Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla II (which is a title that blatantly makes no sense seeing as it’s a technically ser in a rebooted universe) is generally regarded as the Heisei eras crown jewel and after an objective viewing it’s kind of a tough point to argue. Where the previous movies in the series gleefully heaped on story point after story point, resulting in fun yet surprisingly dense plots, this film strips everything down to its leanest essence despite being similarly packed to the brim with brawling monsters and spiraling subplots.
Where the last couple of movies hurled time travelling terrorists, plant monsters with human souls, dragons reborn as cyborgs and giant battling moths at the wall in a gleeful attempt to see what sticks, this one still manages to present numerous plot threads but manages to channel them into one, lean, muscular story that moves at with the focus and velocity of a super-sonic pterodactyl.
In the aftermath of the battle with Mecha-King Ghidorah, scientist managed to reverse engineers his cyborg components and have built Mechagodzilla, the last word in Kaiju defence. Years later, a scientific expedition discovers a large egg on an island in the Bering Sea that gives off a telepathic signal which attracts the giant, irradiated pterodactyl known as Rodan who promptly adopts a cuckoo-type of relationship with it. However, these parental instincts are also beamed to the famously moody Godzilla who expresses his maternal instincts the only way he knows: by signing Rodan up for a Kaiju-sized ass-whupping. In the chaos, the scientists manage to spirit the egg away to Kyoto to study it where it hatches to reveal a baby Godzilla which sports the sleepy haggard eyes of a meth addicted serial killer. Luckily, instead of trying either meth or serial killing, it instead imprints on Azusa Gojo, a female scientist who studies it to find any weakness in it’s biology that could be used on it’s much larger, much angrier wannabe-parent.
However, before you can say “custody battle”, Godzilla shows up and starts rampaging through Kyoto (don’t you just hate new, entitled parents?) and the sleek, Mechagodzilla is launched into the fray, piloted by a crack team, while Garuda, an outmoded, flying battleship piloted by the amiably geeky Kazuma Aoki stays grounded leaving the nerd free to meet with Azusa and Baby.
Inevitably, both a revived Rodan and a Godzilla arrive to claim Baby like two divorced parents arriving on the same day to pick up their child up from school and the results are just as messy as you’d expect. Can Mechagodzilla break up this domestic from Hell before Japan pays the ultimate alimony?
Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla II seems to have a clarity of vision rarely seen in Kaiju movies where, not only are the monster and human plot threads directly linked but there seem to be actual, subtle themes present apart from the usual “man needs to stop dicking about with nature!”. For example, there’s an obvious case to be made for the notoriously dickish Godzilla mellowing out some due to his new parenting instincts focusing his rage purely onto his biological need to be drawn to the infant. In the past his gargantuan dummy spitting has been focused entirely on everything and everyone around him but here it’s unleashed either on Rodan, Baby Godzilla’s adoptive parent or the city where the infant is kept. It’s an interesting character switch in a film packed full of them; Mechagodzilla is no longer the blunt instrument of invading aliens and is now a good guy piloted by soft, squishy humans, while Rodan is taken back to his tragic roots and is a victim to the misfiring mothering instincts that has him constantly picking fights against far superior opponents. The result is that it adds more layers to a series – a whole genre in fact – that usually has an unfair reputation for its depths being puddle deep.
Continuing the winning trend of updating classic Godzilla Kaiju, we get a souped up Mecha-G that matches his nemesis’ 90s glow up with style. Where this era of Godzilla sports bulging pecs and tree trunk thighs (thicc is the term I’d use if I had a Kaiju kink), Mechagodzilla has a matching Olympian physique compared to the egg-shaped, dad-bod he rocked back in the 70s and the fact that he’s now piloted, Mega-Zord style, by an intrepid team of humans makes us more invested with his brawls than if he was puppeteers from afar. He also has the nifty ability to merge with the Garuda to create the intimidating Super Mechagodzilla, but to be honest, it’s just regular Mecha-G with a laser powered backpack… Elsewhere, we find that Rodan has also undergone a drastic makeover and of all the Kaiju that got a redesign during this period, his is the one that works the best as he’s now a full on, lithe prehistoric bird while his previous incarnation made him look as aerodynamic as a flung turd. Finally, the addition of a “Baby Godzilla” may set off alarm bells marked “cringe”, but the arrival of this Zilla infant dispels any lingering memories of Minilla as this lil’ lizard isn’t just here to entertain the kids, but is an integral part of the plot, stringing together both humans and Kaiju alike.
Toiling on his second Godzilla epic after Godzilla Vs. Mothra, director Takao Okawara keeps the human parts whippet lean and stages the multiple monster melees as epic, dramatic and surprisingly unpredictable affairs, that carries real emotional weight and features more last minute resurrections than the bible (but strangely, less then Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen). Despite first appearing relatively late on the Godzilla timeline, Mechagodzilla has always been considered one of Godzilla’s most powerful foes ever and even though he’s no longer being controlled by ape-faced E.T.s anymore (still my preferred version), he still holds his spot the Kaiju most likely to take his biological twin right to the limit as he comes closer to vanquishing the Big G than any of his towering peers.
The best entry into the 90’s string of ‘Zilla movies and therefore technically one of the best of all time, Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla II contains all the exciting, cool and craziness you’d come to expect from the radioactive breathing elder statesman of a long running genre but with a few extra tricks up his sleeve to make this movie linger longer after the credits roll than one of the King Of The Monster’s echoing roars.
Dõmõ Arigatõ, Monster roboto.
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