Part 3: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

 

By Joe Gibson

 

The following is the third part part of the transcript of a recent video on Plan9Crunch’s YouTube page that you can watch here: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP

You can find the first two parts of this transcript edition through following these links:

Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP, Part One

Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Part 2: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

Why I feel the way I do about this trilogy will become clear with the final installment, what all of this was building to; officially known as Godzilla The Planet Eater, for this exercise, let’s call it…

 

GODZILLA: The Pill Eater

 

The film opens with Metphies confessing to the audience that the Exif have been watching humans since before Godzilla even appeared, far before in fact, before the dawn of civilization. His conclusion is that religion does not actually work to keep humans in check, but they seek a leader that can carry out God’s message and embody the culture of the era. This reframes the trilogy’s events thus far because it explains why Metphies likes Haruo so much and helped him so much. Just put a pin in this though; there’s a lot more to say once Haruo finds out.

 

Godzilla is sleeping once more after expending so much energy in the last battle. It is 4 minutes into the movie; let’s play a game and see how long it takes him to wake up this time. As Martin watches the sleeping Godzilla, he speculates instead of humans’ mistakes birthing Godzilla, maybe humans were the opening act for Godzilla as the ultimate life form. As Martin is pretty much always right, we must accept this going forward. The idea kind of makes sense; that is what certain contingents of people believe about dinosaurs and humans. If we examine this in the context of the larger mythology of the trilogy, I wonder why the Hoututa exist then? That is a case of nature recreating humans but faster, stronger, smarter and more psychically aware, an adaptation that came after Godzilla and can live in symbiosis with him.

 

Because of the events of the previous film, there is a lot of fallout to explore. The Bilusaludo on the Aratrum see Haruo’s actions as treasonous, while the humans and Exif agree with the filmmakers about the nanometal. Yuko is in a permanent coma kept alive by the nanometal, and Adam has seemingly joined Metphies’ religion offscreen due to the latter’s role in their survival. In fact, Metphies has leveraged Haruo’s miraculous nanometal resistance as proof he is a hero, and, as Metphies said it would, that got everybody in line. In other words, a 180-degree character shift was achieved not through showing us a transformation but with 5 second foreshadowing via narration at the start of a film. The difficulty with comparing three movies to a 4 season show is that the show always has more time to develop themes and characters…except for Pastor Nick, a side character who is mostly in the shortest season of the show, whose devotion to his religion gets so much complexity for a bit part. It makes him obstinate but also brave, a roadblock for the heroes and also helpful in a moment. AOT also has a lot to say against religion, but it does so a lot more fairly.

 

Anyway, Haruo is in anguish over Yuko’s functional death, but Adam’s ramblings snap him back to his default anger, this time against something Metphies caused (keep this in mind, it’ll be a surprise tool that can help us later). That scowl persists as he watches Metphies’ religious ceremony, and Martin takes Haruo aside to explain the miracle as being the Houtua’s angelic scales as I’ve already mentioned. Martin calls the religion a cult, and Haruo gets angry but it is difficult to tell at what. He asks Metphies if they can talk and passes along Martin’s diagnosis. Metphies explains that he is manipulating the survivors to ready them for another attack against Godzilla using his God, and for some reason he is a lot less sly saying it than he usually is, prompting Haruo to scream asking why their God couldn’t have helped sooner, why people had to die? And now it is clear that this is about more than just these characters. This is a rant against organized religion given three yellow heads and beam attacks.

 

Now okay I do not want a Plan9Crunch Essay to be for or against religion. The cults we are interested in here pertain to entertainment culture. I cannot deny that many of the worst movements and organizations in history have had religion on their lips as they operated. Nor can I deny that the relevant God or gods have not stepped in at those times. But I also literally can’t deny that belief in a God is a major part of 12 step programs because I chose psychoactive drugs as my lens for this article. And I also think back to Grimm season 5 episode 16 where a Wesen used his unique ability to give absolution to followers in his religion, convincing them he was literally taking their sins within himself. Though the episode interrogated his monetary incentive, the way it resolved showed that without a doubt what he truly cared about was the people he helped.

 

 

These questions of religion have motivated so much art, and they are natural ones to ask. I just do not think it is best praxis to relegate the religious characters to mindless background drones against their prior characterization in the last film of the trilogy because it makes it so incredibly obvious that Haruo will not choose them. It’s the nanometal problem all over again but worse. I do not want to prescribe a specific path and say the story must take it, but if you are interrogating religion, do it sooner and deeper. Up until this point, characters like Adam only existed to take potshots at Metphies’ religion. The commentary becomes so much more potent if he were converted sooner and his radicalization unfolded before our eyes.

 

Metphies answers that he needed Haruo to become so angry his hatred for Godzilla would overcome his disbelief in their God, that only Haruo was angry enough and proud enough and sure enough in what humanity ought to be. That is apparently why Metphies selected Haruo. Wait… I thought, based on the previous scenes I pointed to, that Metphies molded Haruo this way, that Haruo was always intended to be the hero, and that’s how this wannabe terrorist made Captain. No, at some unspecified point, Metphies noticed the anger and pride, a trait Haruo thought no one had which should logically include himself, and then took an interest in him and started manipulating him.

 

The Bilusaludo turn off the Aratrum’s power, demanding Haruo’s sentencing. In a moment that has been memed to death, Martin walks in a room to talk to tell Haruo about it, forgets what he was there to say, goes on a big rant about religion and then remembers what he was in there to say. Martin pitches that Haruo pull a Trotsky and run away, and since Martin and Miana (who is in on the plan) are literally the only people Haruo can trust right now, he has to go along with it.

 

Conversing with Miana, Haruo learns that the Houtua philosophy is different from Metphies. They define winning as surviving and connecting life, with losing as dying. She then undresses and offers to connect life with Haruo, such a big step from the relatively chaste kiss last film. I’m more concerned though about the fact that Haruo is so important that one of, well, actually both, as we’ll find out, of the powerful priestesses in the Houtua culture instantly want to sleep with Haruo. Miana claims it is to get to know him better, but both twins winced when they witnessed Yuko kissing him. This is a weird power fantasy. Now that Metphies’ influence on Haruo is temporarily severed, I can diagnose this as the plot and writing using Haruo for these delusions of grandeur and invulnerability and not Metphies making Haruo feel this way. And that is important for the overall PCP thing because it means that this is not a clever deconstruction of this type of character, how making someone into a special hero will make them fall in line, it is just here to be here.

 

 

Anyway, thankfully, Haruo declines her offer…for now. I’ve also seen memes taking the piss out of this situation, and though this has no value as an appeal about film quality, I think it is very telling that the only way a large amount of the audience knew how to interact with this movie is through relentless memes. During Haruo’s sleep, one of the twins stumbles upon Metphies and confronts him for keeping secret that he too communicates psychically, while the other one attempts to remove his spacesuit and sleep with him. I’m still not exactly sure on the logic that because Miana took off his spacesuit before and Miana struggled to a little bit ago, that means the currently struggling Miana is actually Maina. In any case, Haruo sleeps with her. We don’t see the action, but we see the side of her naked body as she embraces him, and I don’t mean to pearl clutch but you gotta remember that City On The Edge of Battle was the second Godzilla film where main characters kissed, and now one of those characters is sleeping with someone else. This is weird for the franchise. Also, both twins’ subplots demonstrate some aspect of detachment as a motif. Haruo is so detached from who he impregnates that he can barely tell her apart from her sister, and Metphies detaches himself from psychic communication with the Houtua while monologuing about how detached he is from frank human open expression that he just observes them for the most part.

 

Metphies restrains Miana and threatens to sacrifice her to Ghidorah just as Godzilla opens his eye at the 32 minute mark. That actually would be a pretty good pace for a standard Godzilla movie (if the film didn’t show Godzilla waking up again at 43 minutes in, which is literally halfway if you adjust for the closing credits). At the same time, Haruo walks in on Metphies preparing a soup for a ritual. After trying it, while Metphies rambles on about how the angry observer Haruo is the only thing that makes Godzilla a kaiju and not a giant creature, Haruo peeks in the pot and finds Miana’s dead body. This is the most memed moment of the entire film; one really good one has Metphies’ head on Gordon Ramsey’s body. Okay this was a dream. Haruo was nowhere near Metphies in real life; this is a memory manipulation from Metphies, and Maina wakes up in terror because she heard her sister say the word Ghidorah.

 

(This is not exactly what I described, but this was the best I could find.)

 

 

The soup is real, even if Miana was not its main ingredient, and it basically becomes the Kool-Aid for Metphies’ cult. As Metphies tells his followers to embrace God by losing their individuality, the similarity to the nanometal debacle is probably intentional, but that was still very recent so it really is not logical that this is working. Like I get what Gen Urobuchi is trying to say here about religion making people act against their own self-interests, but this was like between hours and a week ago that the Bilusaludos were demonized for trying this. Ghidorah’s shadow emanates from artifacts Metphies and another Exif hold and massacre the believers. Now, this feels like an allusion to Heaven’s Gate especially with the alien and liquid components to it, and I think the film should be a little bit more tactful if this is the form of religious commentary it wants to provide, but I have my opinions which may become reality and I have Godzilla The Pill Eater, which is reality.

 

 

A singularity opens up, and one of Ghidorah’s impossibly long necks comes out to destroy the Aratrum. This version of Ghidorah can warp space and time, and its ties to the Gematron crystal override the ship’s features. Consequently, their vital signs read as dead before they actually experience that happening. This causes Ghidorah to draw nearer to Earth with three singularities nearby for each of the heads. Haruo and Godzilla both race into action, Haruo to save Miana from Metphies and Godzilla to face the singularities. I will spare you any reproduction of Martin’s play by play of the final act of this film; if I were to include it, we would be here all day. Basically, Ghidorah is not fully real in the world and so it can attack Godzilla, but he cannot touch it. We are deep into the PCP use now; reality is bending in on itself, and nothing makes sense anymore.

 

Metphies starts monologuing about the flowers of nature and how the prime monster is always the last and greatest flower, and then Ghidorah, the Golden Demise devours those fruits. As far as Metphies has told Harou, Ghidorah destroyed the Exif’s planet, but now he explains that some priests were spared to spread Ghidorah across the universe. This gets Haruo angry and is coding religion as seeking destruction. Metphies has put an artifact in his eye that hypnotizes Haruo, transferring these two into his memories, and this is another area where the awareness of one’s body and mind, where it starts, how ideology is inseparable from the human and their tools and their purpose, grand purpose invulnerable avatars of the fight between Godzilla and Ghidorah all that stuff comes into play.

 

And this is also where we have to give The Planet Eater its flowers. The next few minutes of the movie is where it beat Attack on Titan to the punch on one of its most beloved plot points.

 

This trilogy first went into production in 2015, and this film was released at the tail end of 2018. The part of Attack On Titan’s manga where blonde manipulator War Chief Zeke takes Eren through the latter’s memories in order to convince him of his nihilistic worldview started to debut in the middle of 2019. The anime trilogy somehow predicted that the older blonde character would go into the angry one’s memories and try to convince him of his worldview. It was not without its fair foreshadowing in AOT; memories were very important to the way Eren and his Titan functioned, and Zeke clearly needed Eren for something, but it is uncanny. And I saw this before AOT, so these scenes impressed me on a first viewing even though I still did not think the reveals were the smoothest.

 

 

Haruo resists Metphies’ sermon on the finite nature of the universe with great pain even though he never once talked about immortality. Then we flash back to Haruo’s memory of his parents’ death, but now it is Metphies that saves him, not Yuko’s grandfather Daichi. Metphies hands Haruo his first ration aboard the ship. In the real world, Metphies cradles Haruo’s body, reenacting La Pieta while trying to convince Haruo that all of these memories lead to the single truth that Haruo has just wanted the pain to end, a very suicidal mindset, so let’s go back to the chart.

 

 

Metphies made Haruo dizzy, which led to loss of balance at which point he gave him hallucinations of falling into his memories in a state that could be a seizure since Metphies stabilizes him all with the goal of implanting delusions and suicidal thoughts so that Haruo will take to the violent behavior of ending the planet. This was the motherlode of PCP symptoms, and I gotta say I am enjoying myself with this project.

 

More than just memories, Metphies also conjures apparitions of Leland and Yuko and visions of atomic bomb testing. Metphies also refers to himself as a primate, which I find kind of weird. Metphies’ manipulation starts to take, despite this gaffe until Maina and Martin pray to the God Egg Mothra to invade the dream. Before, it was established that both twins were necessary to amplify the psychic strength enough to reach a large room full of people, but now Martin can sub in for Miana to overpower Metphies from an entire Mountain’s height away. It's fine, don't worry about it. Metphies reveals that he is responsible for blowing up the Tau-e ship, and this does not immediately enrage Haruo because Metphies has sufficiently broken him down. Haruo picks up the pendant he lost when his parents died, and a flashback to something we’ve never seen before restores his autonomy, the symbolism behind a flower. So Haruo starts getting angry at Metphies, and that turns the tide of battle, shattering the artifact in Metphies’ eye. Confusingly, this allows Ghidorah to become corporeal, which was only supposed to happen under the condition of Haruo becoming the anchor, but whatever. Godzilla immediately beats Ghidorah, and each head vanishes after one strike each. To pay off that foreshadowing from the start of City on the edge of battle, Ghidorah’s singularity destroys the Aratrum, and Godzilla destroys that singularity with an atomic breath from the Earth’s surface.

 

 

As Metphies dies, he tells Haruo that his anger can still manifest Ghidorah if he chooses to, and Haruo embraces the corpse (this is meant to mirror the last shot of City On The Edge of Battle) because Metphies still was one of his only friends for years. With all of the bad guys except for Godzilla defeated, Haruo, Martin and the other survivors assimilate to Houtua culture, and a montage in a different art style shows them burying their weapons and rearing children. Eventually, the humans even adopt the Houtua’s style of clothing except for Haruo, though he is otherwise clearly happy. (You could use this to claim that Haruo still is not happy, but that would be forgetting that a major detail of Eren Jaeger’s clothing style was that he never took off the Shiganshina style shirt even after fleeing from there, so no, this is a reference to that.) He takes great joy in seeing spring flowers (the symbol for Haruo’s humanity we introduced at most 20 script pages ago) and it is Martin finally salvaging a Vulture that gets Haruo to remember his crippling anger against Godzilla and Metphies’ machinations. So, to prevent Martin from using the nanometal to restart the process of creating monsters, he makes sure Godzilla will destroy the Vulture and Yuko’s body, and to prevent himself from summoning Ghidorah, an act coded as suicide, Haruo puts himself in that Vulture, fulfilling the kamikaze charge he attempted twice before. In other words, to prevent his own suicide, he caused it. (Technically he had no way of knowing that it wouldn’t summon Ghidorah to do that.)

 

But more to the point, this time he’s leaving behind a family and culture that depends on him. The conceit is that he asks Miana if she hates Godzilla, and he starts to feel that only he feels hate and must die. If he remembered City On The Edge Of Battle, he would know he is capable of not letting his hate consume him, if he remembered earlier in this film, he would know he is capable of not letting his hate draw Ghidorah into the world and consume everything. And he Houtua will reward this by making Haruo into a God. So, no, this is a terrible ending, but let’s wrap around these topics. So, Martin restarting industrialization with the nanometal being destructive per Metphies’ diatribe.

 

You must consider that if acts of pollution and war truly are the reason these monsters showed up, it does not make sense that they started appearing in the late 1990s. But whatever it’s not like the Exif mentioned timing as being important for their plan, and it’s not at all like this is an ironic statement.

 

If the late-stage civilization of humanity and their polluting technology were bad and created the monsters, then the humans should not be able to live happily ever after joining the Houtua with their highly advanced civilization and language capabilities and their technology that includes the nanometal that was literally poisoning the land. Well, you might say, okay, but the Earth made them resistant to nanometal through their scales. Well, they still chose to use it. Remember that Hedorah, the ultimate environmental evil, was reimagined as a successful biological weapon harnessed by the humans as one of their last actions of biological terror against the Earth and its creatures. If I look back from Houtua to Martin to Houtua to Martin, I do not see a difference as all he wants to do is use the nanometal as technology. Also, Miana may claim that the Houtua do not experience hate, but that doesn’t make it something to demonize. Anger and pride are what makes someone human according to this trilogy, so Haruo is feeling bad about himself because he is human. Also, the Houtua can conceptualize enemies, enemies that take each other’s lives in combat such as what happened between Godzilla and their God Mothra, so the movie can piss off with that. 

 

Furthermore, one of the evilest machinations Metphies did was use Haruo’s leadership as a religious messianic symbol. How are we meant to regard the Houtua making Haruo a God of Wrath to commemorate him? The film does not explore this because it cannot, but the myth of Haruo as well as his likely inheritable mental health issues could lead to a manipulative charismatic leader that once again mobilizes support for war against Godzilla, but that point is getting away from me.

 

Haruo killing himself comes literally out of nowhere in the film, and we are literally in his head to see his turmoil. The final stretch of Attack on Titan takes us out of Eren’s head to keep us in suspense about his self-destruction. The Houtua subsequently immortalize Haruo as a God of Wrath with no runtime left to explore what that means, while Eren literally becomes a God of Wrath, and his story fully explores what that insinuates. Those certainly are two approaches to a similar story, and I think one was better, and the other was on some kind of depressant drug.

 

Conclusion

 

This has been a long video essay, so I’ll try to keep this conclusion quick. The trilogy is bad, I think Attack on Titan is good but I have not substantiated that, and I have drawn comparison between this trilogy’s storytelling and hard drug use.

 

Attack On Titan is not the kind of story to show the obvious temptation Haruo is going through and use every aspect of the story to try and get through his thick head that he shouldn’t fall for it three times in a row. If this were Attack On Titan and, again, I mean if the crew had the benefit of knowing how AOT ends and working backward to see how the Eren archetype inevitably leads there, if that were the case, then how this trilogy would end is Haruo would use being the avatar of Ghidorah to overpower the nanometal hive mind in order to become a giant Mecha King Ghidorah monstrosity to fight Godzilla and the Servum and Mothra and the Houtua. And then instead of signposting in every way possible that this is wrong, the art would ask you if it’s wrong and where he went too far and if there was ever any hope of a different outcome. And that’s the heart of my critique here. The arc Haruo has in City On the Edge of Battle about choosing to save his humanity even if it means not killing Godzilla should logically prevent him from needing to learn that again in The Planet Eater, and seeing that he was able to overcome both of those and start to be happy with the Houtua means that he did not need to kill himself at the end. But this examination of human nature is just his violent and detached suicidal dissociation that got substantially less fun to talk about once he went through with it.

 

And it’s not even paired with action in a way exemplified by AOT where you can match the rising personal stakes with the existential ones. This story is slow, more introspective than it can really afford to be with those moral training wheels rigidly rejecting the nanometal or Exif religion as even options to rush us into assimilating with the Houtua. Captain Levi’s speech about still not being sure about what the right answer is between trusting your team or trusting yourself is a more human, more sober, and deeper evaluation into the kinds of questions this trilogy tried to tackle. It is strange that this story is an even darker scenario for humanity than AOT and yet every major conflict has a clear theme and anti-theme, a kind of moral simplicity that should leave a story that intends to demonize religion. This might be a very strange comparison to drop into the conclusion of this video, but it reminds me of the way that the Barbie movie showed a toxic matriarchy as an allegory against the patriarchy but still felt the need to argue that the matriarchy was better because we, as writers, cannot afford to show a bad scenario and let it speak for itself. There is an indecision I feel in showing Haruo as an individual in showing these dueling worldviews as valid alternatives and everything was doomed to either end in the destruction of the Earth or Haruo killing himself for some reason.

 

Well, I hope you enjoyed this transcript edition of my review of Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy. If you have not watched the video, that is a more unbroken and smooth presentation of these thoughts, and you can find it here (Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP).

What Does Lucky Represent In Animal Farm 2025?

 

By Joe Gibson

I recently went to see the new(ish) Animal Farm in theaters (as I have ascertained, it technically debuted at an art festival last year between Netflix shirking the distribution rights and Angel Studios picking them up). As you can probably tell, given that this is a focused editorial on a small part of the movie and not a review, my reaction to the film is such that I do not care to go back to it for a more in-depth review. I did not like the film, I think it is actually pretty poorly told, I only laughed out loud once at an unintentionally funny part, and it is a terrible adaptation of George Orwell's book. However, it is very important to me that you understand that those are four distinct claims I shared and not one half-baked argument. Liking or not liking a film is subjective, as is humor. Why I think the adaptation is pretty poor will become clear with the rest of this article, but you must keep in mind I regard adaptation changes as "sideways" in quality, neither inherently good nor bad. As for why I think the film is bad, I think there are unfortunate interruptions in the arcs of Napolean, Lucky, Boxer and Puff that make me unable to track their growth and changing attitudes in many cases because of the jokes in this movie taking the easy shortcut to appeal to I-Pad babies. I am still open and willing to have discourse on this movie that can change my assessments; there are just four distinct areas to have those conversations. If you like the film and have watched it multiple times, your recollections of the film are probably more precise than mine, but I have done my best to remember and double check the plot points I will be discussing, as well as cross-referencing these decisions with Andy Serkis' stated goals from interviews. With that out of the way, we can begin the actual topic here.

One of the most puzzling changes from the outset of this project is the inclusion of Lucky, a young piglet played by Gaten Matarazzo, who is both student to Snowball and protege of Napolean. Andy Serkis has said that Lucky is supposed to be an innocent audience insert to frame this story, and he has also said that he pursued animation for this project to make it easier for kids to relate to the story, so the obvious answer for why Lucky is in the story is to make it more palatable for children with a likable lead and happy ending, already a concerning direction to take this story but I digress. (Making it a parable with animals is already enough to help it teach children important lessons. I think Andy Serkis should have consulted Aesop or the Brothers Grimm if he still thought children needed to be talked down to with these stories. Similarly, in contexts set after the fall of the Soviet Union, I understand Animal Farm better as a warning against revolutionary populists; "corporatism is the new communism" is probably not a theme you should include in a story where the happy ending is that the surviving characters all recommit to a new communism.)

Upon a first glance, Lucky's role seems to be the standard liberal archetype of 'being unable to do anything except token gestures against rising authoritarianism and getting swept up in the increasing compromises until they become the new bourgeoise and get backstabbed.' Once Lucky realizes Napolean has gone too far, his plan is to appeal to the pigs and humans' sense of decorum by showing in video how Napolean is actually crass, pathetic and irresponsible, the most fecklessly liberal plan imaginable (especially because Seth Rogen seems to be playing Napolean as though he were Trump, but that might have been unintentional yet inevitable the moment they dumbed the Stalin character down into a fat materialist celebrity with an exaggerated cartoon voice). Add back in the fact that Lucky never lost his privilege even once he rejoins with the oppressed animals and becomes their de facto leader, and it is actually very, very difficult to root for Lucky.

However, there is potentially more to Lucky's character and what he represents in this film than may be obvious. I mentioned earlier that there was one moment that I busted up laughing in the theater, and it wasn't Napolean shaking his butt or Lucky's plan destabilizing into suicide terrorism (I'll get to that in a moment); it was a 'touching' moment of Lucky using the memory and martyrdom of Boxer and Snowball to rouse the impoverished starving animals into a second revolution to purge the 'rightists' that have taken power from Animal Farm. It all clicked place into me there, and I could not contain myself. Lucky is, whether intentionally or not, Mao Zedong, and the movie is actually fairly propagandistic in shaping our view of Lucky and what he represents to Animal Farm.

I admitted that it is difficult for me to root for Lucky, but the film does not share those qualms. Boxer actually narrates the film, immediately casting Lucky in a positive light. Boxer was chosen to narrate this film because Andy Serkis resonated with the character all his life, but the fact that Boxer, the paragon hero doomed to die, vouches for Serkis' OC transfers some of that inherent goodwill onto him. Indeed, Lucky is Boxer's best friend and tries to share the milk Napolean hordes for the pigs with Boxer early on in the story. Though Boxer starts out as a mentor character to Lucky, we all know that Boxer is very naive and assumes the best of this movement, working himself to the grave. That is the first misspeak in the film; his narration is far more nuanced than he has the capacity to be, and Lucky even says in one of his last monologues to the Animals that even Boxer was not correct about their movement. The closing moments reveal that Boxer was narrating this film from heaven (the stars specifically, but if a fat pig can be Stalin without that ever being stated in the text, spirits in the stars can be Heaven), but, in order to keep that twist intact, when Boxer dies, his narration ceases, and it cuts to Lucky telling this story to the new generation. Lucky's narration also gets a wrap around in the ending, and, in lieu of a better way to square away two characters both claiming to narrate the film, I have to assume that the heavenly martyr Boxer is part of Lucky's propaganda.

Consider this. Lucky is the junior partner to Snowball during her illegal forays into the farmhouse and protege to Napolean as they make every other compromise through to the book's original ending of looking back from pig to human and being confused which is which. (The "cautionary tail" version of this story, as it markets itself, should obviously end there, and the POV switch to Boxer would be very chilling as we, the audience, could debate if Boxer was right about Lucky or if Lucky was this adaptation's version of the rose-colored glasses Boxer has for the regime.) Instead, Lucky flees and returns to the downtrodden animals, regains their trust and launches an assault on Animal Farm's dam. Though his plan is peaceful in the biased version of the story we hear, let us consider what actually happens, the suicide terrorism I mentioned. Napolean has a bunch of fireworks planned to show off his strength (for whatever reason he has started dressing like Stalin instead of a gang leader, as he was for the rest of the movie) as he holds a large rally of pigs and humans. Lucky wants to sabotage the fireworks, and so he unplugs them and the fireworks themselves wind up in a pit that just exists in the dam for some reason. Squealer plugs it back in, and the Andy Serkis voiced rooster is on guard to stop the fireworks. He stops the spark from going down the line to the fireworks but catches on fire himself, which sets the lines on fire. The rooster falls in the pit with the fireworks, and, as they explode, he says a nationalistic chant about fighting for Animal Farm. The dam explodes, killing countless humans directly and leading to the circumstances where Lucky gets to kill Napolean. (The rooster does not show up again for another tenish minutes, leading us to believe he died, until he pops back up to reveal that Lucky also survived, as the film was desperately trying to convince its child audience that Lucky had died escaping the deluge.)

It does not matter if Napolean deserved it, and it does not matter what the film shows Lucky's intent to be. This story is about questioning revolutionary populists that say the right thing and focusing on the indistinguishable actions of the Tsar and the Stalin. Lucky's Continuous Revolution immediately became the most violent action in the movie, and this is after he was complicit in the mistakes of Snowball and Napolean. Why, oh why do the other animals forgive him? Why is he the defacto leader in their charge on the dam? Why is it okay for Lucky to let the falling silo crush Napolean when it wasn't okay for Napolean to let dogs kill Snowball? The simple fact is that, after his arc two thirds in the movie, the movie does not allow us to question Lucky's motivation or his actions. (The cult of personality of this film is Lucky's.) As soon as he has reunited with the peasants and started to liberate them, all nuance disappears from the conversation. Ending Animal Farm with a continuous revolution where the animals are happy (even though it has been done before) removes the satire and reclassifies it as textbook revolutionary romanticism, specifically Maoist peasant fiction as the film make a point to show much poorer the proletariat animals have become since Napolean rose to power. (Also consider how much literacy is emphasized in these animals, how Lucky knows how to read and tries to teach Boxer, how Lucky's girlfriend Puff teaches the illiterate peasant animals, and how Maoist propaganda was the earliest form of writing education for peasant writers such as the prolific award winning author Mo Yan.)

Alright, even if you are still following me, Mao Zedong specifically is a little random. I've been sprinkling a few hints throughout this article, but I really should make this reading a bit more blatant. This film very clearly distances itself from the Russian allegory by having a 'Big Bad Duumvirate' of Napolean and the owner of Wal-Mart. That is obvious from the trailers, but the story also very deliberately removes Old Major (the Marx/Lenin of Animal Farm). I cannot speak to the intent of this decision as, to my knowledge, no one has asked Serkis about that yet, but it means that the communism of Animal Farm can mean other things with other figures. The way that we can know Old Major is Marx or Lenin is in his archetypal stylings and position in the story. How would we write an allusion to Mao Zedong? Well, he was a student during the earlier revolutions surrounding May Fourth 1919. Wait, Lucky is the student of Snowball during the first revolution against Farmer Jones. Before the revolution, he is merely an educated animal, failing to read the obscured S in slaughterhouse and getting in the van with the other animals, but after he is present for every major decision, the same way that the May 4thers became activists and political leaders (whether communist or nationalist). You have to admit there is something there, but I must again return to the moment I found so hilarious in the movie.

Within Maoist propaganda, there were certain ideal communist figures that Mao would valorize with propaganda. The thing is that pretty often these people all died for the cause, so the unfortunate implication is that Mao's ideal worker is a dead one, his ideal woman a dead one, his ideal communist, if they survived the great famine and depression of the Guomindang, starved in Mao's famine. Lei Feng was one such figure, the ultimate loyal and hardworking soldier. Selfless and devoted, he links up to Boxer in several key ways, and like Mao, Lucky uses his martyrdom to get the other animals into line. I am not a scholar on Mao, and the notes from classes into Chinese history are pretty much useless for me because I could not write the names down in time due to less familiarity with how to spell those pronunciations. But of the women martyrs that Mao valorized, I can at least tell you about Yang Kaihui. She was one of his wives that died in the 30s, but I think that Puff would actually map better on to his later wife Jiang Qing (gaining political power after a split with Lucky but then falling in line at least for a while). The idea here is that the people that Lucky valorizes are not the living members of Animal Farm, and he leads a much smaller force of peasants against Napolean's larger army because Lucky advocates for a continuous revolution of purging rightists (purging rightist authors often meant simply ejecting them from the society, such as Lucky's original plan for Napolean). Lucky's peasant underdogs succeeding against his enemies could match the underdog communists winning the Chinese Civil War in 1949, which means that Lucky's Animal Farm is still doomed to go through the Great Leap Forward (especially since Lucky alludes to hard work and communes for his future plans) and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Forgiving Lucky for his mistakes when they are still in dire straits due to destroying the industrialized dam and nearby humans is tantamount to forgiving Mao for the Great Leap Forward.

I might seem overly cynical about the propagandistic nature of this movie, but redeemed heavenly Boxer telling us a story from the stars he used to look at with Lucky is cloyingly sentimental, unless there is a purpose in the text for it. Initially, I thought it was one of those tropes that wound up in there because Angel Studios released it (because all of the Angel Studios movies I have seen have something subtly in there to point the kiddies back to Christ), but Angel Studios acquired this film very late in its history. This was going to be a Netflix film, which certainly means that they were not intentionally including Maoist imagery but also means that Christ is not on the forefront of the creative's minds. Realistically, the answer is that Serkis likes Boxer so much that he wants to think of him as going to heaven, but that is also how Mao felt about Yang Kaihui. The following is two lines in two translations of Mao's "Reply to Li Shuyi" that directly concern Poplar (Yang).

"I lost my proud poplar, and you your willow,

Poplar and Willow soar lightly to the heaven of heavens..."

"I lost my proud poplar and you your willow.

As poplar and willow they soar straight up

into the ninth heaven...."

Mao was a revolutionary romanticist. Though he censored a lot of Chinese authors, his own poetry is not as rigid as you might expect. He includes romantic appeals to nature, but he believes the collective that conquer it easily. From "Return to Well Ridge Mountain" - "We can clasp the moon in the Ninth Heaven and seize turtles deep down in the Five Seas. Nothing is hard in this world If you dare to scale the heights..." So why is this important. When the Animal Farms works together, their yield is higher than it ever was under Jones. I am not pleased that they included this scene, but early in the movie all of the animals trade with some humans at the Animal Farm farmer's market, and they still pull in more cash than Jones ever did together. At the end of the movie, the Andy Serkis rooster goes out in a fiery blaze to take down the dam, but he survives it. The whole of the new Animal Farm survive the deluge wiping away Napolean's regime. In the most literal sense (outside of Rocky Balboa punching down trees and climbing a mountain), these communists conquered nature as Mao himself told them they could. The film ends by telling us they can all do it again. (If you think it is unrealistic for Mao to inherit a bad economy and famine and then balance the budget and restore the economy, he technically already did that in reality. Chiang Kai Shek's wartime policies against merchants led to an unparalleled famine and depression decades before Mao tried to skip Marxism's middle stages and starved everybody.)

But okay this still all feels random. Communist animals commenting on humanity, Mao Zedong, what's the connection? Well, I'm sharing a bit more of Mao's poetry than I meant to today, but here is one last poem from Autumn of 1965, "Two Birds: A Dialogue."

"Leviathan-roc spreads his wings

Rises ten thousand miles

By the whirlwind's force propelled

The sky on his back he surveys below

Walled cities where humans dwell:

Horizons lit by gun-flash

Shell craters all around

Startle a sparrow from a bramble dell

'Whatever to do?

Oh! I want to fly off as well'

'And whither, sir, shall you journey?'

Now comes the sparrow's reply:

'There's a fairyland, I hear tell,

Where a year or so back, when the moon was bright

Three clans contracted in peace to dwell

They've lots to eat there too

Potatoes piping hot,

Plenty of beef to sell.'

'Bullshit, my friend:

Just watch heaven switch with hell.'"

There are also other translations of this poem, but I am not copying a full poem in here twice for Mao Zedong of all people. I am not going to say if Mao was aware of Animal Farm when he wrote this poem or if he was merely engaging in the long-held tradition of Aesop to Grimm to Orwell of using animals to explain human concepts, but I am more confident in my reading of Animal Farm 2025 for knowing that Mao has also used animals in his communist writings. I think we are well past the point where a New Critic could read Mao into this story, and we are just left with "this clearly is not what anybody making the film intended." I will be the first to admit that as I have done so already. But that is kind of the lesson here, is it not? If you are writing or adapting such an important story as Animal Farm, you have to be really extraordinarily careful about what changes you make. If you want to valorize your own characters in a story with a moral about how you shouldn't let populist strongmen get away with anything, and you also want to undo the very purposeful logical negative ending of a retelling of Stalinism, you need to be very careful to not accidentally rediscover Mao. (If you would like a more in-depth version of this in video format, I can make no promises. I really don't want to rewatch this movie.)

In the Ghost Hours captures in poems the diverse sentiments of death

 

In The Ghost Hours: A Volume of Gothic Verse, by Andi Brooks, (Kikui Press, 2026), is a slim volume of poetry that captures the many emotions and mysteries that death offers us. There's a strong gothic flavor in the verses that capture many sentiments, including fear, love, regrets, resignation, as well as touching on the supernatural. 

My favorite poem is Reflections in the Ghost Hours. It expresses the feelings we have as we've moved through life into the later stages, where we begin to reflect on whether we've had a successful earth journey. Another poem, In Words of Truth, is a deeply affecting passage depicting a love between a father and son, and the immortal expectations young sons have for their fathers. 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Lady in White (An Irish ghost story). Enjoy the atmosphere of this verse:

Out of the dark and o'er the fence

she’ll suddenly appear,

To walk awhile by your side

‘Till the crosswords draw near.

The Shriving of a Lost Soul is a marked poem of regret, anguish and madness from a father who has committed a great evil. Eidolon finds a romantic partner yearning for a kiss from the lover who kneels at his grave. The Old Forgotten Cemetery reminds me of the many abandoned cemeteries found in ghost towns of the American West.

These are just a sample; all of the poems show considerable talent from a writer who can touch our feelings. Included are a poem that talks of Christmas and another that may make the reader dread the sound of bells.

There are 32 poems to enjoy and re-read often.

– Doug Gibson

Part 2: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy - Attack On Titan On PCP - Transcript Version

 

By Joe Gibson

 

The following is the second part of the transcript of a recent video on Plan9Crunch’s YouTube page that you can watch here: Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP

Previously, we covered the first film in the trilogy, describing its similarities to the first few arcs of Attack On Titan (which you can find here: Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP, Part One),. This entire project will spoil AOT and the anime trilogy quite heavily. Make sure to watch those first or proceed with the utmost caution and discretion. At the end of the first film, after they kill the average size Godzilla Filius, an absurdly large specimen called Godzilla Earth showed up.

 

All in all, this moment of false confidence from Haruo constitutes the first couple episodes of Eren’s first battle in Trost in terms of challenging his confidence leading his comrades into battle. But whereas those episodes used that opportunity to flesh out Armin, Mikasa and Jean Kirstein, Haruo gets rescued by one of the humanoids that watching them earlier, a young girl with buglike antennae, and we will focus again on his perspective as he finally starts to have an arc in Godzilla: City On The Edge Of Battle, but right now I’m going to call it–

 

GODZILLA: Cigarettes On The Edge Of Battle

Okay, we are now reaching the section of this essay where I have to go beyond the first film, and that also means spoiling more parts of Attack On Titan. If you are so inclined to proceed, I would encourage you to find this trilogy and AOT whether in print or animation. The trilogy is on Netflix, and Hulu has Attack on Titan. Okay so in Attack on Titan, something very interesting happens in the Battle of Trost, and this is a spoiler for the first season but in the marketing of every subsequent one: Eren somehow becomes a 16 meter tall intelligent Titan. In order to destroy that which he hates, Eren literally becomes it. I’m going to be a lot lighter on the AOT spoilers from here on out, because I want you all to watch it, but when, at the end of the season, Armin tells Eren that in order to defeat monsters, they have to let go out of their humanity, that is built into the stakes of the show. That statement from Armin comes back in every major plot point after, and that is the question City On The Edge Of Battle tries to explore through its 100 minute runtime: is it worth it to defeat your enemy if the cost is your humanity?

 

Okay so you already know two of the titles by which to refer to this film. Well let’s add a third. The direct translation is GODZILLA: Battle Mobile Proliferation City.

 

Okay so the film opens with the central committee offering a bit of foreshadowing on the Aratrum. Meant as an “oh crap” moment, they ascertain that anything on the scale of the 300 meter Godzilla Earth could destroy their mothership by shooting its beam into the sky at them. There will be no payoff for that in this film, and it won't even be Godzilla that destroys the ship, but the purpose of the scene is clear. Plot twist that jeopardizes the perceived safety of their enclosure that the characters are reacting to with reasonable fear.

 

This is the “the damage at Stohess district reveals there are Titans inside of the walls” moment, in other words. And I want to take a brief moment to again talk about how the action adventure show handles foreshadowing for plot twists as opposed to the melodramatic philosophy lecture.

 

I told you Eren is a Titan. Well, a couple episodes before the reveal, you see actual evidence of this. When he gets injured, his head steams to heal, a trait unique to Titans. It is a very subtle thing but lays the groundwork for the first major plot twist of the show. To solve its mysteries, you have to take note of what cuisine and technology our heroes have and what our villains have. Some plot points are as obvious as Metphies’ manipulations, but we see those characters acting in ways that the reveal contextualizes not, as this trilogy did, one of our first scenes of Metphies being him and a Bilusaludo member both casually admitting to each other that they both tried to take over the Earth before and are manipulating things to take the coalition back there.

 

Again, the point of this essay is not how AOT is the only way to tell this story. Different approaches work. NBC's Grimm has a surprising amount of plot points and arcs in common with AOT, but it plays those out in its own unique way. This trilogy just oozes of pretension when the runtime gives us more quiet moments to solve its mysteries, and they are easier.

 

Alright I should clarify the point I made a few paragraphs ago about how the chain of command should have prevented Haruo from taking control even though you can chart a chain linking Leland then Metphies then Haruo. For one thing, Yuko is directly Haruo's superior on this mission and has to give him a power suit later, but she wasn't the one to free him. That was Metphies against the orders of Leland who was still alive at that point. And then he is risking not only his company's materials and soldiers but other companies, and Belu-be, Galu-gu and Martin have all been able to move more freely on this mission than Haruo and at least have comparable power to Metphies when he was advising Leland earlier. Though they are friendly with Haruo, as I pointed out, the film was more concerned with showing the technological means of transmission for his message reaching all of them and less so about his charisma to convince them. After his speech, I guess I have to take for granted that he can convince them to go on the same mission that just killed Leland, but the film didn't show us why they would go along with it. They just do and for some reason don't take any of the available outs to discredit him that they have. The reason I bring this up is again that scene about the Aratrum that opens this movie.

 

Even though their literal captain is giving them the order to stay in Earth's orbit under risk of Godzilla beam, they have different privileges, responsibilities and expertise in their sectors so they argue because it is a matter of operational security. Since it concerns probabilities of landing team survival, the Exif delegate gets a say. Since it concerns physical vessels, the Bilusaludo have a say. And it's just really interesting that the conversion that should have been happening about Haruo's death march is happening based on a hypothetical about Godzilla's beam being capable of reaching their altitude.

 

The title card uses the imagery of replicating nanometal twisting to form the title, and the movie will utilize the nanometal in a way that ties into my PCP analysis so just keep that in mind.

 

Haruo wakes up, his maladies treated and skin covered in a fine powder. Now, this powder over his skin, some very sacred scales, is actually going to effectively grant him immunity from some of the other physical ailments that will lead to reduced respiration, reduced blood pressure and coma in the other characters. And why I find that important to note here is that it is an angelic dust granting Haruo immunity, an immunity that will amount to invulnerability that empowers him to use violence and anger to singlehandedly reverse the status quo. The whole PCP aspect of this is technically ‘Begging The Question’ in order to actually have a platform to talk about the storytelling of the trilogy, but you must admit this is the most apt comparison so far.

 

It takes only like 10 minutes for Haruo to reunite with the crew from the last film, and it does so in a way that removes so much of the tension that could have been there. We see a Houtua girl tending to Haruo’s wounds, and another identical one attacks Yuko, Adam, Marco and Belu-be, but the film makes it pretty clear almost immediately that they are two separate people, never allowing us as the audience to worry what she might do to Haruo if she is that hostile to the other humans. At the same time, after the Houtua people take our human survivors into custody, we almost immediately see that Martin is there, and he confirms that Metphies is not there (but says so in a way that implies he is still alive), and Belu-be and Galu-gu reunite. Not only are we confirming so soon that every main character survived, but we are literally just biding time until the Bilusaludo realize what the Houtua use for their arrowheads.

 

I do not want to be impossible to please. Yuko is finally being treated as a main character, even a leader among her group at the beginning of the film, and this film will show us friction in this coalition as the Bilusaludo have their own goals independent of the humans. Haruo is allowed to show more than one emotion, and this is the beginning of an arc he will have though it is against the way he was characterized. He genuinely believed that Godzilla robbed all of the attributes that made them human, but when he defeats them again, he is fine. Sorry I’m complaining again. This Haruo is a lot more pleasant to watch even if it took literal angel dust to get here.

 

 

Martin puts together that the people with antennae living in tunnels in the ground evolved from bugs, and the Bilusaludo expose their technologically based racism against the Houtua, all while the people still ultimately look to Haruo and accept it when he decides to go fight Godzilla again. Specifically, the old Haruo returns when he gets angry about the Bilusaludo casually talking about slaughtering the Houtua, and a flashback to Metphies reminds Haruo he should be angry at Godzilla.

 

A question I have to ask myself in this process is “how often can I just keep pointing to the same narrative confusion, the same detachment and violent tendencies from characters, sometimes the exact same dialogue, as unique talking points for this PCP comparison?” Well, the rage transfers from Haruo to Yuko for a good bit of this movie while she gets jealous about the attention and care Haruo seems to have for the twin Houtua girls Maina and Miana, the angry one and kind one respectively. This means that PCP-induced rage is an aspect of the trilogy, not just Haruo.

 

Martin’s exposition teaches us that the Houtua communicate psychically when the twins channel the Mothra egg’s power and that the Houtua, though seemingly primitive, have a rich culture. He has even also learned that Godzilla Filius was a subspecies and that the entire surface is mimicking Godzilla. Logic be damned, Martin will always be right because he is a mechanism in this story. I find the approach taken with Hange more suitable: someone who obsessively spearheads the search for truth because of the odd kind of person they are not for what the story can make them say.

 

At some point, I need to mention that during the initial landing of this Earth advance team, they had to drop some bombs to land, and the Houtua understood this to be terrorism on their home. Haruo earnestly tries to explain otherwise, and I think that is the actual reason his character needed to be more even tempered in these scenes. It’s the prequel Anakin Skywalker effect. A smart and empathetic woman like Padme is not going to fall for the emotionally stunted, genocidal fascist like Anakin unless he is really, really nice to her. Even so, our heroes suffer no consequences, and neither Houtua nor human/Bilusaludo blood is spilt. Now, obviously the lesson here is to be more like the Houtua, but this is a very shallow exploration of these actions in such a talky show. You may not have seen AOT, but you’ve probably seen Kong Skull Island, which used the Vietnam War as the lens through which to analyze the journey to Skull Island instead of colonialism, and the bombs they drop at the beginning are the first tangible effect of the violence that the film interrogates and punishes as its theme.

 

Now, Marco does confront Haruo about wanting to fight Godzilla again, but that conflict is pushed aside to favor the aforementioned resentment of the twins from Yuko, and that leads to worm-type Servum using their tentacles to pull her legs apart and then trying to ambush her. Since the filmmakers refused to give Yuko characterization in the previous film and are now borrowing objectifying imagery in having her be preyed upon when Haruo was not when he was in this area earlier…it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Even this escapade, Yuko’s biggest moment so far only exists so that we can see Galu-gu realize that the Houtua’s arrowheads are made of nanometal, and then Metphies does a Deus ex machina to save the characters from some flying type Servum. 

 

Earlier, we saw Haruo question himself again and cry out for Metphies, which shows the hold this Exif has over him. I actually cannot complain too much about this. I think the very simple and subtle way of showing that Haruo’s sense of self-worth and justice ties back to Metphies does the legwork of the foreshadowing here. As you will find out whenever I get around to reviewing Gamera Rebirth, I really appreciate foreshadowing that subtly reveals character dynamics through their relationships to each other. I guess that means Seshita does too. As you’ll see though, liking Metphies and Haruo a lot more in this movie is not going to affect my overall assessment of this film’s conflict and themes.

 

The argument aboard the Aratrum between the committee members representing the Bilusaludo and Exif sets the tone for the rest of the film. The Bilusaludo look to technology, and the Exif use their mysterious God to make decisions. When Metphies tells Haruo of the committee’s plan to leave the solar system, Belu-be and Galu-gu come up next to them, and Haruo is framed between the two delegations. After the Bilusaludo tell Haruo they can win using the nanometal, he addresses the survivors of their mission. Once again, Marco speaks out of turn, and Haruo invites Belu-be and Galu-gu to explain the nanometal. Haruo’s moment of asking the remaining men if they want to stay but not blaming if they do not is something Erwin did in Attack on Titan, but Haruo steeps it with his thoughts on living in the ship, which can best be described by how Eren regarded living in the walls, living like cattle.

 

Now, are we meant to assume that seeing Leland’s sacrifice and being influenced by Belu-be as well as Metphies has led Haruo to mature, or should we assume that this dialogue and plot point was the starting point and Haruo was the easiest for the narrative to make say these words? I am clearly arguing for the latter perspective, but if you believe the former, we can have that debate at a later time.

 

The scene of the surviving cadets choosing to join Erwin’s Scout regiment was a very emotionally impactful scene because while we always knew our main trio was going to stay, the characterization of Jean throughout the last dozen episodes leads to a very difficult decision to stay and fight and avenge the people he has lost. There’s not really a moment like that here. Haruo was always going to stay and fight, Yuko was always to stay with Haruo, and Metphies needs to manipulate Haruo, with the Bilusaludo spearheading this part of the mission. Martin was always going to keep studying the planet’s curiosities, and Marco…was always going to leave because the story was never interested in exploring dissidence in Haruo's leadership outside of bastardizing the Bilusaludo in this film and the Exif in the next.

 

Martin, as the primary tool for exposition, explains monster factors in changing the florafauna and that Earth seemingly has restructured to serve Godzilla’s needs as if it chose him. Haruo already viewed his mission as taking the Earth back from Godzilla, and this justifies his perspective on that, inflating the self-importance of this mission. He defensively declares that they will have to take the Earth back. This also plants the seed for Haruo that humans should liberate Earth from this state and not accept that kind of control over the Earth coming from anyone other than them. You should keep this in mind when the characters then stumble on a city made entirely from the nanometal in Mechagodzilla’s carcass that spreads and consumes a few Servum. The Houtua twins warn Haruo that Mechagodzilla City is poison, but, since they use nanometal in their tools and technology, we can understand this warning to be of the same caliber as “hey be careful if you walk into an oil refinery, and just make sure to be safe around the product.” 

 

 

The nanometal’s AI explicitly serves the directive of fighting Godzilla, and the nanometal has reproduced Mechagodzilla’s production plant at a larger scale. And a Giant Mechagodzilla is on the poster, lording over even Godzilla so you would be forgiven for thinking that the nanometal will form a giant Mechagodzilla. The characters just handwave that aside immediately and end up augmenting the power suits into flying Vulture Mechs. For what it is worth, Metphies is the final person to speak against rebuilding Mechagodzilla, but Galu-gu this whole time was talking of other projects. The city itself becomes the very specific terrain needed for Haruo’s Godzilla Defeat strategy, and, though I think the film is only kind of aware of it, there is a very clear parallel between Haruo and the nanometal AI. 

 

Both operate mainly under the goal of defeating Godzilla, and both push aside ideas like Mechagodzilla to favor one singular ideal strategy. Consequently, unless we are drawing these similarities to their logical conclusion, the Bilusaludo created AI should have made another Mechagodzilla. That would have made more sense. The idea is supposed to be that the Bilusaludo will try to tempt Haruo into merging with the nanometal and becoming a monster by showing that the nanometal will be the only way to defeat Godzilla and the only conscious agent that cares as much about doing that as Haruo does, but already he is a synergy with the nanometal that Galu-gu, passionate creator of Mechagodzilla, isn’t.

 

As the movie develops, more and more Bilusaludo allow themselves to join with the nanometal, and this shapes the vague ‘destroy Godzilla directive’ into a more well-defined misanthropic worldview of submission. If you are familiar with Attack on Titan, you might know what comparison this naturally brings, and it is a pretty spoilery one. So I will put this in simple terms. Of the intelligent Titans, one is near omnipotent, however it comes with a certain mindset, almost a hive mind of all of the holders of this power. The arc in question is also the one that broke down Eren’s philosophy, making him question if his mission truly was the best one. And so for that to happen to Haruo now when the nanometal is on his same page makes more sense if they started with AOT and then extrapolated outward.

 

Metphies asks the Bilusaludo for the ability to repair his religious artifact, and Yuko practices flying in a Vulture. The former will diverge from the Bilusaludo’s intentions, and the latter will actually embrace them. First, however, Yuko reassures Haruo after he voices his insecurities, though it does not exactly work. Right after the film first alludes to it, Martin explains that the Houtua’s treatment and scales has made those treated with it functionally allergic to Mechagodzilla City, and so Haruo, who is suffering those symptoms, leaves the City briefly to ask advice from Metphies. Metphies spoonfeeds Haruo the author’s assessment of the nanometal as monstrous and parasitic, and then whispers the name “Ghidorah” into Haruo’s ear as the name of the Exif world’s monster. Now, when this scene was in the trailers, because of the art style and the way the camera pulls back, a lot of people thought Metphies was kissing Haruo. In the very next scene, Yuko kisses Haruo after his ego is sufficiently inflated to declare that they need to defeat Godzilla, will defeat Godzilla and that he will show Yuko what being on Earth was like. Checking back in on the PCP symptoms, yes that is the sense of invulnerability but also the allergy to the nanonmetal could be interpreted as nausea and dizziness depending on how you view Haruo clutching his chest and stomach. This is only the second Godzilla film to include two main characters kissing, and the first was Invasion of Astro-Monster. It’d be really funny if the next film jumped to a different milestone and featured the first sex scene in the franchise with just one of these characters and not both, but there’s no way that can happen right?

 

So Godzilla wakes up an hour into this movie. And when he finally starts moving, a single step takes over 7 seconds. That might contextualize what I mean about lethargy being a major motif on his end. 

 

Anyway, Adam informs Haruo that the City is eating some Bilusaludians, and all of the humans in the room instantly think this is too far even though it is a volunteer thing. Yuko, who overhears only part of this, wanders in and defends the practice. Having Haruo and Martin, the POV character and exposition machine respectively, both oppose it kind of poisons the well and takes out the suspense. Haruo is not even considering joining the nanometal now even though it flows so easily from his wants, and the way you write a suspenseful climactic decision is to make either choice seem possible based on cause and effect, think Luke’s temptation to the dark side in Star Wars episode 6, the suspense is there because of his struggle and the fact that his dark clothing and force choke usages suggests to us a level of compromise between light and dark. The only reason Haruo gets into the third Vulture for this final campaign is to resolve morale after the argument. It’s really taking the teeth out of the film’s central question to have the answer so clear not only to the audience but also the major characters aside from Yuko who spoilers will choose to regret her opinion.

 

 

The battle reenacts last film’s climax, but this time Godzilla Earth can weather the attack because he is a lot stronger than his offshoot. This manifests as Godzilla attaining a Scarlet Mode that somewhat references Burning Godzilla from the 90s films, and Martin explains this. At least this time, it makes sense to explain to people why they must evacuate, unlike his rants earlier and later. Martin leads the remaining humans away, while the Bilusaludo merge with the nanometal, and Galu-gu holds out hope that Harou will join them. Scarlet Godzilla is too hot for the Vulture pilots to approach, and since only the human inside is susceptible to heat, Galu-gu starts to fuse the pilots to the nanometal. Being rubbed with the scales earlier allows Haruo to resist, but Yuko loses control of her craft until Haruo can save her.

 

Still, this is where Haruo realizes that it is not worth it to become a monster just to defeat one. His options are fusing with the nanometal to be able to kamikaze run into Godzilla and destroy him or follow Metphies’ advice to destroy Galu-gu and the City control center. Though I have voiced major criticism with the arc, this is Haruo’s arc in the movie, and it should make the next movie’s conflict impossible based on Haruo choosing his humanity, but we’ll get there. He does agonize over it in the moment though. Changes in body awareness is one of the weird psychoactive properties of PCP use that is hard to fit into any reading of media except insofar as merging with the nanometal changes the boundaries of your body and mind. That is all that we can use to describe that here really. Oh, and Yuko winds up in a nanometal induced coma, another side effect of PCP that we have not gotten to yet. This movie gives us a bingo.

 

The morality has also shifted in a notable way. For probably the first time in this series, we are meant to view Godzilla destroying a City as the lesser of two evils. While Godzilla was explicitly evil in the first film of the trilogy, he is a more amoral figure in the latter two. That is why it is so interesting to compare it to Attack on Titan. Armin, the wisest of the main trio, tells Eren that they have to let go of their humanity to defeat the Titans, and boy does Eren listen? But the point is that there is likely a point where you will stop agreeing with Eren. According to this film and most that try to tackle the problem of losing humanity to defeat an inhuman threat, that point is at the adoption of the belief not its fruits. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

In the kaiju genre as a whole, the audience has a certain level of detachment that allows them to condone certain operations. It is not just that it is an underdog military going up against an inhuman threat, though that certainly helps, but the audience also can quickly accept and move on from a plot point wherein the government severely raises taxes to build an anti-Godzilla mech that promptly gets destroyed. In the real world, there would be outrage for that. Not so for the kaiju audience. One question Attack on Titan asks you is how much will you reconsider the blank check you grant the heroes striking back at their Titan oppressors when there is a civilian cost or when they are using those same tactics against humans? Unlike this trilogy, where you are watching a rudimentary morality play, your introspection is part of the conversation within Attack on Titan.

 

That will be all for this upload. We will cover the third film at a later date. In the meantime, please watch Attack on Titan and the anime trilogy so that I have not spoiled everything for you.