Random Thoughts On... The Netflix Godzilla Anime Trilogy

In a couple of weeks, the G-Man will be returning to theatres. Yeah, it took five years, but Legendary Pictures has finally gotten another Godzilla movie out. From what I’ve seen and heard, this looks like it’ll be fun especially since a certain King will grace its head(s) once again. For this month, I was originally going to do a list of my favorite Godzilla films. I haven’t seen them all, so that’s gotta wait. Yes, I’m such a bad Godzilla fan. Instead of that, I decided to revisit and finish the anime Godzilla trilogy on Netflix. I can safely say that it’s… okay?

Alright, let me start off at the beginning. Toho Co., the ones behind the Godzilla movies, announced that they were going to do a trilogy of animated Godzilla movies. Toho Animation worked along with Polygon Pictures to bring these movies to life. The first movie, Planet of the Monsters, was released in 2017. Its sequel, City on the Edge of Battle, was released in 2018. The final movie, The Planet Eater, was also released in 2018. It didn’t make it to Netflix until 2019, though.

I was moderately interested in the movies. When I found out the first one was on Netflix, I immediately watched it. It took a while for me to get around to the sequel, though. As for The Planet Eater, I actually decided to re-watch the first two movies and it as well this week. I guess I felt I was missing something the first time around with the first two. I’ve also briefly talked about the first two here as well. I wasn’t a big fan of them and now that I’ve finished watching the trilogy,… eh.

The creators had free reign to do anything with Godzilla and his lore. It’s pretty much its own creation and not connected to any of the previous movies. Just imagine what Toho did with Shin Godzilla and you’ll more or less get the idea. Essentially, Godzilla and other monsters rise in the 20th century and bring havoc to Earth. We even get a couple of alien species on this ride: the pretty religious Exif and the pretty scientific Bilusaludo. They were refugees who came to Earth and tried to help humanity against Godzilla. Unfortunately, things got so bad that the surviving humans, Exif, and Bilusadludo left Earth in search for a new home.

1. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters – The first movie takes place at least 20,000 years later. To the survivors, though, only 22 years have passed for them. Since hope and supplies are dwindling, the survivors head back to Earth to see if it’s now habitable. Spoilers… it’s not.  An expedition team is sent down and they see that the environment has completely changed during their time in space.  Godzilla (or at least a version of him) is also still around. Harou, our sometimes melodramatic main character, devises a way to defeat their long-time foe. Do they defeat Godzilla? Well… sort of. It turns out that the version they killed was one of the original Godzilla’s offspring. As for the O.G-Man, it rises out of the ground after a long hibernation more powerful than they ever imagined.
2. Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle – The surviving soldiers nurse their wounds and find human survivors called the Hotoua.  The Bilusadludo team realize that these “Egg Worshipers” (hint, hint) have made weapons based off of their original countermeasure against Godzilla: Mechagodzilla. After doing some searching, the survivors find the evolved remains of MG and the nanometal it was constructed of.  They then modify the original plan they had for Godzilla.  Harou and the human team start to get concerned when the Bilusadludo  do some weird stuff with the nanometal. They then enact their plan, but (of course), things don’t go to plan like they should. We got one more movie left and the hint of a fan-favorite coming, remember?
3. Godzilla: The Planet Eater – The final movie picks up with the survivors once again licking their wounds. Harou is in mourning since his friend, Yuko, was killed by nanometal. He’s also being looked at by the Bilusadludo since he went against their plans in the last movie. That stuff doesn’t matter since the Exif set their own plans in defeating Godzilla. They use previous events to gather followers and use them as a sacrifice for their god, Ghidorah, who’s basically a extrademinsonal being that can’t be punched. When it’s revealed that Metphies and the Exif want to bring destruction to Earth as well, Harou must do what he can to stop him. Also, Godzilla is in the movie… somewhere. Oh yeah, Harou gets over Yuko pretty quick since Miana, one of the Hotoua Twins, makes a pass at him. All I can say now is that it is over!!!

OPINION

So, now that I’ve watched this trilogy, what do I think? While it has some potential in areas, it’s mainly a misstep from the beginning. Since I pretty much have the same pros and cons for all three movies, I ain’t splitting this thing up.

I hope King of the Monsters is better than this... all these dudes do here is get into the longest biting contest ever.

Pros

Even though some may think it’s impossible, I did find good things to say about the trilogy. They do know how to start well. While the execution was off at points, I liked that the writers were trying to tackle different themes here. The trilogy tries to explore things like religion, science, revenge, survival, the environment and other things I’m probably not thinking about at this moment. Even Godzilla is treated a little different here. The whole Earth evolves in a way to adapt to him over those 20,000 years. I think it’s been said before, but he’s pretty much a walking natural disaster. They also play up the “god” part of the G-Man since he’s pretty much the top dog of the food chain on Earth now.

Okay, with the way Metphies acts with Harou, you know there are some fan-fiction stories about them out there. I definitely saw the connection, y'all!

As for any characters, the only ones who remotely interested me were Harou and Metphies. Harou starts out as this loud dude who pretty much wants revenge against Godzilla. Like most of the characters, he was pretty one-note in the first movie. Luckily, he does evolve in the latter two movies, which is good since we’re following this guy. As for Metphies, I thought he was interesting since his race was a bunch of religious zealots. His turn towards evil was kinda noticable, though. When you start to throw around that your god is Ghidorah, that’s definitely a red flag. Other than him and the twin Hotoua Girls, that was it for interesting characters.

Uh... yeah, there was defintely some "connecting" going on there... Also, I didn't expect Harou to hook up with one of the Twins.

I’m not the biggest fan of CG anime. It can look good at times like with that recent Ultraman anime on Netflix. By the way, that was kinda good. Anyway, the animation in the trilogy was fine to me. It looked competent enough. The monsters we see were okay. Godzilla himself looked nice and pretty intimidating. It’s the biggest Godzilla we’ve gotten in any media and the animators showed that well. What action we do get isn’t half-bad either.

And that’s where the compliments end.

Cons

Leland, it kinda already did that. Also, I'm betting this is what most G-fans think about this trilogy.

My problems with the trilogy are few but pretty similar. All of these movies have horrid pacing. They all followed the same format of having a lot of dialogue in the first two acts while the heavy action comes in the third act. The first movie was probably the worst with its pacing. City on the Edge of Battle’s pacing is probably the best of the three, but that’s not saying much. It doesn’t help when a lot of the dialogue we get is mostly full of techno jargon and exposition. I remember seeing a review about the trilogy that said this trilogy could’ve been shortened down to one or two movies. Having it be two movies would’ve probably helped this problem better.

Outside of Harou, Metphies, and a couple of others, the characters are pretty much dull. It also doesn’t really know how to have balance the excitement of being kaiju films. While I applaud that it wants to tackle weighty themes, you got to give some good monster action. What we get here isn’t that great and I think that’s where the animation suffers for me. When your most impressive fight (Godzilla vs. Ghidorah) is pretty dull, you may have to rethink some stuff. Yeah, I know that wasn’t the focus of the final conflict (Harou vs Metphies via conversation), but they could’ve done better there. They even hint to a couple of other monsters from the Toho library (Mechagodzilla and Mothra) but they don’t get used in an action way. I still liked their presences, though.

I was pretty mixed on the music as a whole. While there are times where it is good and upbeat, I think the orchestral stuff here wasn’t good. I think it was less that it felt out of place and more that it felt kinda cheap. I thought some of the voice acting felt off. I know English dubs are notorious for that, but it’s still something that’s irksome. It wasn’t even “so-bad-it’s-good” acting either. As for the animation, there were some things that weren’t that good. As I said above, the action was one of them. Also, what was up with Mechagodzilla’s design??? No wonder it doesn’t get used in the second movie!

Yes, that's Mechagodzilla. 

………………………………………………………

In the end, the trilogy was a letdown. While it does have some interesting things, the pacing and some other stuff make it a chore to sit through. If you are going to watch them, just have something else to do as well… like typing for a blog post, for example. Anyway, I gotta get some sleep. Next time, it’ll be a Trek novel that took a long time to get to. Until then, Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there.