Usually I Would Agree, But Doughertys Previous Tweet Got Me Thinking...

Usually I would agree, but Dougherty’s previous tweet got me thinking...

Something I wondered about Dougherty’s approach was whether he’d take direct influence from Shin Godzilla since he likes it so much. His “evolution in the flesh” comment seems to confirm that the answer is yes.

No, that’s Coronosaurus.  Coriolanus is a species of Mixosaur found in the Besano Formation.

coriolanus? isn’t that a type of parsley?

The way I see it there are two possible options, either Dougherty is joking around with all these comments or Godzilla: King of the Monsters will be done entirely using Suitmation, with a modified Godzilla design to accommodate the change in effects.

Something I wondered about Dougherty’s approach was whether he’d take direct influence from Shin Godzilla since he likes it so much. His “evolution in the flesh” comment seems to confirm that the answer is yes.

Finally...

After years of nigh-unwatchable “public domain” releases by the likes of Alpha Video and Retromedia, Gappa the Triphibian Monster is coming to Blu-ray and DVD via Tokyo Shock on February 25. The company previously issued it on DVD in 2000, but it was non-anamorphic and is long since out of print. Knowing how Tokyo Shock’s recent kaiju releases have gone, however, best to snap this one up fast before it suffers the same fate.

At least as far as the Rodan design, for me it was less about realism and more that I thought it would be cool to see a take on him with elements inspired by Azharchid Pterosaurs.

Like scale up that baby Sauropod to adult size and your already halfway there to a pretty menacing iteration.  Of course you’d want to have something with more Rodan specific features but elements like the upright quadrupedal stance and stork like head and neck make for an impressive yet predatory visage even when on the ground, which I think works for a Kaiju known for snacking on human sized treats.  So it’s pretty cool to see some of those elements make their way into this anime (though Rodan seems to be strongly puny in this for so reason).

It’s amusing, many of these redesigns (Rodan and Anguirus especially) look like what the “realistic” fans expected from a hypothetical new american movie between 1998 and 2014. But now we live in the post-2019 era, with the latest american movie going mostly in the opposite direction, trying to stay faithful, and instead it’s the japanese anime that does this and it feels like an exception to the rule rather than the rule.

Why was this so common in early kaiju dubs?

Nobody:

Tsukioka: