I remember when I first saw Minilla, the adopted son of Godzilla, on one of the old Japanese monster movies on telly and I just went "What the heck?". Never thought that the Big G was one for settling down and having a family. But there they were...doing the parent and son thing. Of course, the NBC Buffalo affiliate showed the dubbed version and my father had a bit of a belly laugh when Minilla actually spoke goofy English (I think he was voiced by Mel Blanc since Baby G sounded like Barney Rubble!). One other scene had Godzilla show his scion some tough love while training the kid in blasting his atomic breath. It was the only time that blowing smoke rings wasn't considered cool.
Well, let's race ahead some six decades later. Looks like Minilla or Chibi Godzilla has been playing around in his own anime on TV Tokyo titled "Chibi Godzilla no Gyakushuu"（ちびゴジラの逆襲...Minilla's Counterattack） since early 2023 in the form of 3-minute comedy vignettes with chibi versions of all of those monsters from Monster Island such as Mothra and Rodan.
It is Wednesday today so why not have Suiyoubi no Campanella（水曜日のカンパネラ）provide a song here and that's what they did for "Chibi Godzilla no Gyakushuu". Their "Kaijuutou" (Monster Island) is the second opening theme song for the series and the one for Season 3, with the Hidefumi Kenmochi（ケンモチヒデフミ）creation being a percolating dance club-friendly ditty which ought to have gotten the little ones prancing about in front of the television. It was released as a single a couple of months ago in July. Let's see Big G pull off a headspin!
The idea of Godzilla having children while silly in at least the 1967 movie should actually be kind of frighting for people in the movie because Godzilla seems to be practically immortal. Not only has he lived for ages past, even if he is seemingly killed, he seems to come back to life stronger than before in the next movie. So, if he can have children that can also live as long as he can, then the world in the movies is in for a lot of trouble.
ReplyDeleteWell, having the entire population of Monster Island and for that matter, the entirety of the Ultraman (and any giant tokusatsu hero) universe should be terrifying for everybody on Earth.
DeleteHowever, out-of-universe, the whole idea behind Minilla was that the producers had wanted to soften Godzilla's image with a tyke/pet since he was going up against studio rival Gamera which was becoming a kids' favourite.