Toho finally remembered how to do a good Godzilla design!

[air_show]

I am absolutely stunned. This is fantastic! I had honestly given up on Toho after Shin Godzilla turned him into The Thing and those god-awful anime designs. I hope he's as expressive and animated in the movie as this image makes him look. I'm sick and fucking tired of "Godzilla the braindead plot device" and want more of Godzilla the character.

 

[Falselogic]

I enjoyed Shin Godzilla for what it was. I love this new design as well. Really hoping this spurs new releases of the 90 toho godzilla films. Theyre hard to find these days...

 

[air_show]

Especially after those animes*, I have actually warmed up to Shin Godzilla a bit. I still don't like the pokemon evolution and back lasers and being like, a grotesque mass of living tumors.

But at least his final design does look cool and despite the beady dead-eyed look, he at least emotes somewhat at points and has a small ounce of the narrative caring about his perspective as a character during the breath attack scene.


*Full disclosure I have not watched the second anime, the Singular Point or whatever. Between just how awful a taste the prior trilogy left in my mouth and the fact that I hate, and I cannot stress this word enough, absolutely HATE every single monster design I have seen from Singular Point, I can't bring myself to waste precious hours of my life watching it. In my eyes they are literally worse than Original Movie Sonic.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

lol I don't take kindly to this misinformed and superficial condemnation of Singular Point, but hey it's your loss.

 

[Kirin]

FWIW I’m a bit less invested than Wist and gave the animated movies a miss because the synopses I saw didn’t sound appealing at all, but I did watch Singular Point and enjoyed it. Granted I’m *also* not super invested in the old Toho designs so the revisions there didn’t bother me one way or the other, but overall it was a fun take on the mythos, and when the big G puts in an appearance he’s very recognizable.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I empathize with disliking the other Netflix animated Godzilla projects because I don’t like them either. But it’s just a shame and very close minded imo to lump S.P. In with those based on nothing more than a casual glimpse. Because it’s a very different show, made by completely different people, doing very different things. Assuming that show is going to be bad because the other ones were is about as close minded to me as assuming Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is going to be bad because Thor 2: Dark World was bad. The only thing they have in common creatively is the broad umbrella corporation that the two projects served under. I don’t blame anyone for making the assumption, but it takes a minuscule amount of effort to confirm this by seeing the creative team (director, writer, animation studio, etc) is completely different.

I don’t need or even want other people to always agree with me and like the things I like. But like, dislike it for its actual merits, not because of what you imagine it being. And I also get casually brushing things off based on appearances as well, when we live in such an over saturated media landscape with millions of different things vying for a slice of our vanishing free time. Like, ain’t nobody have time to give everything an honest chance. But the passion and anger over something that is quite frankly imagined is jarring and alienating in its own right.

 

[Daikaiju]

Looks like they scaled him down, which is a good thing. The Gamera films kept to certain heights to avoid the sets looking like toy playsets.

 

[estragon]

Something to emphasize about Singular Point is that it's written by an author of both sci-fi and literary fiction, who has won some of Japan's most prestigious awards in both literary and genre fiction. It doesn't mean you have to like his work (although I do), but the series is coming from a different perspective and artistic sensibility than most of its contemporaries in Japanese animation.

It's a fundamentally different project than the other animated Netflix Godzilla projects because of that starting point, and it has a different feel than something created by people who are primarily come from a background in anime or light novels, etc.

Like it or not, it is definitely sad to see people write Singular Point off because Netflix made also made some completely unrelated and unremarkable Godzilla projects before it.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Meanwhile, I got about halfway through Singular Point before losing interest in it on its own merits. I didn't even get to see Godzilla!

 

[air_show]

Like, I'm sorry but no. Kaiju design matters. I cannot look at what they fucking did to Rodan and Jet Jaguar and watch that fucking garbage. And just last night I googled it and I SAW what Godzilla starts off looking like. They are TRIPLING DOWN on the stupid pokemon shit! I HATE IT. I hate its very fundamentals, its immediate concepts, with a very real, true, and genuine hate. AM is looking at me and going "dude calm down".

To watch it would be to encourage it even a tiny insignificant bit and I will actually die first.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Lol. You remind me of the Gundam fans that would write off Turn-A because the titular Gundam was “ugly”. Which is hey, you’re welcome to do that and it’s your loss. I push back though because someone should. I didn’t give Turn-A a chance for years because impassioned fans fixated on superficial aspects of the show set the tone of the discourse surrounding the show for years and influenced many others - including myself - to not even give it a chance to begin with. I wish back-in-the-day I had heard more dissenting opinions encouraging me to give Turn-A a chance earlier, because it is far and away the best classic Gundam show there is.

S.P. might not be for everyone, and I got no problem with POV’s like Paul’s where it just didn’t click. I’m more than happy that Paul gave it an honest chance and it just didn’t vibe with ‘em. But to get as self-reportedly angry over a TV show just because you saw some images you didn’t like once is just… lol

 

[Falselogic]

I don't know if we need to get so angry about a form of media. If it isn't for you that's fine. But it's existence isn't a threat to you and it doesn't take anything from all the Godzilla that you already have and enjoy.

I don't know if all the swearing is necessary. I believe I got through half of Singular Point and stopped due to life things. It seemed fine to me and I'm okay with franchises changing and adapting to today's audiences. Godzilla and the other Toho monsters have gone through a number of looks since being introduced over 60 years ago.

I thought a lot of the designs were inventive and fun. You can do a lot when you're not confined to having to use puppets and people in suits. I'm not against either of those things, I love Tokusatsu its a style of cinema that has strengths and weaknesses and the best creators of it lean into it. Animation is its own style and form as well being tied by the restrictions from another art form doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

 

[air_show]

I swear because sometimes swearing is necessary to convey intensity. And I'm not afraid to be intense about this.

You can BE faithful to Tokusatsu design conventions and still make use of the medium of animation to allow them to do things that live action cannot. Calling it a restriction is in the same territory as John K calling Avatar or Batman restricted because they're using characters that are on model and have generally normal human proportions.

Do you see this? This horrific, wretched thing? It is disgusting. Vile and repulsive.

Hey, do you know what would make Anguilas look super great? Entirely too many spikes? You bet your ASS too many spikes!

How dare you? Just how dare you? Are you kidding me with this? The person who made this is bad and should be ashamed and quit their job and get a new job where they never ever design anything ever again.

And this, somehow, is Godzilla. This is a crime. Believe it or not, jail. It is not ok for him to look like this for one episode, or even one minute. When you think it's ok to make Godzilla look like this you are literally throwing the entire concept of Godzilla out the window and pretending you know better. This is Godzilla '98+. This is the Dark Souls of the Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen.

It is not "creative". It is not "an interesting new way of doing things". It is a screen full of unpleasant garbage that I hate looking at. It is Hayao Miyazaki's dark prophecy come true in the worst way.

 

[Daikaiju]

Anguilas looks great to me. But yeah the other designs, definitely more misses than hits in my opinion.
Still unless you genuinely think this will dominate the franchise design aesthetic like Bayverse did for Transformers, I think you can maybe let go of your anger and just accept it's very much a Your Mileage May Vary situation.

 

[Falselogic]

Yeah, I like all those designs. It's taking the original characters and their inspirations and playing with them in new and creative ways.
I actually really like that Godzilla design it leans into the fact that the big fella's name is a portmanteau which includes the word whale.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

I'm willing to admit I don't have the biggest investment in the franchise as a whole, but I can't hate Singularity Point either. I thought it actually did some fascinating things with the kaiju threat as a whole. Namely the big reveal that Godzilla is basically a cosmic horror that can not only warp our own reality around it to suit its own needs, but somehow occupies the same space across all possible realities and effectively exists outside of our own timeline. It also basically takes Godzilla back to his roots as the personification of a human-made threat, in this case, the threat of humanity wrecking the world around it to suit its own needs of consumption and growth, rather than nuclear annihilation Evidently the dude that wrote it was a PhD grad in mathematics who eventually discovered his true passion in writing speculative fiction (which estragon also pointed out, and I somehow managed to overlook it).. There's a pretty good article about the show on Bogleech.com, for anyone who cares to learn more.

It's final (digivolved?) form looks badass as fuck, too:

(And I promise I'm not trying to dogpile or be inflammatory or anything. I just genuinely like the ideas, and even the worst designs are just so-so in my book.)

 

[Aleryn]

Eventually any franchise is going to turn away from its origins enough to be for "other people," that's about when I call it a good run and stick to personal classics.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Eventually any franchise is going to turn away from its origins enough to be for "other people,"

The ironic part of this is, I thought S.P. did a better job adhering to the tone and ethos of the very original Godzilla than anything I've seen in a long, long time.

 

[air_show]

So, a couple things, with a cooler head hopefully, but still, very very adamantly sticking to my choices and argument:

1. No, really, I'm serious. It is not ok to make Godzilla look like that. At all. I don't care if he looks more like a proper Godzilla at the end. I don't watch things just for the ending. The reason I enjoy Godzilla movies, and have ever since I was a young child, is because there is a thing on screen that looks Like Godzilla, more or less consistently, for the entirety of his screentime. Yes I know that this puts Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah at least partially on my shit list, and I'm fine with that. Sure his design changes over the years, iterates, sometimes slimming, sometimes bulking up, head shapes that vary. But he is always a huge, bipedal, greenish grey monster with three rows of distinctive spines running down his back that breaths blue fire that's a mix between smokey and beam-like. His facial features are often a mix of reptilian and mammalian traits and he is to some degree expressive or reactive in a way that makes him feel like a genuine living creature and character, ableit a seemingly invincible one.

He is not a big red whale. He should never ever BE a big red whale.

I don't care what the origin of his name is. I don't care if it's called "a new direction" or a "reinvention". It's some shithead anime director making up some completely new monster and copy-pasting it over a treasured cinematic icon and saying "yeah that's the same guy." It's Godzilla '98 shit. I'm not even saying he can't use his red whale design! By all means put that red whale in your anime series! You can even give it an origin story that explains why it has some vaguely Godzilla-like features! Just don't fucking call it Godzilla god damn you.

2. I hate the pokemon evolving. I hate it, I hate it so much. I retroactively hate the Pokemon series now for unintentionally inspiring a form of creative cancer in my favorite series of all time. I know that Shin Godzilla started it and believe me, I consider it just as much of a sin there even with my more agreeable position on that film.

3. I didn't even get into this but I particularly loathe the CG-ification of monsters and robots in Anime. It universally has resulted in uglier and worse animated monsters and robots. When I look at animated monsters and robots from the 80's and 90's I weep, weep for how far things have fallen and pine for the timeline where they decided to do an anime Godzilla back then. Or at least give it to Studio Trigger.

4. It may be true that it doesn't take away from the classic Godzilla movies I already love, but what it does do is waste resources and misuse artistic talent that could have been spent making something good instead. Something that doesn't have to be perfectly faithful and completely stick to a very strict set of unambiguous rules, but should at least respect the basic fucking concept. And from where I'm sitting the existence of this anime is a threat to the future of Godzilla in two ways:

-The anime is a critical and financial failure and Toho is once again convinced Godzilla's not a good moneymaker and shelves the franchise again.

-The anime is a critical and financial success and Toho decides to continue the trend of letting any asshole get wacky with it and completely bending and stretching and altering the very concept of what A Godzilla is until it's a completely unrecognizable thing. A ship of Theseus but after you replace all the parts it looks like a Buick.



So yeah no, no insults or mockery of my thought process on this is going to sway me. Nor will any earnest endorsements. A one-man boycott doesn't amount to much but it at least is one thing in which I can put my foot down and stand up for what I believe in. I know I failed to stop from getting emotional again and I don't care I'm emotional about it. I will go in the fucking ground before I waste one single minute of my increasingly precious watch time on this absolute garbage.

TLDR: