still pretty nice, and the best Kong had ever looked on screen at the time of production. Despite that, Dino De Laurentiis had little interest in giving Baker credit or opportunity, while granting all sorts of leeway to Carlo Rambaldi’s misguided attempt to build a giant mechanical Kong. The resulting robot looked like crap and only made it into the film for a few seconds (before eventually being left on a beach in Argentina), yet, to justify its exorbitant cost, De Laurentiis went around promoting it as though all of the effects were achieved through the robot. That year, it was Rambaldi who got the Academy Award for all of Baker’s work, in case you were looking for yet another reason to disrespect the Oscars in general.

So, that’s my personal Rubicon for the film. It’s my least favorite of the Kong films generally, flawed as it is, despite some nice effects, because they can’t quite make up for the fact that it’s simply less exciting, and has lots of cringe humor, including a joke that belittles those very special effects. What I can’t fault the movie for, though, is the enormous pop-culture footprint that it had…how many times has it been obliquely referenced in this series of blog posts as something was cashing in on its production? It honestly created a mini giant-monster boom at a time when the Japanese studios had lost interest, and there was even a nod to it in the US marketing for one of the most famous Godzilla flicks stateside:

At least that poster doesn’t have the awkward sameface that Paramount doctored into their actual King Kong publicity materials.

Kong count #4 – King Kong (2005)

I grew up with conservative, micromanaging helicopter parents, and as a result was prohibited from taking full advantage of my local video stores’ horror movie aisles until college. As such, the name Peter Jackson meant little to me in the late 90s, since Bad Taste and Dead Alive were in the strictly verboten bucket. I did read Lord of the Rings (it was a chore, I wasn’t allowed to play Magic: The Gathering until I finished them all), and later took part working tech crew in a stage production of The Hobbit. I was positively smitten with the girl who played Bilbo, and, one fine winter day in 2001, the pair of us ditched class and went to see the brand new Lord of the Rings theatrical film instead (we didn’t wind up getting in trouble. Do well in school, kids, because administrators let merit scholars get away with crap like going on morning dates rather than attending discrete math). I was all about the Balrog scene (’cause, y’know, giant monster), and still riding that high when the credits rolled. Upon seeing the name Peter Jackson, I remembered a rumor from years before: “Oh, hey, that’s the guy who was gonna remake King Kong at some point!” Four years later, he finally did.

That introduction was overly-long, self-indulgent, and somewhat thematically incoherent, and I did such intentionally, in honor of this film. Now let’s, as Tripod are keen to sing, “get to the f-ing monkey“.

I’m snarky, but Jackson’s film was a long time coming, starting in the mid 90s (when he initially agreed to it in order to prevent anyone else from tainting the Kong name), through several delays due to Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla saturating the market, then its greenlighting due to Jackson’s limitless clout following the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A lot of awesome stuff resulted from Jackson’s unbridled enthusiasm for this King Kong project:

• Weta did a fantastic period-accurate reconstruction of the original’s famously lost spider-pit sequence.
• The concept book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island lays out the ecosystem in meticulous detail.
• The original King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young got snazzy DVD releases.
• There was a video-game tie-in with an amusing alternate ending.
• Jackson published elaborate production diaries for the film, likely the most comprehensive of any bonus feature ever.
• And naturally, a staggering toy line.

That’s just the official stuff, not taking into account mockbusters and cash-ins. There was a lot of material, and of course, the film itself had a lot of content as well; pretty much every element of the original that wasn’t in the 1976 film is present (I still remember the Daily Show episode where Jon Stewart was interviewing Adrien Brody about it. Stewart said something like “This is insane, it’s King Kong, but also dinosaurs” and Brody had to give him a lecture). All of the 30’s setting elements are handled impeccably, and while Jackson’s original idea was to have Fay Wray deliver the final line, I appreciate that Denham does, just like in the original. The thing is, it has every element that the original does… plus some….and then some.

King Kong ’33 runs for 100 minutes, while the 2005 version runs for 201 minutes, and even during my initial screening of it, I had to say: it’s cool that they rendered this fight with the V-rex with modern effects, but honestly I wish there was a version that only has the shots from the original, and not all this vine-bound acrobatics. While it’s neat that the extended director’s cut exists, I wonder if there could be a shorter, just the basics-cut; we could have gone without Kong slipping around on ice, without the stampede, without the spider pit (gasp!), without Jimmy trying to spook us by reading Heart of Darkness. Thank god there won’t be any other call-outs to that book agai-

Despite any complaints about the bloat of the movie, I do thoroughly enjoy it. The effects are tremendous, and Serkis’s Kong is an inspired incarnation. The cast is entertaining, particularly the unexpected choice of Jack Black as Denham, not to mention Thomas Kretschmann’s badass Englehorn, and future Godzilla King of the Monsters star Kyle Chandler as new character Bruce Baxter. Plus, having now seen Dead Alive, I’ve got to chuckle at the rat monkey (that movie had its own whole Kong homage, btw)! There’s a lot to love in the movie, on top of there being a lot of movie in general. It’s nice that this way, Jackson was able to do everything he imagined with the remake… and if The Hobbit is any indication, who knows, maybe some day we’ll get a 542 minute trilogy based on Son of Kong!

Kong count #5 – King Kong vs. Godzilla

This is daunting… what can I say about King Kong vs. Godzilla that hasn’t been said ad nauseum? I’ll strive not to be just the 453rd doofus this week you’ve heard say “actually, the US version doesn’t have a different ending”, but with a work this beloved, this core to the very genre, this may not be novel information or a fresh perspective. I even toyed with the idea of making a case that it’s overhyped, just to be contrarian, but decided that would be disingenuous. The film is wonderful, and its impact immeasurable.

Mothra might have gotten the ball rolling on the lighter, more anything-goes tone for the science fiction oeuvre at Toho, but the studio’s 30th-anniversary celebration runs with it. Even the first shot makes this clear: Panning through space with ominous narration is something you’d expect from one of their SF flicks, but upon revealing that this set-up is just a show the characters are watching on TV, you’re simultaneously hit with a punchline and a revelation that this movie will be much more in line with their salaryman comedies (Ichiro Arishima’s performance as Mr. Tago is particularly deserving of every gif that’s been made of it). This keeps up throughout, including the climatic battle being more of a fun wrestling match than the horrific deathbattle in Godzilla’s previous outing. Mothra set up that it was okay for kaiju to make it through a movie alive, and King Kong vs. Godzilla codified it.

This brings us to the film’s next revolution: It’s a “vs” movie. While not the first ever cinematic universe or crossover (see Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man), it was certainly a shake-up for Toho, leading to the nigh-standardization of monster movies as a title bout (Mothra vs. Godzilla, Frankenstein vs. Baragon, Sanda vs. Gaira), which of course continued out of the sixties and into the works produced by other studios as well. It also re-introduced Godzilla for the modern age, after seven years out of the spotlight. It’s hard to imagine, but without this film, there might be no “Godzilla series”, just an awkward duology along the lines of The Amazing Colossal Man; heck, we might have never even known his beam is blue! This film set Godzilla in place as the studio’s headline monster, as its cheif representative when doing business with the foreign agent that is Kong.

 

That international aspect is another element of King Kong vs. Godzilla that changed the game. Toho’s previous partnerships with Hollywood hadn’t gone that fantastically (e.g. Varan the Unbelievable), but a mash-up of Toho and RKO’s headliners was a sure-fire way of drumming up interest on both sides of the Pacific, and it’s hard to not see this as a factor directly leading to American co-productions like Frankenstein Conquers the World, Invasion of Astro-Monster, War of the Gargantuas, King Kong Escapes, and Latitude Zero (what is it with co-productions and giant octopodi?), and by extension the later Gamera films as well (heck, even You Only Live Twice!). Those movies were produced utilizing western actors, and thus helped nearly end the practice of American companies doing reshoots with their own actors after the film was licensed (well, aside from the later exceptions like Godzilla 1985 and Power Rangers).

  

That brings up the unfortunate aspect to this being an international co-production: the distribution. It seems like once a week or so, there’s a post on social media asking if we’ll ever get a complete box set of all of the Godzilla films, and we have to give the same disappointing stock answer: no, because Universal has perpetual rights to King Kong vs. Godzilla. To make matters worse, they have perpetual rights to the US version, which inserts awkward American actors, tries to be a non-comedy, and swaps out Ifukube’s music with library stock (notably including Creature from the Black Lagoon). Universal can’t put out a subtitled version without licensing the Japanese cut from Toho (which they have no incentive to do; they have thousands of their own movies that they haven’t released, why license other people’s?), yet other companies can’t license the Japanese cut without getting Universal’s blessing (which they have no incentive to give), so we have a stalemate.

At least Universal takes good care of their prints, so while their Blu Ray is an inferior cut, it looks great. Toho, conversely, destroyed the King Kong vs Godzilla negative for the 1970 Champion Matsuri edition (losing a third of the movie), and as a result home video releases have been a mess ever since, and pretty much every one has been some mix of 35 mm, 16 mm, original negative, and US version sources, with distracting missing frames exacerbating the changes in footage quality. Japan only last year finally got a proper version, rather than a reconstruction, so hopefully this one becomes the new standard and doesn’t get lost or damaged, but it seems the English-speaking world will forever be limited to imports and fansubs if they want to see it… while I don’t watch tokusatsu dubs often, I do wonder if a proper one for this film could raise its esteem in the west? It might be too late for that, though.

So, yeah, if you’ve only seen the American version, I’d implore you to track down the Japanese cut, especially now that we finally have a reasonable transfer (I imagine that anyone reading this would already have the Japanese version, but you never know). Hopefully this was a little helpful in understanding just why this movie is such an instrumental classic. Legendary has pulled off a miracle in clearing things up for a remake in 2020 (there have been numerous attempts in the past), and it has the potential, if the 1962 version is any indication, to spur on something enormous.

Weekly news recap: No kaiju edition

For once, I don’t think I have anything kaiju-related to discuss this week. That doesn’t mean there’s no cool news in the world of Japanese-ish genre fiction, however!

Starting in the robot realm:

• I neglected to mention last week that Big O is getting a Blu Ray release in the US. The original DVDs have become shockingly scarce for how big of a deal that show is, so this is a great opportunity to pick it up if you haven’t already. I’d say the show is bananas, but really it’s tomatoes.

• Discotek licensed GoShogun and its highly-unconventional follow-up movie Time Etranger. While the movie has been released stateside a couple of times, the TV series was only previously available as Macron 1 (one of those Frankensteined shows cobbled together from multiple anime), so this is neat. GoShogun has quite the reputation as a snarky take on the genre, and while watching it isn’t strictly necessary for the movie, I’m keen to see how it fills out some of the nuance that we’d otherwise miss.

• It turns out the Odaiba Gundam is getting replaced by a Unicorn Gundam model. While this could be cool, I still think the original is the most iconic.

Now for some superheroes:

• We have a new trailer for Hurricane Polymar, with lots of other suits:

• There’s another Avengers anime in the works, Marvel Future Avengers. Hopefully it gets brought to the US; I still maintain that Disk Wars hasn’t been brought over only because everyone at Marvel knows their homegrown cartoons aren’t good enough to compete at the moment.

• Netflix briefly listed a new Devilman show, based on the original TV series. It’s not on their site anymore, so who knows what that’s all about.
• Tsuburaya filed a trademark for Ultraman Zeed, who I have to assume will die in the first episode fighting Ultraman Kenshiro.

…and wrapping up with a smattering of other stories:

• Several of Junji Ito’s horror manga are up free to read until the middle of the month: Hanging Balloons, Kyoufu no Juusou, Slug Girl. I take no responsibility for the psychosis it may induce.

• We finally have a look at the live-action Jotaro for Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Woefully, his hat does not defy the laws of nature by fading into his hair.

• While note a kaiju per se, Joon ho Bong’s The Host has a lot of fans in the fandom. Nextflix just released a teaser for his upcoming creature feature Okja.

That’s a wrap for this week. We’ll make up for no giant monsters in this post with continuing coverage leading up to Skull Island!

Kong count #6 – King Kong Lives

Another guest spot! In addition to his earlier article on King Kong novelizations, Justin Mullis also submitted this radical thesis on the oft-maligned King Kong Lives. Many thanks to Justin for the piece! Without further ado, let’s get controversial!

In the annals of film history there are probably few films as loathed as KING KONG LIVES (Dir. John Guillermin). For starters the critics were not kind upon the movie’s 1986 theatrical release. Janet Maslin, of the New York Times, said the film had “a dull cast and a plot that’s even duller.” Duane Byrge, of The Hollywood Reporter, called it an “ill-developed production” with a “pedestrian, muddled script” and accused it of nonsensical “tonal changes at every juncture.” An uncredited critic for Box Office said the movie’s “miniature work is shoddy” and called it “the most ill-advised film of the year.” Deborah J. Kurk, for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, said that the movie amounted to nothing more than “Southern Fried corn pone.” Roger Ebert awarded the film one star – he gave THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN three. But it wasn’t just critics who hated KING KONG LIVES, fans of Kong did too. Peter Jackson called the film “unadulterated crap.” James Rolfe simply called it “awful.” Even the most diehard fans of Dino De Laurentiis’ KING KONG (1976, Dir. John Guillermin) remake, for which this film serves as a sequel, won’t defend KING KONG LIVES.

But I’m here to do just that. See I actually like KING KONG LIVES. Unashamedly and unironically. After the 1933 original and 1962’s KING KONG VS GODZILLA, KING KONG LIVES is easily my next favorite Kong film.[1]

However before jumping into why I think KING KONG LIVES is actually a great movie, let’s briefly recap the plot for anyone who’s forgotten or, possibly, never seen it…

KING KONG LIVES picks up ten years after the events of 1976’s KING KONG. Kong, we quickly learn, survived his fall from the World Trade Center, but in a coma, being kept alive by Dr. Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton of TERMINATOR fame) who is housing the big ape down south at the Atlanta Institute. Though alive, Dr. Franklin says that Kong’s heart is weak and that he’ll die if he doesn’t receive a new one. Fortunately Dr. Franklin has managed to whip up an artificial heart the size of a Volkswagen and she’s ready to perform surgery – there’s only one problem. See, in order to survive the surgery Kong’s going to need a blood transfusion and that means we need another Kong to serve as a blood donor. That’s where adventurer Hank “Mitch” Mitchell (Brian Kerwin) comes in. As fate would have it he’s just returned from Borneo where he’s found and captured a giant female gorilla who he unoriginally dubs Lady Kong. Amy and Mitch bring Lady Kong to the Atlanta Institute and once they have her sedated perform the heart transplant/blood transfusion that saves Kong’s life. Once back to full health however Kong senses Lady Kong, goes into heat, and busts out of the Institute with his new monstrous bride-to-be.

With two giant apes now on the loose, army Lieutenant Colonel Archie Nevitt (John Ashton) is called in by the local authorities to hunt down and kill Kong and Lady Kong. And because the Kongs are loose in the American South it is only a matter of time before every redneck, yahoo, hick and yokel with a shotgun in the region is also on their tail hoping to the bag the biggest trophy of all time.

Fortunately Amy has installed a tracking device in Kong’s artificial heart and, along with Mitch, is able to locate the giant gorillas first as they have decided to stop and rest along Honeymoon Ridge in the mountains of Tennessee. That night both couples make monkey love.  The next morning, however, Nevitt also catches up with the Kongs and manages to capture Lady Kong. King Kong is driven over the side of a cliff and is presumed dead. Kong, of course, is not dead and after some time spent recuperating via snacking on alligators, as well as making a meal out of some of those aforementioned rednecks, makes his way back to Lady Kong who is being held in an abandoned missile silo under the eye of Nevitt. Kong, along with Amy and Mitch, come to Lady Kong’s rescue and Kong takes on an entire army regiment including helicopters, tanks and flamethrowers. Kong manages to defeat the soldiers, and kills Nevitt by literally beating him into a grave. Sadly however Kong quickly succumbs to his many injuries and dies, but not before seeing Lady Kong give birth to their son. The film ends with Amy and Mitch relocating the two surviving Kongs to a nature preserve in Borneo.

First let’s get one thing straight. KING KONG LIVES is an absurd movie. Absolutely, completely, unequivocally crazy. But just how absurd is it really? Most critics would point to the film’s scene of Dr. Amy Franklin performing open-heart surgery on Kong, complete with giant-sized surgical tools, as the point where the movie goes off the rails. But how exactly is this scene any more absurd than, say, the sight of two children piloting a mini-sub inside of a giant turtle to destroy a brood of invading parasitic organisms? Or the idea of building a giant mechanical ape to excavate radioactive ore? Or that an invading alien race would decide that the most effective way to conquer the planet is to trick a group of humans into giving them a pair of mutant dinosaurs in exchange for a bogus tape containing medical secrets? Or that another alien race would decide that a better plan was to create a fake children’s amusement park? Or that a third hostile alien race would decide to create a robot doppelganger of a mutant dinosaur and then dress that robot up as said dinosaur? Or that the most effective way to transport a giant inebriated ape hundreds of mile to Mt. Fuji is via balloon? Or that the best way to rid your city of a giant rainbow beam projecting lizard is to lure it away with a giant chunk of cubic zirconia? Or that the best plan for stopping the destruction of the earth by meteor is to simply build a set of giant jet engines to move the planet? Or even just the idea of a black hole gun, a maser tank, a sub equipped with a drill on the front, or an oxygen destroying bomb? And just recently writer and artist Stephen Bissette even openly compared the climax of SHIN-GODZILLA (2016, Dir. Hideaki Anno & Shinji Higuchi), which he described as having the appearance of “insane dental surgery,” to the heart transplant scene in KING KONG LIVES.

But Justin, you might say, those are all Japanese kaiju movies, KING KONG LIVES is an American giant monster movie! Well yes, but then I would just point to the giant hypodermic needle in THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957, Bert I. Gordon), or the idea of loading a rifle with a radioactive isotope and firing it manually at a rampaging dinosaur as they do in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953, Dir. Eugène Lourié), or even the notion that a giant prehistoric ape-god would be more interested sexually in a small blond female of an entirely separate species then he would be in a giant female ape of his own kind; perhaps the one aspect of KING KONG LIVES which is certainly much less absurd then the 1933 original.

My point here is that all giant monster movies are absurd by their very nature, be they American or Japanese. Kong creator Merian C. Cooper is reported to have said in 1933 that he hoped that KING KONG (Dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack) would be the “most preposterous picture” anyone had ever seen, when RKO Studio execs began to openly voice concerns that Cooper’s monster movie might be a little too weird for mainstream American audiences. Of course, my default is to go to the Japanese films both because those are my favorite and because they are, admittedly, often more openly ludicrous then their American counterparts. This then leads me back to my point about why KING KONG LIVES is such a remarkable, wonderful film, a point I’m going to make by referencing another infamously reviled American giant monster movie: 1957’s THE GIANT CLAW (Dir. Fred F. Sears).

In his review for THE GIANT CLAW on his website 1,000 Misspent Hours, genre aficionado Scott Ashlin makes the following observation…

“There’s something essentially, fundamentally different about Asian monster movies, largely because there’s something essentially, fundamentally different about Asian movie monsters. Even when the creature is something relatively pedestrian, like a revived dinosaur or a giant bug, the Japanese and their imitators along the western rim of the Pacific can be counted upon to take a more expansive view of the permissible departures from nature, unencumbered by modern Anglo-Saxon notions of how much disbelief an audience can comfortably suspend. This doesn’t mean that their monster movies are better than ours, but it does mean that kaiju eiga are predictably weirder than their Western counterparts. The monsters are bigger, faster, stronger, tougher, more anatomically freakish. They have inexplicable powers and anthropomorphic motivations. The destruction they wreak on the human settlements they visit is on a grander, nearly apocalyptic scale. And the films’ creators appear to subscribe wholeheartedly to Arthur C. Clarke’s famous dictum that technology becomes indistinguishable from magic beyond a certain threshold of advancement, cannily assuming further that for the average person, that threshold was crossed sometime around 1945. I bring all this up here, in the context of a notorious Hollywood monster flick made with no Asian involvement whatsoever, because what makes The Giant Claw truly special, beyond its ludicrously inept dialogue, its impressive misuse of stock footage and voiceover narration, and its legendarily cheap and unconvincing special effects, is that it boldly defies the aforementioned pattern. The Giant Claw is every bit as unrepentantly bizarre as any Japanese or Korean creature film, and in exactly the same characteristic way. It is, so far as I’ve seen, the only true American kaiju movie.”

I for one am persuaded by Ashlin’s argument that a movie like THE GIANT CLAW is closer to the spirit of a Japanese kaiju flick than it is any Hollywood creature feature – I would even argue that its “impressive misuse of stock footage” and “legendarily cheap and unconvincing special effects” be submitted as evidence for the case.

I would also argue however that KING KONG LIVES is every bit as much a kaiju movie in spirit as THE GIANT CLAW and that in order to fully appreciate KING KONG LIVES and everything is has to offer fans of the genre only need to view it as if it is one. Seriously, if you’re a kaiju fan who’s reading this article and who doesn’t like KONG KONG LIVES but gives KING KONG ESCAPES (1967. Dir. Ishiro Honda) a pass ask yourself “Why?” And ask yourself how much more accepting of KING KONG LIVES you might be if the movie had been made by Toho rather than Hollywood?[2]

Not surprisingly the Japanese apparently loved KING KONG LIVES when it was released there under the title “King Kong 2.” Heisei era Godzilla artist Noriyoshi Ohrai created a knock-out poster for the film – though I also quite like the American poster as well complete with its cheesy tagline – and two official video games based on the movie were developed and released only in Japan by Konami. These were “King Kong 2: Season of the Megaton Punch” for the Famicom and “King Kong 2: Revived Legend” for the MSX. Not surprisingly these games pushed the kaiju aspect of Kong even further with the Famicom game totally discarding the human aspect of the film and instead having players assume the role of King Kong as he traverses the globe fighting giant robots in order to save Lady Kong. Now there’s another sequel I’d also like to see!

[1] KONG: SKULL ISLAND excluded for the obvious reason that I haven’t seen it yet

[2] Interestingly enough actor Brian Kerwin is on record as saying that he actually prefers to watch KING KONG LIVES dubbed in Japanese. In Japanese, Kerwin says, the movie suddenly feels like a Kurosawa film.

_________________________________________________________

A friend and occasionally guest contributor of Maser Patrol, Justin Mullis lectures in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where he teaches classes related to the intersection of religion and popular culture. Being a native of North Carolina is another reason why he loves KING KONG LIVES, as it is to date the only giant monster movie filmed in the state.

Kong count #7 – King Kong Escapes

If I had to describe Eisei Amamoto’s character Dr. Who (no relation to Peter Cushing) in the 1967 film King Kong Escapes, I’d probably say something along the lines of “an enthusiastic go-getter with a can-do attitude and a real passion for customer service”. His client is an unspecified Asian country that wants the radioactive element X buried beneath the arctic, and the doc will not rest before he gets it to them.

His first plan is to dig it up using a mechanical King Kong he’s constructed (see The King Kong Show), using plans he has from his estranged pal Carl Nelson (Rhodes Reason). One would think that giant killer robots would have applications other than mining for a burgeoning superpower, but the doc promised them rocks, and by god he’s going to deliver them! Well, the robot fails due to all the radiation surrounding it (raising a question: was he able to retrieve the robot then, or did he leave it there and construct a new one?), and Who, undeterred, assures his liaison (Madam Piranha, played by Mie Hama), that this is just a temporary setback, and he’s got an outside-the-box plan B to get the ore: kidnap and hypnotize the real King Kong into doing it. Again, he could pitch her country on the sale of a brainwashed kaiju to do their bidding, but he promised this ore and he’s going to deliver on that at any cost.

There are more setbacks, but Dr. Who keeps up his optimism. The earpiece broke? Well, I’m sure Carl will help me. He won’t? Well, he’ll come around if I threaten his friends a little. Oh, that didn’t work and Kong escaped? No worries, I’ll just send Mechanikong after him, he’ll beat up Kong and drag him back here to be re-hypnotized and continue work. Everything will be fine.

Madam Piranha, on the other hand, doesn’t quite have confidence in the doctor’s vision, so when things go south, she switches sides and dies violently (because this is an Ishiro Honda movie, after all). Oh, I suppose the heroes are there too, but they lack both the charisma and fashion sense of prior pair, even if Akira Takarada and Linda Miller make an adorable couple.

 

The movie is certainly worth checking out, despite showcasing arguably the worst Kong costume, for its great synergy: it’s very much a Toho kaiju film, but it also brings in the best aspects of the cartoon while paying tribute to the iconic bits of the original King Kong untouched during King Kong vs Godzilla (with some James Bond and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea mixed in for good measure). Gorosaurus is arguably the best dinosaur costume Toho produced during its Showa-era run (boy, did Toho get their money’s worth out of that suit with later movies and TV), and the miniatures look quite nice by sticking to the 20-meter scale previously used in Frankenstein Conquers the World and War of the Gargantuas. Mechanikong is simply awesome, and it makes sense that the company later revisited the robot doppelganger idea for Godzilla (King Kong Escapes played in the Toho Champion Matsuri in 1973, for context). They even tried to bring Mechanikong back to the screen in the 90s, but rights evidently choked that project up (despite him appearing in some manga at the time).

But first and foremost, this is the Amamoto show. I feel bad for him; he was just really committed to digging up some rocks and everything went wrong. At least he got to boss Susumu Kurobe around a little before his organization was destroyed.

Kong count #8 – Son of Kong

A sequel produced at breakneck pace to release the very same year as the original, Son of Kong runs just under 70 minutes, which was more common in the days of early talkies (see the earlier runtime of The Most Dangerous Game). However, I couldn’t blame audiences, jazzed for a sequel to the genre-defining original, for looking at their watches around the 45 minute mark and asking “So…uh…. Are there going to be any special effects in this movie?”

The early part of the film (written as a comedy since Ruth Rose didn’t think she could top the first dramatically) is somewhat unexpected but completely plausible: Carl Denham is getting sued by pretty much every possible party in New York.  He hops aboard Englehorn’s vessel to live out his days sailing on the other side of the planet, and it’s clear that the pair of them both feel tsundere nostalgic for their time on the island of pure murder. They pick up a singer as romantic interest for Denham on one of their stops (the character is so well-developed that she’s not actually named in the dialog of the movie) in a sequence illustrating that, despite attempting to transition to sailing life, Carl is still a showman at heart, and with her comes Helstrom, the movie’s villain. A purely malevolent force in the film is a sure sign of a friendlier Kong (notice how the cartoons all have clear-cut villains while the original film doesn’t?), and sure enough, this movie may be what started that trend.

Helstrom, it turns out, was the one who first gave Denham the Skull Island map, and, eager to get a free ride, convinces him that the island is full of treasure. He then organizes a mutiny among the crew of the Venture, who, aside from Charlie, are not stupid and have no lingering desire to be eaten by dinosaurs. Helstrom underestimates just how not stupid the crew are, so they toss him over the side as well. Shenanigans ensue once the group of five reach the island, befriend a smaller, whiter version of Kong (nicknamed “Kiko” outside the text of the film), actually find treasure, and eventually there’s an earthquake that destroys the entire island… good thing they didn’t wait another week to return there!

Willis O’Brien did manage to get a fair amount of footage with the movie’s title star (who was, admittedly, a bit recycled, but underwent enough modifications to be easily distinct from the original puppet), though. Standouts include a battle with a bear-like creature (sloth?), Kiko’s introduction sinking in quicksand, his toying with a rifle, and ultimate demise (again sinking), not to mention a triceratops rampage; considering what a time-consuming process stop-motion is, O’Brien clearly worked incessantly, and it’s understandable that these sequences are all bundled together at the end…once you get to Skull Island, you don’t want to break up the action. OB was going through some seriously horrific personal stuff during the time of production, which likely dwarfed the impact of things like dealing with half the budget or studio interference, but at the end of production he was a wreck and tried to swear the film off… but RKO didn’t let him remove his name from the credits, which is certainly unfortunate. The result is that it’s one of the least-documented of his films, because he (understandably) didn’t want to talk about it.

Under such circumstances, I’d say the picture turned out pretty well. While Son of Kong doesn’t live up to the original, it does succeed in doing just what it sets out to, as a comedic look at the aftermath of the original. While it could be disappointing for those expecting the level of monster action that the first film delivered, Armstrong’s comic timing is impeccable, and I’d love to have seen this in the theater with a crowd of first-time viewers. It’s a shame that, despite the best efforts of the crew, we didn’t really get more Carl Denham adventures, because I could see him spanning a whole franchise, Kong or no.

Kong count #9 – King Kong (1932) The Delos W. Lovelace novelization

Exclusive treat today! Maser Patrol special guest correspondent (pretty much our Gold Ranger) Justin Mullis is an expert on King Kong to the point that he actually teaches a college class on the subject! When discussing the original 1932 novel, I mentioned that I didn’t think there was much to say, and Justin rightly put me in my place by submitting the following exhaustive manuscript. Hope you enjoy, and many thanks to Justin for the write-up!

Though often considered ‘junk literature,’ movie novelizations – that is, novels based on film scripts – remain a popular and lucrative part of the modern American literary landscape. According to Randall D. Larson’s authoritative book Film Into Books: An Analytical Bibliography of Film Novelizations, Movie and TV Tie-Ins, novelizations are as old as the cinema itself. Historically studios commissioned novelizations as another way of drumming up advance publicity for a film, as well as to provide their movie with a more erudite air at a time when films were still seen as a gimmick by many and not deserving of the same cultural status as books. Also in the days before home video and television, novelizations served as a way for people to revisit a beloved film. Today novelizations remain popular because they often provide fans with a more complete version of a particular story than what can be found in the two-hour runtime of a film. Characters that only got a few words in edgewise can monologue for pages, and various bits of narrative minutia can be expanded upon at length. And because novelizations have to be written well in advance of the film itself being finished, novelizations will often contain deleted or alternate versions of certain scenes not found in the theatrical release.

With regards to Delos W. Lovelace’s 1932 novelization of the 1933 version of King Kong, all of the above is true and then some, because part of what makes Lovelace’s novelization of the original King Kong so interesting is not just the more fully fleshed out characters or the numerous scenes found within the book but not the film, but the fact that Lovelace’s novelization is one of the very few which has never gone out of print – at least not for long. Casualties of their very nature, most movie novelizations are printed once, sold briefly and then disappear entirely; only to pop-up later on the collector’s market where they go for exorbitant prices. Only a lucky few – such as the novelizations for the original Star Wars Trilogy or Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) – stay in print perpetually. Lovelace’s King Kong is one of these.

Originally published in 1932 by Grosset & Dunlap, the novel briefly fell out of print until 1965 when it was reprinted by Bantam Books, followed by Ace Books in 1976 with a cover by legendary fantasy painter Frank Frazetta. That same year King Kong was also reissued by Albin Michel, Tempo Books and its original publisher Grosset & Dunlap this time with the later two featuring accompanying interior illustrations by artist Richard Powers. The following year Grosset & Dunlap reissued the book again as did publishers Arthur Barker, Futura and Otava. King Kong then briefly falls out of publication again until 2005 when Grosset & Dunlap reissue the novelization. That same year King Kong is also inducted into the prestigious Modern Library series, with this being the version still on the commercial market today. This edition features a new preface by Cooper biographer Mark Cotta Vaz and an introductory essay by noted sci-fi author Greg Bear, whose 1998 novel Dinosaur Summer – a sequel to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World set in the early 1950s  – I would be remise to not mention here only because it features Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen as strong supporting characters.

Undoubtedly much of the King Kong novelization’s success is owed to its author, Delos W. Lovelace, whose clear, crisp prose and taut pacing make the book an exciting and fast read. However, over the years there has been some confusion as to who exactly Mr. Lovelace was, with some even assuming that he was actually a pseudonym for either best-selling mystery writer Edgar Wallace or director Merian C. Cooper whose names also routinely appear on the novelization’s cover. To clarify this issue, Cooper originally hired Edgar Wallace to write the initial story treatment for King Kong and had also planned to hire him on as the writer of the novelization. However this was not to be as Wallace succumbed to pneumonia complicated by undiagnosed diabetes and died shortly after Cooper hired him and before he could contribute – to quote Cooper himself – “one bloody word” to King Kong. However out of respect to Wallace, and out of a less respectful desire to exploit the late author’s brand name, Cooper gave Wallace story credit on both the film and novelization anyway and also authorized for an abridged version of the novelization to be run in the February and March 1933 installments of Mystery magazine; the publication where much of Wallace’s work had seen print. This Mystery magazine version was simply titled Kong and was published under Wallace’s name alone though it was actually written by Walter F. Ripperger. Cooper then hired his old friend, journalist turned short-story writer Delos W. Lovelace to pen the actual novelization. Cooper had roomed with Lovelace in college and both men worked together as journalists for The Minneapolis Daily News in 1916. As a result Lovelace became the natural candidate to transform Cooper’s movie into a book. Lovelace was paid a total of $600 for his work on the novelization – a significant sum of money in the 1930s – but appears to have retained no royalty rights. According to researcher Ray Morton, Lovelace based his novelization off of screenwriter Ruth Rose’s first draft of the King Kong screenplay, which was itself a revised version of the screenplay penned by screenwriter James Creelman who had rewritten Wallace’s initial story treatment. As a result Lovelace’s novelization contains several scenes, a good bit of dialogue and a few more superficial details not found in the final theatrical version of King Kong released in 1933.

Since it is these alternative bits of info which are most likely of interest to readers of this article who have themselves not read Lovelace’s novelization, the remainder of this essay will list the major differences found between the 1932 novelization and the 1933 film version – which I am assuming all readers are thoroughly familiar with. As a final note, there are conflicting reports as to what the legal status of Lovelace’s novelization actually is. Some sources claim that the novel is now in public domain while others dispute this while still other sources say that it is the Mystery magazine version which is public domain while yet others claim it is both. Whatever the case may be one thing is clear and that is that Lovelace’s novelization has proven a source for every major remake, reboot and adaptation of King Kong to come along since the original 1933 film was released. This includes Dino De Laurentiis and John Guillermin’s 1976 King Kong remake, as well as Peter Jackson’s 2005 version. In addition, both Gold Key and Monster Comics – an imprint of Fantagraphics Books – produced comic book versions of King Kong based on Lovelace’s novelization in 1968 and 1991 respectively. There have also been animated versions of King Kong as well including 1998’s The Mighty Kong and an episode of the 1990 animated series Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies which have clearly used Lovelace’s novelization as a source of inspiration. As a result I have made notes in the following of when and where elements of the King Kong novelization turn up in other Kong media…

• A Ship by Any Other Name: In Lovelace’s novelization the ship Denham and co. take to Kong’s island is the Wanderer, not the Venture as in the movie
• Denham, Who?: Actor Robert Armstrong played movie mogul Carl Denham in the 1933 film, but in Lovelace’s 1932 novelization the character is just called Denham with no first name. This is one of the surest signs that you’re dealing with a Kong adaptation that is using the novel as its basis and includes both the 1968 and 1991 King Kong comic adaptations and 1998’s The Mighty Kong.
  
• The Wanderer’s Crew: Other than Englehorn and Jack we don’t get to know much of the ship’s crew in the 1933 King Kong film. But in Lovelace’s novelization we are introduced to two additional characters; Jimmy and Lumpy. Lumpy is a veteran sailor who spends his time hanging out with a pet monkey named Ignatz. Lumpy never ventures into the interior of Kong’s island and so survives his time there. Jimmy, on the other hand, is a cabin boy who volunteers to go with the first wave of men after Ann and who carries the backpack full of gas bombs smuggled onto the island by Denham. Jimmy later dies in the Spider-Pit. Both of these characters are featured in Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong with Jimmy being portrayed by actor Jamie Bell and Lumpy by actor Andy Serkis who pulled double duty as the motion-capture actor for Kong. In Jackson’s version Lumpy dies in the Spider-Pit while Jimmy survives but is badly injured by Kong. Jimmy also pops up in 1998’s The Mighty Kong now with a pet monkey named Chip.
• Ann and Jack’s Backstory: Like the rest of the characters we learn only the scantest details about our principal protagonists Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll in the 1933 film. Lovelace’s novelization fleshes these two out telling us that Ann was raised on a farm and lost her parents at a young age. The money left to her was entrusted to an uncle until she came of age, but her uncle squandered the money leaving Ann destitute and in New York searching for work. Likewise we learn that Jack ran away from home to avoid going to college, became a sailor and later reconciled with his mother – though she disapproves of his association with a known risk-taker like Denham.   
• Love in the Crow’s Nest: In the 1933 film Jack confesses his love to Ann on the desk of the ship, but in Lovelace’s novelization he does it up in the ship’s crow’s nest – which is a far more atmospheric and romantic image.
• Skull Mountain Island: Though it may come as a surprise to many, Kong’s home is never actually called “Skull Island” in the original 1933 film. Nor is it called this, per se, in Lovelace’s novelization where it is instead referred to as “Skull Mountain Island.” It is not until 1976 that the name Skull Island appears in association with any official King Kong merchandise, in this case the John Barry soundtrack for the Dino De Laurentiis and John Guillermin remake; though again the island itself is never called this in the actual film.
• Racism: As a franchise King Kong has a poor track record when it comes to depictions of both people of color and indigenous cultures. Lovelace’s novelization is no exception here, though it does fair better in some ways and worse in others. For one Charlie the racially insensitive comic relief Chinese cook from the 1933 film – and its sequel Son of Kong – is nowhere to be found. The Skull Mountain Island natives however are still the same lamentable stereotypes with Lovelace contributing a few cringe worthy lines regarding both the white explorers “racial superiority” and how “primitive minds” find the act of thinking especially difficult. Lovelace also chooses to repeatedly emphasize the whiteness of Ann’s skin to a point that it becomes apparent he is attempting to make a link between white skin, virginal innocence and moral purity – ideas which have a long history of problematic racial and sexual connotations.
• The Protagonists Figure out What Kong is Before Ever Seeing Him: After their initial encounter with the natives of Skull Mountain Island, Denham, Jack and Ann return to Englehorn’s cabin and try to make sense out of the mysterious ritual they’ve just seen. Knowing that the native girl they saw was intended as the bride of Kong the four attempt to figure out just what Kong is leading to the following exchange…

“But even agreeing to all this,” Englehorn puzzled, “I haven’t yet any clear idea of what Kong is.”

“I have,” Denham said with abrupt conviction. “That wall wasn’t built against any pintsized danger. There were a dozen proxy bridegrooms because only with so many could the natives approximate the size of the creature which was getting the sacrifices. And those gorilla skins that the dancers wore didn’t mean that Kong is a gorilla by a long shot. If he’s really there, he’s a brute big enough to use a gorilla for a medicine ball.”

“But there never was such a beast!” Ann laughed uncertainly. “At least not since prehistoric times.”

Denham shifted in his seat to stare.

“Holy Mackerel!” he whispered. “I wonder if you’ve hit it, Ann?”

“Rot!” Discroll exploded.

Englehorn shook an unbelieving head…

“Why shouldn’t such an out-of-the-way spot be just the place to find a solitary, surviving prehistoric freak?” [Denham’s] eyes flashed. “Holy Mackerel! If we find the brute, what a picture!”

• Triceratops in the Asphalt Pit: Merian C. Cooper met Willis O’Brien while the later was at work on never-to-be-completed ‘Lost World’ picture Creation. At the time the only sequence from Creation which O’Brien had committed to film was a brief scene in which a hunter shoots and kills a baby triceratops, enraging its parents who proceed to chase the vandal down and gore him to death. Cooper had originally intended to make use of this footage and O’Brien’s triceratops models in a sequence following the crew of the Wanderer’s narrow escape from the lagoon dwelling brontosaurus. In Lovelace’s novelization the men catch up with Kong who is embroiled in a fight with a trio of triceratopses in an asphalt pit with Kong lobbing boulders at his dinosaur adversaries. Kong escapes the enraged dinosaurs that then turn their attention to the men and give chase, killing one, while the rest are forced onto a log leading across a ravine where they encounter Kong on the other side. It’s not clear at what point this sequence was cut from the 1933 film but it seems to have been fairly late and after having gone through several variations including one where the triceratops would be replaced by a prehistoric rhino – arsinoitherium – and another in which they were replaced by a different horned dinosaur; styracosaurus. Early publicity photos of the iconic log sequence exist showing the styracosaurus on the one side of the ravine and Kong on the other. Some, like Peter Jackson, believe a version of this scene, like the infamous ‘lost’ Spider-Pit sequence, may have even been shot and then deleted. Variations on this sequence show up in both the 1968 and 1991 King Kong comic adaptations. In the 1968 comic Kong battles a pair of triceratops while a styracosaurus chases the men across the log. The 1991 comic has Kong facing off against a whole heard of different ceratopsian dinosaurs and a random ankylosaurus(!) In 1998’s The Mighty Kong the stegosaurus the sailors initially encounter is replaced with a lone ceratopian, anticipating Peter Jackson by seven years.

 

• The Spider-Pit Sequence: Undoubtedly the most celebrated deleted-scene of all time is the infamous Spider-Pit sequence. Conceived early on in the 1933 film’s development this sequence would have taken place immediately after Kong knocks the remaining sailor off the log into the ravine. The sailors – most of whom are still alive – would have awakened to find themselves besieged by various giant arachnids, insects, lizards and other assorted monstrosities who lurk at the bottom of the ravine. Behind-the-scenes photos from the 1933 film show that the set and models for the scene were constructed but to this day debate rages over whether or not they were ever actually employed with many fans holding out hope that they were and that the deleted scene has survived the ravages of time locked away somewhere in an unmarked film canister waiting to be rediscovered. This sequence however definitely shows up in Lovelace’s novelization and is just as chilling as anyone might hope. It also shows up in 1991 King Kong comic adaptation and, of course, in Peter Jackson’s 2005 film. Jackson also commissioned a period-accurate reconstruction of the original Spider-Pit sequence which is included as a special feature on all current Blu-ray and most DVD releases of the original King Kong.
  
• Kong vs. a Giant Snake (Maybe?): Following his fight with the tyrannosaurus, Kong reaches his mountain lair where he encounters another foe lying in wait. Based on Lovelace’s description it’s not entirely clear what this creature is supposed to be though it is described as “serpentine” leading many subsequent artists and filmmakers to conclude that it is a giant snake. This includes most notably Dino De Laurentiis and John Guillermin in their 1976 King Kong remake as well as the artists for the 1968 and 1991 comic book adaptations, 1998’s The Mighty Kong and even the “Kong!” episode of the 1990 animated series Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies. In the 1933 film version of this sequence the creature Kong battles is actually an elasmosaurus; albeit an admittedly snake-like one.
  
• Escape from Kong’s Lair: In the 1933 film Ann and Jack escape from Kong’s lair by attempting to shimmy down a vine dangling over a cliff. When this doesn’t work the two jump into a pool of water below. In Lovelace’s novelization, however, Ann and Jack escape by diving down into the pool inside Kong’s cave – the same pool the giant snake had been hiding in – and swimming through an underwater tunnel and that spits them out over the adjacent waterfall. The two then swim down river until reaching the lagoon where the crew of the Wanderer previously encountered the angry brontosaurus and then running the rest of the way back to the native village.
• Kong Caged: Lovelace describes Kong as being shackled to the floor inside a large cage when he is presented to the public as part of Denham’s show, as oppose to the now iconic crucifixion pose from the 1933 film. Both the 1968 comic adaptation and Dino De Laurentiis and John Guillermin’s 1976 King Kong remake share the cage imagery.
• Kong in New York: In Lovelace’s novelization Kong pursues Ann and Jack into the lobby of the hotel where Jack is staying which is across the street from the theater – Ann had the good sense to get a room nine blocks away – where a security guard opens fire on the beast-god with little effect. In the 1933 film Kong climbs the building searching for Ann and in one of the more horrific scenes finds another woman sleeping in bed. Thinking it may be Ann, Kong reaches inside of picks her up. When he realizes it is not he simply drops her to her death. In Lovelace’s novelization this moment still plays out but is surprisingly more terrifying since it occurs from Ann and Jack’s perspective who can only hear what is happening to the women in the room next door to them. Once Kong has Ann he escapes by climbing over various NYC rooftops until he reaches the Empire State Building. Unlike the 1933 film there is no sequence in which Kong destroys an elevated train.  
• “It Was Beauty. As always, Beauty killed the Beast:” Denham still delivers a slightly wordier version of his famous last line in Lovelace’s novelization from atop the Empire State Building rather than on the ground next to Kong’s body as in the film.

Lovelace’s novelization is not the only prose version of the original 1933 King Kong film to appear in print, though it is definitely the most accessible today. The aforementioned Mystery magazine version of the story has been reprinted in 2013 as part of Mike Hankin’s Ray Harryhausen – Master of the Majicks Vol. 1: Beginnings and Endings. Forest J. Ackerman, founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine also republished the Mystery magazine version when he serialized it in Issues #25-27 (Oct. 1963-March ’64) of his now legendary fanzine. Ackerman evidently felt that “many of the ‘good’ parts were left out” in this adaptation (he’s right, there’s no T. Rex fight for one) and so Ackerman took the liberty of adding them back in on his own!

Hankin also reports that beginning in April of 1933 the London Dailey Herald ran a serialized version of King Kong over the course of 37 installments penned by journalist turned crime-fiction novelist Kingsley Long. Long’s version of the story is evidently told in a pseudo-documentary style; reporting on the events of King Kong as if they had actually happened. Hankin writes that Long’s adaptation not only fleshes out the principal characters more but also contains such intriguing additional information as “the origins of Kong and the Skull Island civilization” and reveals what happened to Kong’s body after his fall from the Empire State Building: Denham had it stuffed and mounted and charged folks to see it! If anyone knows where one can find a copy of this today I’d love to know!

Yet another short-story version of the film appeared in the October 1933 issue of Cinema Weekly magazine where it was also credited to Edgar Wallace but actually written by Draycott Montagu Dell. This adaptation was later reprinted in the 1988 book Movie Monsters published by Severn House and is now out-of-print, though it appears to be common throughout public libraries and used copies are not hard to track down. That same month the story also appeared in the juvenile publication Boys Magazine (Vol 23. No. 608, Oct. 1933). My best efforts to track down a copy of this version have thus far yielded no results, though a reproduction of the first page does appear in Vol. 1 of Hankin’s Master of the Majicks and appears identical to the Draycott Montagu Dell version and may, in fact, be the same version.

  

There has also been at least one children’s book adaptation of the original King Kong. First published in 1983 and then again in 1988 by Random House this version was based on the Lovelace novelization but rewritten for children by Judith Conaway with accompanying illustrations by Michael Berenstain. Conaway was not the last to rewrite Lovelace’s prose however. In 2005 writers Joe DeVito and Brad Strickland also rewrote Lovelace’s 1932 novelization and published it under the title Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong: A Novel. The point of this was apparently to improve upon Lovelace’s original as well as to bring the novelization into the same narrative continuity as DeVito and Strickland’s own original prequel Kong novel Kong: King of Skull Island.

_________________________________________________________

A friend and occasionally guest contributor of Maser Patrol, Justin Mullis lectures in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where he teaches classes related to the intersection of religion and popular culture. His published work includes “Playing Games with the Great Old Ones: Ritual, Play, and Joking within the Cthulhu Mythos Fandom” (The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Vol. 26 No. 3), “All The Pretty Little Ponies: An Examination of Brony Sexuality” (The Retro-Futurism of Cuteness, Punctum Books, late 2017), “Notes from the Land of Light: Observations on Religious Elements seen in Ultraman” (Kaiju and Pop-Culture, McFarland Press, late 2017), and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Ritual, Repetition, and the Responsibility of Relaying the Myth” (The Myth (Re-)Awakens: Canon, Conservatism, and Fan Reception of Star Wars, Wipf and Stock, late 2017). Justin has also written for G-Fan magazine, the LovecrafteZine and has recorded podcasts for The Film Find.

Kong count #10 – The Most Dangerous Game

Some fun facts for film aficionados – the original King Kong was the first movie to ever get an audio commentary, as part of its 1985 laserdisc release from Criterion. It was the company’s second home video release, following only Citizen Kane (another picture produced by RKO, which, funnily enough, has stock footage from Son of Kong in one of its background scenes, accounting for some inexplicable pterodactyls in an otherwise conventional drama). While the company never reissued those films, they still to this day distribute King Kong‘s sibling as the 46th entry in their collection: The Most Dangerous Game, and will likely do so in perpetuity, since it’s public domain.

The 1932 film shares much with King Kong, though its lack of a monster (unless man is the true monster?) made me hesitate to include it here at first. However, it’s worth noting because it’s an underrated and influential classic (films from Hard Target to Zodiac to Predator draw inspiration), and because of its ties to the King Kong production.

Based on a 1924 short story by Richard Connell, the movie has a big game hunter getting shipwrecked on a remote island, owned by an eccentric aristocrat sharing a passion for hunting, though he’s interested in a particularly tricky and ferocious beast….human! Being a pre-code film, there’s some great gruesome content that censors would have none of (especially the human trophy room), and, like King Kong, there was some heavy editing done after the fact. You can already tell some similarities, both being adventure films set on a remote island, but let us share two images with you:

The Most Dangerous Game

King Kong

It’s the same set. Also, if you zoom in on one of the figures in the first shot, you might notice Ann Darrow herself, actress Fay Wray, sans blonde wig. Her brother in the picture is played by Robert Armstrong, better known as Carl Denham. The picture has a score by Max Steiner, like King Kong, and was also produced by Cooper and co-directed by Ernest Schoedsack. You see, this is the incredible thing: this team of people shot the two movies concurrently, filming Kong all day and then turning around to film Game by night. With that sort of regimen, it’s shocking that what they turned in was even passable, but both films are A-grade material worthy of shelf space in even a modest horror fan collection.

If you haven’t checked it out, it’s a brisk 62 minutes, meaning you can do a double-feature of it and King Kong in less time than it takes to watch the 2005 Kong flick. Maybe watch one film by day and the other by night to really replicate the production experience!

Ooh, how cool would a crossover be, with Count Zaroff going hunting on actual Skull Island?

Kong count #11 – Kong of Skull Island

Most King Kong stories tell of a group of unwitting colonialists who take Kong away from Skull Island. Boom Studios’ current comic Kong of Skull Island is different: it tells the story of a group of unwitting colonialists who brought Kong to Skull Island in the first place!

A prequel to the Kong: King of Skull Island novel, the comic focuses on the ideologically-divided Tagu-Atu people, who bred giant apes to do battle with each other for sport. Famine and volcanic eruption drive them from their home island to a nearby one with a familiar mountain resembling a cranium, where they set camp despite an onslaught by hungry dinosaurs. This destabilizing shakeup is an opportunity for  gold-diggers, assassins, and religious zealots to try to seize power, and suddenly we’re all Game of Thrones with gorillas and velociraptors.

Our main character (a female Kong-tamer) is fairly likable, but it’s easy to get tired of the political drama between the factions, especially since, as a prequel, we already sort of know where it’s going. Personally, I also never really felt the need to know about how Kongs were genetically engineered or the big wall was built or the ins-and-outs of Skull Island sociology, but if that’s your jam, more power to you. The art is pretty solid, and at least one cover was by Usagi Yojimbo‘s Stan Sakai:

The first volume hit last week with volume 2 coming in September.

Weekly news recap for 2/26

A quick recap of the news of the week; it’s been another fairly slow one.

• Another piece of concept art for Polygon Pictures’ Godzilla anime, in anticipation of Anime Japan:

• Kamen Sentai Gorider is one heck of a concept for a miniseries, three episodes leading up to Cho Super Hero Taisen.

• It looks like Killing Bites is getting an anime. It’s about time, considering how popular it is, and hopefully it prompts a US release for the manga!

• A trailer for Takashi Shimizu’s Little Nightmares:

• Voltron: Legendary Defender is listed at 78 episodes, with the next batch coming in September. Awesome if true.
• We also got a teaser poster for Netflix’s Castlevania series.

• Discotek licensed Endless Orbit SSX, which is a logical follow-up to them getting Arcadia of My Youth.

Also, the first of Shout Factory’s Digimon Adventure tri DVDs is up for preorder. It’s just the first movie, so I wouldn’t blame anyone waiting for a box set many years down the road when it’s finished.

That’s a wrap for this week; take it easy and beware Skull Island spoilers as we get into the final stretch!