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).

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.

Godzilla’s Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP, Part One

 

By Joe Gibson

 

The following is the first 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

 

Hi. Welcome back to Plan9Crunch. I am Joe Gibson.

In all my time talking about Godzilla here, I have been quite open about my disdain for Polygon’s Godzilla anime trilogy. In the deepest part of my being, I know these movies to be terrible and among the worst the franchise has to offer, and I have never really given myself the opportunity to lay out my best arguments for that case. However, even now I don’t really want to do that. Let’s set aside how that is poisoning the well to the audience about experiencing what is perhaps the most niche sector of this franchise that still involves feature films; it is just not that interesting to me to try to tear down a trilogy without some nuanced gimmick. I have also grown to appreciate these films in their own way. The design for Godzilla Earth, while slow, immobile and barely qualifying as something that only animation could create, is actually probably one of my top ten designs for Godzilla. I just think it’s neat with some sleek muscle patterns and a very meme-able face.

 

I also have a warped kind of nostalgia for these films because I was there following along with the updates before the films came out, catching every new report about what the first Godzilla anime would be like. I witnessed when the officially reported title for the first film changed from Godzilla: Monster Planet to Godzilla: Planet Of The Monsters, and I was there when we got early translations for what would eventually become City On The Edge Of Battle as Mobile Battle Breeder City. In both cases, the earlier title was technically more accurate to the film than the later, but that’s not the point. I have experienced both hype and letdown with this trilogy, and I’m really not that devoted to trashing on it outside of throwaway jabs and tangents in other videos. That said, I still think the trilogy deserves a slightly negative video essay exploring some of my issues with it. One common critique of the trilogy is how derivative it seems of Attack on Titan, and, don’t worry, I’ll unpack what all that means in a second, but the discussion I want to create here is that the Godzilla Anime Trilogy is very much like AOT but far less mature in its storytelling and implementation of themes.

 

And this is important to note. Even though I am using Attack On Titan as the positive example by comparison, my criticisms will not simply be “this is not what Attack on Titan did so it is bad.” That wouldn’t really make much sense. This trilogy never had a chance of doing exactly what Attack On Titan did because the manga was still ongoing when this trilogy was in production. Heck, this trilogy managed to preemptively include a plot point from AOT before AOT’s manga even got around to that (I’ll explain that when it comes up later), so if that were my metric, rest assured it wouldn’t be an unfair hindrance to these films.

 

So how else do I frame this comparison if not “living up to a source material.” Well, have you ever heard the expression that X thing is like Y thing on crack, as in crack cocaine, the drug? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. Essentially, it is a comparative tool wherein I acknowledge base level similarity but through the lens of hyperactive, frenetic or melodramatic exaggeration of certain elements. The problem is that it does not really work in this instance. Though undeniably similar, as we will get to, the anime trilogy is a lot more subdued and restrained than the comparative high energy battle anime of AOT. Okay so then it was all about finding a different drug with the desired exaggerations from AOT’s tone, and that was difficult to find with an innocuous google search term. But eventually I settled on PCP, so please indulge me as I run through the side effects of PCP we’ll want to keep in mind. This part of the video is technically a drug abuse PSA, so if the YouTube algorithm suppresses this video, well I shouldn’t finish that thought. On that note though, this essay will discuss topics pertaining to drug abuse obviously but also depression and suicide, so viewer discretion is advised.

 

   

 

Phencyclidine, known for the purposes of this essay as PCP or Angel Dust, is a hallucinogenic and dissociative drug that can lead to many side effects but especially lethargy, disorientation, hallucinations, sense of detachment, lack of concentration, loss of coordination, agitation, bizarre behavior, a dangerously inflated sense of strength and invulnerability, memory loss and unconsciousness. I am getting this information from Americanaddictioncenters.org. The image you see on your screen is from The Carolina Center recovery .com and adds suicidality and coma to this list. So, basically, the methodology of this exercise is to pinpoint how the anime trilogy expresses its themes about humanity and see if the tone registers with a certain disorientation and sense of detachment or lack of concentration or if the choreography entails a sense of lethargy and relies on unconscious hallucinations or if the ways characters act are informed by the side effects of dissociative drugs instead of rational acting. If the lead for example demonstrates violent suicidal behavior, delusions of grandeur, a sense of detachment from his life, stupor and notable memory loss, then there you go. I think it is a fair criticism to say “the emotional maturity of this series is akin to that of someone addicted to PCP.” Ah yes and the ways people abuse PCP are plenty: it can be a white powder, a yellow liquid, a tablet, eye drops, an injection or in a cigar. So very adaptable and I think ultimately very fair to use for such a sweeping analysis.  In any case, let us proceed to some background information on the trilogy itself so we can actually begin the analysis proper.

 

 

Between 2017 and 2019, Netflix released three Godzilla anime films. Animated by Polygon Pictures, these were to be Godzilla’s first official feature film foray into animation, though as I understand it the 2021 Netflix series Godzilla Singular Point went into production first. Recently, I have heard commentators posit that the trilogy is not really that good of a demonstration to anime fans what Godzilla represents nor to Godzilla fans what anime entails, and that is largely because the style of animation was a costly 3DCG that simulates live action but resulted in a very sluggish Godzilla with very little screentime. So a limitation of the technology, same as the goofy suits between 1955 and 1975. Also a very experimental format that settled the uncanny valley in regards to how tokusatsu and anime are usually shot. (Consider the way this distorts our sensory perceptions of the ways characters can move and their body awareness.)

 

The premise is equally uncanny between old and new, traditional and experimental. Giant monsters have pushed the remains of humanity into one cramped area (that’s the Attack On Titan part), but it is to the spaceship Aratrum, and, while humanity is in space for 20 years before they decide to come back, 20,000 years have passed on Earth. The Xilien and Simeon aliens from the Showa series are back but as members of this defeated coalition, as their plans to defeat the monsters have failed. Also, it is best to get to this out of the way now, the Xiliens became the Aryan Exif aliens, and the space monkey Simeons became the dark skinned humanoid Bilusaludo aliens. This is not a Critical Race Theory Essay, so I’m not going to read too deep into that except to say they act more like deconstructions of fantasy elves and dwarves than they do real world stereotypes. The lead character is Captain Haruo Sakaki, and you can recognize his first name from the original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima and his fierce and petulant anger from Attack on Titan’s protagonist Eren Jaeger, but, as you will soon find out, there is a lot more to talk about this trilogy as a whole than what just came before. Still, maybe I should expand on that history first.

 

 

Running between 2009 and 2021, Attack On Titan, originally called Shingeki no Kyojin, is a very popular manga and eventually anime series by Hajime Isayama. The basic premise there is that man-eating ogres called Titans have forced the remnants of humanity that they have not already killed into German towns housed within three massive walls, and everything appears to be somewhere between medieval times and the 1800s, though the title of episode one clarifies that 2000 years of history are relevant to this world. Within the desperate struggle to survive, one teenager is angry enough to try and fight all of the Titans to reclaim his world. That is Eren Jaeger, and his best friends Mikasa and Armin seem skilled and smart enough respectively to help him achieve his goal if they and their allies can survive long enough to see it through. I am trying not to spoil too much…Yet, but that is roughly what you will need to understand going into the first few arcs of AOT. After that point, twists and turns abound with realistic government corruption, dangerous political intrigue, betrayals, doomed love, and a final stretch that decodes the subtext of the Titans and lays bare as text what the whole story was really about the whole time. I think it is really a masterclass and an amazing political thought experiment while delivering on amazing fight scenes. Not everyone sees it that way, and, fair enough, Attack on Titan is not on trial today. Maybe you will prefer the approach of the trilogy. With all this context out of the way, let us begin.

 

So the title is Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, what if I call it–

 

GODZILLA: Planet of PCP

 

In this film, Haruo is the driver on the mission to return to Earth. Put as simply as possible, he comes up with a battle strategy that could have defeated Godzilla in the past that motivates his human, Exif and Bilusaludo allies to help him test it out.

 

Haruo is very clearly an Eren expy because of his tragic backstory and how that shapes him into an angry yet cunning and charismatic leader among his equals. Eren always wanted to fight for his freedom even when he was a child, but, in episode one, we are there with him when Titans breach Wall Maria and eat his mother in front of him, and, from that point on, we empathize with him and understand why he takes military training so seriously and how he inspires the other cadets in the battle of Trost. Even though Haruo also witnessed Godzilla killing his parents, traumatizing him as a child, the introduction we as the audience get to him is not that, but we see him attempting suicide terrorism, threatening him to blow himself up in an effort to prevent their scout ship from leaving to a nearby prospective planet.

 

Okay there is actually more to it than just that. Haruo justifies his dissidence by giving a fair argument that the central council is knowingly sacrificing the elderly people aboard the ship just to make sure there are less mouths to feed. This is driven by necessity with willing participants as we find out but still represents an inability of the existing governmental structure to take care of its people. This plot point of sending the elderly on a mission outside of the walls also appears in AOT, and it was the first of many scenes showing a logical but terrible human cost to survival, raising the question of if it is worth it. The trilogy does not have the same time or space as a four season show, but this, as the introduction to this question, is sufficient and snappy. Haruo is vindicated as the scout ship explodes, and he is remanded into military custody. And then we learn his backstory. But why, oh why did they choose to write it this way?

 

PCP is not the reason this trilogy is the way it is (that’s post hoc wishful thinking); Gen Urobuchi was the writer, and Kobun Shizuno and Hiroyuki Seshita codirected. As I understand from post-mortem interviews after the fact, Gen Urobuchi is to blame for the nihilism on display, Seshita brought an enthusiasm for using the Godzilla IP and its staples to bring in a new audience, and Shizuno had no prior knowledge of Godzilla and adjusted the other two men’s suggestions into new trajectories. So stuff like the technology obsession and worship migrating from the Xiliens to the Bilusaludo is more likely an inconsistent reference changed by Shizuno than the work of Seshita or Urobuchi, and, well from Gamera Rebirth, we know that the details of Void Ghidorah were precious enough to Seshita to retrofit onto Viras though with a more weighty flesh and blood fight. So all this to say that yes, a trio where one man is writing a depressing treatise on nihilism with franchise references, another guy loves the franchise and wants to expand the audience, and the third guy has no clue of the first thing in the franchise and shoots down or warps the other two guys’ suggestions is absolutely a scenario that fits the PCP abuse side effects of lack of concentration, sense of detachment, and memory loss in a very unique way that I hope you can appreciate.

 

In Attack On Titan, despite being the protagonist through the entire run and the main character by runtime for the first three seasons, Eren is not the narrator; his friend Armin is. And immediately that works into the themes and tone the show is portraying. Armin, as a character, has an unparalleled hope for the future, and framing Eren through his narration allows for us to see a great range of Eren’s emotional capacity. In Planet of The Monsters, Haruo gives the narration of the backstory of the monsters and fall of humanity, and, again, the way that we explore these events are through his perception and worldview, so very angry and bitter. He has characters to balance out his extremism, but the script does not elevate them to major characters until the sequel.

 

It kills me that right after Haruo’s failed suicide terrorism, almost every shot has warm hues cast over it and lights going in and out of focus that make it hard to focus on what we are seeing, but when he literally narrates that he still remembers the flames from Godzilla’s destruction, the shot is the clearest blue it could possibly be. And yes uh I bet you didn’t expect so early to find a match for the blurred vision and dizziness PCP symptoms, but yeah. I didn’t even draw too much attention to those, but already the film is playing along with me here. 

 

Okay, this whole visual element is actually very odd because the characters make a point of space and the Aratrum being functionally a frozen hell. The planet they are seeking, Tau-e, is warm, so it is more interesting to look at complicated shots that incorporate both, but the juxtaposition would be better served if Earth wasn't also blue and Mechagodzilla City also a dead and sterile environment.

 

Okay back to the guiding narration. I actually am a proponent of telling and not showing a good deal of the time. There simply is not enough time in a movie to show everything you need to get across to the audience, especially in diegetic ramblings. I mean that more in the regards to “kaiju started appearing in the late 1990s, Godzilla came last and was unstoppable by human or monster, then the aliens came and also failed to stop him, then the survivors evacuated.” Haruo has a very personal connection to Godzilla that takes a more show don't tell approach, but the majority of information in this flashback has to be told. Still, I do criticize Haruo's moment with Godzilla because I think it could have communicated its point better overall, and actually Attack on Titan does that plot point better so we can look at that again.

 

When it comes to Godzilla's emotions and intent, he is often ambiguous especially now that we don't have the benefit of a human acting in his suit. It is very difficult to understand Shin Godzilla's motivations just looking at him moving forward and spewing beams. Actually ironically enough, that movie has to tell us through the nondiegetic lyrics of Who Will Know what is going through his head. That's not a critique of Shin Godzilla, just evidence of my point. The Godzilla in Minus One is much more easily understandable because you can see his rage when he steps on people, tears through buildings and tries to bite the Shinden. The tooth and nail destruction Godzilla does in the original film is the most visceral, and the crocodile melee crawl and slashing of Kong he does in GvK sticks with you as much as his best atomic breath finishers do.

 

 

Eren Jaeger has to witness a very disturbing Smiling Titan eat his mother, and Haruo has to witness Godzilla shoot down a transport that also contains his parents. This is not a measuring contest, but let us compare for a moment how hard of a punch that packs. Eren is ripped away from the rubble of his home, dragged as he tries to go back and save his mother, while Haruo is at a much safer distance, dragged and unable to go back for a necklace while we don’t even see his parents die. Yes, there is such a thing as subtlety (we’ll actually soon get to why I don’t think this trilogy understands it as well as AOT), but this is supposed to motivate us to follow Haruo on his journey because of our attachment to revenge for what Godzilla did to him. It would be a small change but admittedly might balloon the budget because of this art style to have Godzilla actually crush Haruo’s parents and then we see how Yuko’s grandfather saved him so that his death on the emigration shuttle a scene ago now retroactively carries more weight. This is a minor point; let’s carry on.

 

Haruo finishes his recap monologue by asking variations of the same question why. Why are they still alive? Why did this happen to them? And those are what we will have to examine throughout the film, but he also states that kindness and pride are gone in this Aratrum culture. For one thing, the film will later prove him wrong on the kindness part, and he very clearly is prideful by thinking he is the only one who can or wants to draft a plan to defeat Godzilla, but genuinely having thought about this, I think the only reason he said that is so we can have the immediate juxtaposition to Metphies being nice to Haruo and think ‘maybe this guy is manipulating him,’ Metphies of course being derived from Mephistopheles and being the main Exif character and I guess priest in their religion who offers forgiveness rites to prisoners. 

 

The way that this trilogy builds up to plot twists in comparison to Attack on Titan is a lot more simple. “What if the character that is high up in a cult and literally gives Haruo information about the past while lying to the council is lying to and manipulating Haruo’s psyche and memories?” is one such example. Also, let’s have Haruo ask if the reason this happened to them is that it was an inevitable punishment for humanity but he then says no and that it is because they did not give it their all against Godzilla so that when the trilogy ends and they all failed to kill Godzilla again, the only other option on the table is that it was punishment for humanity and their technology when Godzilla, especially one that is made of plant life, could come from anywhere for any reason.

 

Again I do not want to just say “well this isn’t Attack on Titan so it’s bad.” It is just inviting comparison by ripping off Attack on Titan and then self aggrandizing over its themes and foreshadowing even while it strips down the amount of characterization and action that went hand in hand with AOT’s reveals. 

 

Haruo releases his manifesto/Godzilla battle plan, and it is important enough for the council to discuss it amongst their bleak survival possibilities because everyone on the ship is reading it. Earlier, Haruo broadcast his terroristic opposition to the Tau-e emigration to the entire ship. And this matches how especially pre Trost in Attack on Titan season one, Eren was very charismatic, setting a standard for grit and determination that inspired the other cadets…notably before he had to watch some of them die too. Eren ends up questioning himself a lot after that, but the point that I am making here is that we are entirely replacing the other cadets seeing Eren barely manage to balance in a training ODM gear rig and then realizing that it was busted, and he actually did something more impressive than any of them, we’re replacing that with broadcasts and an anonymous battle plan.

 

Still, this is when the film actually begins to introduce us to more characters. Uh, Colonel Leland, Dr. Martin Lazzari and Adam Bindewald are all white blonde humans with the major design differences being their hair style. Leland we’ll put a pin in since he’s actually my favorite character in this whole trilogy, Adam winds up in Metphies’ religion though in this introductory scene he is very cynical about how quote “the ship leaders turn to the gods, as usual,” and Martin will give exposition about nature but also becomes anti religion once Gen Urobuchi decides Adam isn’t I guess. We have had several shots of Yuko Tani reacting to things, and Metphies has a conversation with one of the Bilusaludo Mulu-elu Galu-gu, which reveals they are on the same page about using Haruo’s research paper to undermine the committee and return to Earth. As the flashback briefly showed, Galu-gu was behind the failed Mechagodzilla project, and Metphies speculates that, had it worked, Mechagodzilla would have then subjugated humanity after Galu-gu insinuates that that was the purpose and aim of the Exif’s cult.

 

Adam’s friend Marco sits with some other characters, who voice an earnest wish to see the real Earth and see the ocean, and if you have experienced Attack on Titan, particularly season 3, you will have in your head how this story would be able to leverage so efficiently two characters talking about wanting to experience the sea. It is the dream that Eren and Armin share but gradually begins to take on a different meaning for each of them. Here, a bunch of nameless extras gather around and instantly see the blue ocean, gazing at how beautiful and blue it is when the ship that was their hell is the same dull blue. Haruo even has his moment of angrily staring at the sea and only seeing their enemy when Attack on Titan used these same pieces to paint a much more poignant picture. 

 

But again this is not about Attack on Titan; it is about how this trilogy’s immaturity seems to manifest as a diluted Attack on Titan. The focus of the scene is on scout drones scanning the new Earth and finding Godzilla. Earlier, Eren’s charisma was replaced by Haruo utilizing technology, and his strategy for defeating Godzilla hinges on details he can only find out through Metphies’ technology and the Gematron calculator, so it is official, that as a motif, this trilogy is diverting from more personal human connection and ingenuity into using technology, so let us put a pin in that.

 

The Captain of the vessel, Unberto Mori realizes with horror that although thousands of years have passed and the terrain has changed, Godzilla still remains on the planet in some form. Haruo also realizes this somehow, but he does not have the benefit of Martin Lazzari’s dissertation to the council on how Godzilla cannot be considered a normal living creature and thus any number of explanations could explain why at least one remains. Metphies pushes for the extermination of Godzilla and negotiates dropping the charges on Haruo, and now Haruo is in front of the committee explaining his plan as good diegetic exposition…until it dips into literal “As You Know” dialogue and I am reminded of my feelings for the trilogy. Mori opposes the plan because it will cost lives, and he does not want to risk the 600 people Haruo needs (Deputy Director Hamamoto also declares it out of the question). Somehow, Haruo gets his way anyway, and I really am not sure of the cause and effect that got us to this point from one scene ago. The council members were discussing how it would drastically affect public perception of them if they were unable to land on Earth, and we never saw Mori too torn up about sacrificing the elderly to Tau-e (even if he did not think that would happen, the calculations given in the film still revealed it was not an optimally safe planet). Unless the Exif and Bilusaludo came together to strongarm the literal captain of their ship, there is really not sufficient justification for Mori to immediately reverse his stance, but we know that isn’t true because somehow human Colonel Elliot Leland becomes commander of the Earth Landing Brigade and not Metphies or Galu-gu.

 

 

Leland is a very different character than Commander Erwin Smith from Attack on Titan, but they share a voice actor, hair color, insubordination to the government and willingness to put their own life on the line in these risky military maneuvers, so the inspiration is evident. Leland’s selfishness is on display sooner, as he claims that defeating Godzilla will appoint a new era for him as a pampered hero, a much more shallow and stock secret motivation than wanting proof that more is outside the walls in order to vindicate your father’s secret theory that you feel a lot of guilt for outing to the government as a child. That contained some spoilers for Erwin, I am sorry, but we are already exposing both the official and hidden motivations for Leland in his first scene, a hallmark of great writing. Where Leland comes into his own as the most dynamic character of the movie though is his past with Haruo. They are childhood friends, and, since Haruo is the criminal on bail that they are technically following in this mission, Leland has to weigh following chain of command against listening to his friend.

 

I am not sure if this is from lack of subtlety in the storytelling, inability to read finer emotions in the art style or to further show Metphies’ manipulation of Haruo’s emotions, but he feels the need to say outright that Haruo is still angry even though he is getting his goal. Haruo responds that he is unsure if everything will go to plan, and Metphies repeats a line from Leland about trusting in a hero, but Metphies says that the hero he trusts in is Haruo. Now, again I mentioned how Eren was singularly confident in himself before he faced any real opposition from the Titans. Haruo said earlier that kindness and pride are dead, so this would almost further that except that his ego clearly informed his terrorism attempt and his confidence in writing, updating regularly and presenting his paper to the leaders of the ship. Heck, forget all that, Leland is Haruo’s childhood friend and is as proud as ever. True, we are only seeing him now after they are within Earth’s orbit, but he had to have this belief to choose to be commander of this mission, and if he was a child same as Haruo when they entered this ship but became his superior, he needed his same motivation to achieve his rank. In any case, it is just strange that Metphies has to elicit in Haruo what his archetype already bore from the beginning, and Metphies’s AOT analog and actual role in this story is a foil to Haruo/Eren.

 

When the party lands, they unload their mechs, traps and command centers to begin their plan. I do not think it productive to give an exact play by play of the conversation between the characters, but Martin slots into the Zoe Hange role from AOT, and Yuko Tani becomes Haruo’s official handler 38 minutes into the film as a scout team goes out, at which point they realize how different the flora/fauna have become. Leaves are sharper than razors, and a masked humanoid watches the operation from the razor bushes. Yuko now explains her motivation; she joined this operation because Haruo was here. She always wanted to meet him and is curious if the central committee used his bombs to destroy the Tau-e shuttle. Haruo shuts this down, stating that he does not want to be so judgmental of humans, but this is against his own philosophy expressed through the opening scene and then the narration of the committee sacrificing them and kindness being dead. Yuko’s grandfather is who saved Haruo as a child and talked him down from his terrorism attempt, so maybe there was a double meaning to his “kindness is dead” remark that he could rediscover in Yuko, but that would be if the trilogy cared about Yuko outside of her obsession with Haruo, which is not likely because instead Haruo blames Godzilla for taking away justice, pride and faith. He says that fighting Godzilla again can take back that dignity, but clearly they never lost pride or faith through Leland and Metphies but also they have a working justice system as he got court martialed for terrorism. This primes us for a story where he realizes they still have humanity, exemplified through Yuko, but she will entirely orbit his character and eventually get fridged to make room for other characters.

 

 

Okay so the three leads of Attack On Titan are Eren Jaeger, Armin Arlert and Mikasa Ackerman. Mikasa is another childhood friend of Eren who the Jaegers took in after human traffickers killed her parents, and the moment when Eren saved her by killing one of the traffickers and then wrapped his scarf around her awoke something in her that indebted her to Eren. This also manifests as romantic feelings as the cast goes from ten years old to mid teens to young adults over the show. Mikasa bears a strength that Eren never gets though, and she has to save him as often as he saves her. Mikasa is the least developed of the three main characters, but she still grows a lot in her outlook, and she winds up the deciding factor of many of the action scenes in the show. Eren, Mikasa and Armin balance each other, and this trilogy took Armin out entirely and relegated Mikasa to a weak damsel that completely loses agency midway through the story. I feel the need to reiterate that Attack On Titan is not the only way to tell a story of this scale, but legitimately, as I think you will come to see, this trilogy is the kind of story where failing the Bechdel test legitimately does make it is somewhat misogynistic, and Mikasa is an example of a well written character that is still obsessed with the main hero that they chose to deviate from because their inspiration was clearly AOT.

 

The party stumbles upon the ruins of some buildings that have almost transformed into the Earth. As Martin explains, lichen attached itself to the buildings’ rubble and fossilized, with further flora growing on top of that. Haruo loses his balance, a symptom of PCP addiction, nah kidding he intentionally drops to his knees, and declares, as the music swells that “Although we’ve forgotten, this planet has always remembered us,” and that they must take it back. This is a very effective emotional moment, but we have to actually examine what happened here because Haruo is wrong and that is part of the point of this whole trilogy. As we learn in scenes before and after this one, the florafauna of the Earth changed while they were gone. 

 

Leaves are stronger than steel, and the native animals are just as strong but seem like offshoots of Godzilla; these Servum as they are called attack the base camp, and this batch is winged but there are also terrestrial ones later. The metallic and magnetic properties of the Servum and the plants are in common with Godzilla, and the trilogy later confirms it is not Godzilla’s doing but natural mimicry across nature. So nature has absorbed the humans’ buildings, yes, but did so to become Godzilla. There is an old poster that came out before we knew much about what the 2014 film would entail, I believe it was a Comic Con exclusive, and it showed building rubble coalescing into an effigy of Godzilla. It equates Godzilla with destruction and dominion over what he has destroyed. A Monster-Planet (now you can see why I said that title made more sense) growing over the remains of humanity is a win condition for Godzilla not an inspiring moment for humanity. Haruo is of course allowed to be wrong, he’ll be wrong a lot, it just is important to note that as often as it happens.

 

Leland listens to Martin’s explanation of the florafauna and comes to the reasonable conclusion that they need to retreat, saying it would be the height of stupidity to fight Godzilla for a planet like this. Haruo has an emotional attachment obviously to staying but he gets so angry at this that he literally attacks his good friend Leland, pinning him up against the wall. Haruo confronts Leland on abandoning his goal of being humanity’s hero by taking down Godzilla, and Leland, again correctly, explains that they have already taken heavy losses, their manpower is not trained in fighting, and he frankly underestimated the mission. Now, since Leland is now abdicating the “hero of humanity” title, and Metphies applied it to Haruo’s holy mission, we can fairly expect it to be Haruo that this journey immortalizes into some kind of legend (we’ll get there) and not Leland. Now notably, Metphies followed these two when they ran off, so he is able to manipulate Leland by saying he agrees with him, but the Servum damaged their equipment so they cannot leave. Metphies keeps going, explaining that the only plan for retreat they even have is pretty much verbatim the choreography of Haruo’s attack plan. Later, Metphies tells Haruo that he knows that Godzilla will not let them escape and will seek them out.

 

There’re certainly things to appraise as well or poorly written in this trilogy, and that’s not my focus here. The movie has been functionally speaking good so far. Haruo is not going to have an arc until the next film, the side characters are more of a Greek chorus than individuals, and the specific details built up in this movie are going to destroy some plot points of the later films, but, so far, nothing has contradicted itself, and I think Leland’s arc ground this film pretty well. Still, now Godzilla shows up, and we have another point of comparison to AOT.

 

Eren Jaeger winds up in military custody after his actions in the Battle of Trost, and, after a trial, Captain Levi becomes Eren’s official handler, Levi being humanity’s strongest soldier, a very dynamic role that toes the line between mentor and main cast member. Levi’s deal is that he is so strong and skilled that eventually he has to watch everyone around him die. His “Levi Squad” consists of very skilled handpicked soldiers, and, on a mission outside of the walls midway through season one, they are responsible for protecting Eren. Now, at that point, an intelligent 15 meter Titan starts hunting after Eren, and Levi Squad races through a wooded area as this huge Titan follows them. Levi Squad begs Eren to trust them and not go off and fight the Titan by himself. Eventually, Levi Squad has to fight this Titan because the plan did not work, and Eren chooses to believe in them. Levi tells him that, after all of these missions, he does not know which is the correct option, if he should trust in his comrades or in himself. Levi tells Eren to “do as his conscious dictates,” and then Eren watches this intelligent Titan systematically kill the other soldiers in Levi Squad, and then Eren fights the Titan himself. That scene is so crucial to the entire show and Eren’s development, and Planet of the Monsters has a scene so similar I think the inspiration is clear. (Just so you know that the reference is possible, you should know this movie came out in 2017, and season one dropped in 2013, so yeah they had time to copy this part.)

 

When Godzilla appears, it is in a wooded area where he poses a big danger to their convoy. Even though by all accounts, Yuko is Haruo’s official handler, Metphies has control over Hauro’s handcuffs and releases him. Specifically, Metphies says the words, “Do as your soul is crying out to do,” and Haruo races off on a speeder to fight Godzilla. In this case, he wants to record Godzilla’s force field pattern, which is crucial to his annihilation strategy, but all of the speeder’s attacks are too light so he preps a kamikaze run. This is at the beginning of Haruo’s journey, and it would be rather embarrassing if this exact visual becomes the wrap-around to the end of his arc, but I digress. Delusions of grandeur and inflated strength as well as violent suicidal actions are side effects of PCP use. Taking a scene that was so complex and driven by the strong personalities of a large cast and turning it into Haruo distracting Godzilla to selfishly advance his plan while killing himself is just so weird to see as a consumer of both pieces of media.

 

The only reason Haruo does not go through with it is because Leland commandeers some heavier artillery to get Godzilla’s attention, and Godzilla returns fire, killing Leland. As I am rewatching and reviewing this, I am realizing that this film is rather light on Leland, and this is not a case where he has a top 10 or even top 20 character arc in this franchise, but I gravitated toward him because his is the only character arc in the film, he is a well-intentioned and level headed character, and the conflict between his ideals and Haruo’s is actually very interesting in a movie where the only other main character is Metphies, who just agrees with Haruo. I like Leland because he had a simple arc of choosing between his military role or his childhood friend, that is to say choosing between what is best for humanity and his childish goal of being the ultimate hero, and it always felt to me watching this movie that there was a complexity to his choices instead of just vague confused writing that I see in the trilogy as a whole. He died to save another soldier, but that soldier was specifically Haruo, and, in so doing, he helped Haruo get the data he needed for the plan Leland at least professionally opposed (but Leland must have been on board enough to initially take the mission).

 

Metphies immediately defers leadership to Haruo, which confirms they will do his plan. Despite there being an entire chain of command composed of a coalition of three humanoid species, Haruo’s acceptance speech is enough to convince everybody there not to mutiny and instead follow him to their certain death fighting Godzilla. Again, AOT being a good show is not really relevant to this point, but this specific plot point made a lot more sense when it was cadet Eren Jaeger who finished top 10 of his training year inspiring other cadets, one of which was Armin, in the lead-up to the Battle of Trost. There is no reason that Adam Bindewald, Belu-be, Galu-gu and Martin should all listen to Haruo, and we cannot argue that the earlier scenes of Haruo not being confident in this mission means he had an arc because he was willing to ask the entire ship to implement this plan anonymously and then also presented it to the central committee. Nothing changed in Haruo from the beginning even though his friend died saving him from recklessly carrying out this plan. The Servum swarm also poses a major roadbloack in operational security.

 

Godzilla’s part of the battle is looking around and firing his beam. Throughout the entire trilogy, Godzilla will be very sluggish and lethargic, another symptom of PCP we haven’t covered yet, and believe me it is actually very notable how lethargic this Godzilla is. During Leland’s death, Haruo’s attacks were not hard enough to register on Godzilla’s force field, and yet after sustaining those, a volley of shots from Leland that did register on the force field and shooting one atomic breath at Leland, Godzilla was spent and retreated instead of finishing off the people Metphies was so sure he would not let escape. This is not even a case like in Minus One where using the beam hurts him. He got so tired from doing nothing that he had to retreat. And Godzilla will spend most of film 2 and like half of film 3 sleeping, actually Godzilla has spent most of this film sleeping, and you’ll find out soon enough how I can say that so confidently.

 

After a battle where Godzilla can barely register how fast (comparatively) the machinery around him is moving, Godzilla explodes. Now this still required Haruo risking his life, but it kind of screwed with the stakes because no one saved Haruo, he just managed to survive the guns shooting on his power suit like there was no tomorrow. Okay so Godzilla just died, and we’ve got 14 more minutes and then two more movies. Martin starts talking to Haruo, because Martin is the exposition guy as I am sure you remember, about how biologically the Godzilla they just killed is unlikely to be the real capital G Godzilla let’s say because nature always changes. And yeah that wasn’t the Godzilla this trilogy bears in its title. That 50 meter creature was Godzilla Filius, and the original Godzilla now wakes up, demolishing the mountain he was sleeping under because he is 300 meters tall and has a beard. Okay so anyway he issues a super oscillatory wave out of his mouth and creates a huge shockwave from whipping his tail, and that destroys at least the vehicle Haruo was in, knocking him out. 

 

 

It is difficult to actually use the built in stopping points of these films for one thing because it is meant as one big story but also because the novel adaptations literally chopped the second film in half in order to make the whole story just two books.

Even so, we will stop here for now. The video upload (Godzilla's Anime Trilogy: Attack On Titan On PCP) of this still wound up at an hour and thirty seven minutes (the whole thing was 15,000 words), and I invite you to watch the video while you wait for the next part of the transcript. Also, watch Attack on Titan in the meantime, as the next parts will significantly spoil several plot points.