Godzilla

Godzilla (Gojira) (ゴジラ) is a giant, amphibious, dinosaur-like fictional creature first seen in the Japanese-produced 1954 Tokusatsu Kaiju film Gojira produced by Toho Film Company Ltd.. In total, 28 films have been made by the Toho Film Company and a further two made unofficially (not related to the Toho Film company). For a list of these films, see below. The most notable unofficial movie is the 1998 film Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich. This has been widely panned by cult followers of the Godzilla franchise, critics on both sides of the Pacific, and movie-goers in general and has since been dubbed GINO (Godzilla In Name Only). Ironically, the Americanized Godzilla featured in (2004) was killed by the "true" Godzilla from a hit to the tail, and its radioactive breath. In this film, the American Godzilla appeared simply as "Zilla". Godzilla has three primary abilities: regeneration, amphibious mobility, and an atomic fire beam. Godzilla is also extremely durable and can resist almost all physical assaults. The atomic fire beam is Godzilla's trademark skill. Although much of Godzilla's significance as an anti-war symbol has been lost in the transition to pop culture, the nuclear breath remains as a visual vestige of the creature's early cold war politics.

Animated series

In 1978, Hanna-Barbera Productions produced an animated Godzilla Saturday morning cartoon as the centerpiece of their Godzilla Power Hour. The series featured a team of scientists, who could call upon the monster using a special communicator in order to assist them in various adventures. Also included in the series was a cute diminutive Godzilla counterpart, Godzooky.

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1978 - Hanna-Barbera Productions - Saturday morning cartoon

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Godzilla's size in the animated series shifted even more radically and with greater frequency than the films - sometimes within a single episode or even one scene - as sometimes Godzilla's claw will wrap around a large ship, and only minutes later the team of scientists fit rather neatly on Godzilla's palm.

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The Godzilla cartoon was aired in reruns through the early 1980s, and is periodically broadcast on Cartoon Network's Boomerang network.

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1980s - Cartoon Network - Boomerang

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Another cartoon, ', debuted in 1998 in the wake of the American film. Although it featured the creature design and characters from that film, the concept was much more in line with the traditional depiction of Godzilla. Two DVDs were produced for this series. One depicts the first two part pilot called Trouble hatches, and the other compiles a three part trilogy from the series called The Monster Wars. It was most likely a tribute to the classic film Destroy All Monsters, a showa era film which included virtually every monster Toho studios had ever produced. Monster Wars is also the first appearance of a truly cybernetic Godzilla. The 1998 feature film version of the monster is resurrected as 'Cyber-Godzilla' and eventually comes face to face with it's sole survivng offspring. (This is technically inaccurate, as one egg in the 1998 film hatches within Madison Square Garden, while the one depicted in the cartoon series was located much further below ground. The 1998 film had been left deliberately open ended in order to pave the way for a sequel. However because of the negative response by fans, that never panned out. It is interesting to note that despite the negative response to the 1998 film, the animated series still did surprisingly well, with only two episodes produced that never saw the light of day on television.)

Related Topics:
1998 - American film - Destroy All Monsters - Cybernetic - Madison Square Garden

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