“Godzilla Raids Again” Review

A film that gets six months worth of production usually translates into a sloppy result. To a certain degree, Godzilla Raids Again captures that sloppiness; especially if you compare it to its predecessor: Gojira. But on its own, Godzilla Raids Again is a pretty good movie. Albeit, not the best in the franchise, but certainly a film that is worth a look. It just may even be the most overlooked film in the series.

Tsukioka and Kobayashi are two pilots who look around the ocean guiding their fishing boats to schools of fish. On one particular trip, Kobayashi’s plane malfunctions and he and Tsukioka are forced to make an emergency landing on a random island in the Pacific. Once there, they witness two kaiju battling it out. The kaiju conclude their battle by taking a plunge into the ocean.

Upon their return, scientists (including Dr. Yamane from the first film) and government officials realize the two kaiju Tsukioka and Kobayashi saw were Godzilla (a second version of the species) and Anguirus. Japan braces itself for their imminent arrival. They do in Osaka.

Godzilla and Anguirus battle it out to the death in a brutal battle of tooth and claw. In the end, Godzilla becomes victorious. Rebuilding begins and our

characters go about their lives. Godzilla isn’t really heard from again for a while. Once he does, the JSDF locate him on Iwato Island and bury the King in an icy tomb after bombarding the icy slopes of the island.

The first half-hour of the movie moves along at a nice clip and there’s hardly a lull in the movie. As I explain in PXCR Ep. 2, there are some differences between the American version and the Japanese version. For the purposes of this review, I’ll focus on the American version. One of the differences is when Dr. Yamane talks about the formation of the earth and the first Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo. The discussion of the earth’s formation is really unnecessary for the film, but, nevertheless, is fairly interesting to see what the American producers were thinking for this segment of the movie.

One of the drawbacks to the movie is that the final battle between Godzilla and Anguirus begins around the 30 minute mark. It does make for a slower second act, where much of the time is spent further developing the characters (only minutely) until Godzilla begins making appearances and has the people of Japan frightened again.

The effects are really good despite the rushed production. There are several scenes where cropping is used to hide the sets and also to appropriately scale the kaiju with the humans in appropriate scenes. These are well done. The only drawback to the effects are the hand puppets of Godzilla and Anguirus. Godzilla’s is especially horrendous with the sharped bucked-teeth and a dumb-founded expression on his face. The Anguirus puppet looks nicer, but still looks bad. The suits of Godzilla and Anguirus and great with Godzilla’s getting a slimming down treatment so Haruo Nakajima can perform quicker, violent moves in the fight scenes.

The acting, for the most part, is good. What makes some of the characters, and the acting for that matter, look sub-par is the voice acting for some of the characters. Kobayashi’s voice actor really makes him sound aloof and a few bricks shy of a full load. Overall, the acting and voice acting are top-notch.

Godzilla Raids Again is an entertaining film that starts out with a lot of action, then drags on for about a half-hour, and picks up again in the final 15 minutes. The story isn’t as deep, or emotional, as Gojira. It’s essentially a monster-on-the-loose film and purely designed to cash-in on the success of Gojira. This is a movie that has continuously grown on me. Part of it must be the lack of color, for I find that black and white films have a certain charm about them that few movies, in color, have. Despite the quick production time (although Toho has traditionally had short production periods for their Godzilla movies, but this one is even shorter compared to many of the other films in the series), Godzilla Raids Again is a fun and entertaining movie. With Classic Media having released this title onto DVD a few years ago, this should be a movie no one should have trouble finding. I greatly suggest checking this movie out!