TV Talk - Godzilla: Singular Point

When I heard that another Godzilla anime series was coming from Netflix, I gotta say that I was a little worried. I don’t know if you’ve read my review of the first Godzilla anime trilogy from Netflix, but I and others thought that series wasn’t good. Now, I did have some good things to say about it, but overall, it just didn’t do it for me. Now, we get to this new one. Godzilla: Singular Point was released over 13 episodes between April and June of 2021. It made it over Netflix after its airing in Japan. This time, Toho teamed up with two animation studios, Bones and Orange, to put this all together. It’s a blend of 2D and 3D anime. So, how does it fare out?

The series revolves around an engineer and a young scientist trying to avert the end of the world. Yun Arikawa and Mei Kamino separately investigate a mysterious signal. They and the world then get pulled into some craziness. It turns out that the signal is linked to the sudden appearance of dangerous creatures that emit a dangerous red dust. It also turns out that their appearance could spell doom for the whole world. Insert a crapton of Toho monsters including the G-Man himself, metaphysical and technical gobbly-gook, big monster action, and Jet Jaguar.

PROS

Yes, folks. When Jet Jaguar is one of the best things about a show, you know someone is doing something right!

While the series isn’t perfect, this does feel like a love letter to the Godzilla franchise as a whole. The G-Man is just one part of that franchise, remember? You get callbacks throughout it all including the newer stuff. We see some monsters like Rodan, Angurius, Kumonga (that spider creature), Manda, and of course, Godzilla. Yes, the G-Man ain’t around that much, but I’ll get to that later. He’s given the same treatment that he had in his original outing as well as Shin Gojira since he’s pretty much the big threat to the world. We even had an original monster called “Salunga” who looked like a mixture of past Toho monsters.

Our big cast of characters range from fun to “eh”. I did like the main characters, Mei and Yun. I also found out that Yun’s English actor is Johnny Yong Bosch from Power Rangers. The dude can’t get away from giant monsters, can’t he? The backstory and development is a bit thin with them and others, but they are fun and bring some life. Other favorites were Goro Otaki (the old inventor), the shady-looking “BB”, and strangely enough, Jet Jaguar. Seriously, the mecha from one of my least favorite G-Movies is one of the best things about the anime.

The story itself is interesting but not the best. I do like that it feels like a story that could've taken place during the Heisei era or Millennium era of Godzilla. It wanted to be more than just a monster mash-up and it kinda succeeds at that. You get a lot of metaphysical and technical gobbly-gook thrown at you. Time travel, other dimensions, shady organizations, and other out-there aspects are tied into the story.

The action is pretty cool. While there aren’t a lot of monster-on-monster fights, the action rocks. I like seeing regular folk do their best to take on powerful creatures. The animation itself was pretty good. The designs with the 2D and 3D animation was good. I usually don’t like 3D anime, but this looked pretty good overall. The monsters were unique but recognizable. The destruction especially towards the end was epic. Lastly, the music was awesome. Not only was original music from the G-Movies used, but the more modern music rocked too especially the intro and outro music.

Godzilla may look a little different, but he still looked awesome.

CONS

Even the graphs and pie charts didn't help explain the science!

Of course, it does have its issues. Yeah, I could gripe about Godzilla not being in it much, but I’ll touch on that next. First up is the dang technobabble being a hinderance! Most of the dialogue we get from our characters is kinda hard to decipher. It gets worse as we get towards the end with them trying to explain the findings of Michiyuki Ashihara, a scientist who used this weird science to predict that a catastrophe was coming. I kinda got lost within all that babble and just sat back up to enjoy the visuals. Things could also get a bit dull at points. I’ll admit that I nodded off with some of these, but I’ve been watching these right as I’m going to bed.

Of course, when seeing what other folk thought about this, one criticism that came up was the lack of Godzilla and other monster-on-monster action. One thing most folk don’t recognize about the G-Man is that he isn’t around much in these movies. I will say that I wish he was in it a bit more especially since he doesn’t show up in the halfway point of the show. Since the series is 13 22-minute episodes, I think we could’ve gotten a little more of the dude. While we had some good monster action, there was some action that could be distorted by all of that red dust. The final battle was even like that.

While most of the characters were fun, they had a lot of them that didn't amount to much. 

Another thing that was a bit of an issue was some of the characters. We really don’t get much backstory or development with our leads. I will say that Mei is probably the one who gets the most development, but it isn’t much. It also felt like there were too many playing pieces on the board. You had our leads and their supporting cast. Then, you had SHIVA, a shady organization, with too many odds and ends. Then, you got monsters rising from the depths, poisonous red dust, cats and dogs living together… just overall mass hysteria! It just feels like a lot for this show, ya know? Even with all of those trappings, I still think this stands up well.

Oh yeah, the AI companions annoyed the crap outta me especially Mei’s “pet”, Pero II.

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In the end, Godzilla: Singular Point was a unique take on the Godzilla franchise. It brought some interesting ideas to Toho’s Daikaiju world, and while it all didn’t work, a lot of it did. It really feels like a love letter to the whole franchise. I don’t know if a season 2 will come, but if it does, I’ll be there for it. Well, I’m outta here. Until then, Peace, God Bless, and be careful out there.

Who knew we'd get a callback to Godzilla's son???