GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II | Movie Review

 GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA
(Gojira tai Mekagojira)
AKA: Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II

December 11, 1993

For the next movie after the big success that was Godzilla vs. Mothra, Toho decided to up the ante by bringing back not one, not two, but three of their classic Kaiju co-stars.

The UN's newly established G-Force pools their resources and creates the ultimate weapon to combat the threat posed by Godzilla. Meanwhile, an egg is discovered on a remote island that soon hatches into a baby Godzilla. Soon G-Force, Godzilla and even Rodan aim for custody over the baby and all roads will eventually lead to a colossal confrontation with the one and only, Mechagodzilla!

Since the mid 70's, Mechagodzilla was a villain character but from this movie to his later appearances, he's a creation of the people made to defend against Godzilla.

If you remember my Super Mechagodzilla Review, you'll know that I'm not the biggest fan of this design. Especially when you look at what could have been from the Orai Noriyoshi poster. But this Mechagodzilla (played by Wataru Fukuda) isn't all terrible though, he still has a nice variety of weaponry which more than makes up for the fact that he's not much of a physical fighter and I like its shiny, muscular (debatably thicc) body design. It's just the dopey looking face and poor excuse for a tail that that keep him from being 100% awesome.

Also, his theme music is pretty cool.

Rodan makes a welcomed return in this movie, sporting a very awesome new look. Where as the other monsters got bigger, Rodan got smaller and was brought to life solely by puppets. While the wings can be too stiff at times (a common problem with flying monsters), I still have no problem buying that this is a living, breathing creature.

We also see the return of the son of Godzilla (referred to as Baby Godzilla), who gets a major upgrade in terms of looks. He actually resembles what you imagine a Baby Godzilla to look like. Just ignore the occasional lazy eye on the suit and you'll be hard pressed to not find this thing adorable. Even the bond he forms with Azusa (Ryoko Sano) is sure to melt the iciest of hearts.

It's about this movie that Godzilla starts to show signs of becoming less of a villain character. He still retains an antihero persona, it's just that he's not motivated malice or a desire to fight another monster, he just wants to get to his son. And this is presented very well through both the performance of Kenpachiro Satsuma as well as the highly expressive animatronic head. 

Ryoko Sano as Azusa, Masahiro Takashima as Kazuma & Megumi Odaka as Miki

Miki Saegusa, our friendly neighborhood psychic lady also gets more to do as she starts to see Godzilla as a necessary evil and is very reluctant to help G-Force when they plan to exploit a newly discovered, fatal weakness of Godzilla.

The other stand out character is Kazuma (Masahiro Takashima), a G-Force pilot who conveniently loves Pteranadon's and is a bit of a doofus. Also, this self proclaimed Pteranadon enthusiast refers to them as "small flying dinosaurs"

...

...bruh.

Being that this movie features a United Nations branch, there will be times when the characters in the movie will deliver their lines in English. While some of the actors deliver their lines well enough, most of them can't seem to hide their foreignness and it's unintentionally hilarious at times. 

(THE ENGINE ROOMS ON FIRE!) If you know, you know.

One criticism I've heard about the Heisei series as a whole is that most of the fight scenes rely too much on the monsters spamming beam attacks. While this is a debatable subject, I feel like this issue is most prevalent in this movie. This comes mostly from the fact that Mechagodzilla has never been much of a physical fighter to begin with.

Other than that it's more or less minor things that irk me about the movie.

(PTERANADON'S ARE NOT DINOSAURS! THEY ARE ONLY FLYING REPTILES! CEASE THIS MOCKERY OF SCIENCE!!!)

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II is a step up in quality from Godzilla vs. Mothra, it never feels too slow or preachy, it knows to keep the monster action flashy and fun and the story interesting. Not quite in my top 3 of the series, but like Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah before it, it's an overall solid entry.

Funny story, the first time I saw this movie was on TV sometime in the early 2000's. I was flipping through the TV Guide and saw that it was going to be on and I made time to watch it. What I didn't count on was that the channel it was playing on was a Spanish language network.
I still watched it though. You know a fan is dedicated if he watches a movie he's never seen before on a foreign language channel, without subtitles!

I have to say, as much as I like seeing Mechagodzilla being built by the humans to defend Japan, I kinda want to see him as a villain again. If Godzilla can go back to being a bad guy, why not Mechagodzilla?

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and thank you for joining me here in my lair.

So long...

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