Godzilla x Mothra x Mechagodzilla: Tokyo S.O.S Review

The third film directed by Masaaki Tezuka, and a direct sequel to his previous film, Godzilla x Mechagodzilla. As I’ve downplayed his two films earlier, I had no idea what to expect from this film – so my expectations were low for this film.

However, this time around, I was fairly surprised on what I saw from this film. All I have to say here is that this is the best film that Tezuka has made. It seems that with a new writer in Masahiro Yokotani and Tezuka himself, they seem to have come up with the best story in Tezuka’s Godzilla film career.

STORY: Again, the story here I believe is the best under Masaaki. So I think that the culprit to the no-so-great-stories from both Godzilla x Megaguirus and Godzilla x Mechagodzilla could have been Wataru Mimura. However, I’m just digressing here.

Anywho, Tezuka and Yokotani do a great job with the story, and trying to fill up as much holes as possible (however, that’s practically impossible). The also good thing was that they didn’t have a female lead that was depressed this time around! Also, they didn’t waste time to get into the monster fights at all.

The story is not only a sequel to Godzilla x Mechagodzilla, but also Mothra (1961) and Space Amoeba. With that, we are reunited with a well-known character and actor – Hiroshi Koizumi reprises his role as Dr. Shinichi Chujo from the film Mothra (1961). However, the story really doesn’t focus on him, but mainly focuses on his nephew, Yoshito Chujo (Noboru Kaneko), who’s a maintenance worker for the Mechagodzilla project who loves machines.

We’re also met with the Shobijin (Mothra’s twin fairies) and warning to return the Godzilla bones that were used in the Mechagodzilla project to the bottom of the sea, or Mothra would have no choice but to declare war on humanity until they redeem themselves. This was also the reason why Godzilla kept coming back to Japan was because of the bones inside Mechagodzilla.

Although, one little thing that bugs me on the story to this film was when the Prime Minister Hayato Igarashi (Akira Nakao), his advisors and one of the scientists were discussing what to do with the Absolute Zero weapon for Mechagodzilla, one of the PM’s advisors all of a sudden, and randomly, says that Godzilla sunk a submarine. That’s the one thing that bugs me on the story was that that came out of nowhere.

But nonetheless, the story to this film is still good.

VISUAL EFFECTS: The visual effects have really improved a lot since the last film, and what also makes this film look great. Although you can still noticed when they use the green screen, but that still doesn’t take away from the great effects.

The effects seems more believable and realistic his time around, compared to Tezuka’s two G-Films he directed.

There’s not a whole lot to add here, but just that the visual effects for this film are really great.

ACTING: I’m pretty glad that we don’t have a depressed female lead this time around and ruining the whole experience, and that could be the reason why Wataru Mimura wasn’t part of the writing crew for this film this time also. So with that, I think that the acting was pretty good overall.

There wasn’t too much drama, silliness stupidity – none of that. It seemed a lot of the acting fell in place at the right moments. But, the actors did a good job portraying their characters in the film.

Although, we still do see Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku) and some of the pilots from Godzilla x Mechagodzilla, her presence doesn’t bother with main lead Yoshito Chujo and the rest of the characters. Plus she was in the film for just a short time.

BATTLES: We didn’t have the good ol’ 2 battles this time around, there was only just one, big kaiju battle in this film. Just like I said earlier that Tezuka and Yokotani didn’t waste any time to get to the kaiju battles.

This was a nice little twist to what we’re usually used to and also a fresh little take to just have one big battle.

The battle was much better and executed fairly well compared to Megaguirus and Mechagodzilla films. Mothra was great, Mechagodzilla had a much better fight and Godzilla was more active this time around. So, not much to add here.

HUMAN DRAMA: As I’ve also stated earlier in this review, it just seemed like a lot of things fell in just the right place, which I can also the same with the human drama. The drama was executed much better, much more believable and realistic when the characters were in certain situations.

The cast members weren’t overshadowed by a depressed, emo-attituted that the two female lead has in previous Tezuka films, which is a sight of relief. I can at least enjoy the film, the characters AND their human drama.

OVERALL: Masaaki Tezuka did a much better job this time around, including replacing Wataru Mimura with Masahiro Yokotani as screenplay writer, including himself. With that, the story and the film played out well. Although I had a couple nitpicks here and there, they didn’t overshadow the majority of the film.

This is the best film Tezuka has in the Godzilla franchise; however, not quite as good as Godzilla 2000. If I had to pick one of the top 3 best films from the Millennium era, this would be one of them.

[include id=”1″ title=”Ness GMMG Review”]