I kinda knew this was going to happen.
After Singular Point had hit a multiple episode hot streak thanks to the belated arrival of Godzilla himself, I had a sinking feeling that at some point, the show was going to have to pump the brakes as the story hurtled into its final three episodes. This is hardly a rarity in tv shows as a late-in-the-season pause usually acts as a deep breath before we plunge into the final act, but not every show has the sheer amount of unused characters and scientific exposition that Singular Point has; and so with a handful of episodes to go, it’s very much a case of taking several steps forward and one Godzilla-sized stride back.
So strap in as Mei, Yun and a whole bunch of background characters finally get a chance to get super chatty when all we really want to do is watch Godzilla punch over yet another building. Oh, well – se la vie, I suppose.
Godzilla is still radically remodeling Tokyo while the red dust continues to get ever thicker and it seems that not even other Kaiju have the power to slow his roll as he obliterates an attacking Manda with barely a pause for thought.
Menwhile, Yun and Haberu arrive at Misakioku only to find that Kai (remember him?) and a bunch of heavily armed men have removed the giant, Kaiju skeleton from the facility and is preparing to transport it out for obviously sinister reasons. While Yun argues that both Godzilla and the skeleton are both seperate Singular Points, they are connected within another dimension and thus must both be destroyed in order to save the Earth. Kai, ever the shifty reporter/spy/whatever, sneers at the news and takes the skeleton anyway, so our two heroes continue on their way preparing Jet Jaguar to fight Godzilla.
Meanwhile, at the SHIVA facility in India, BB shows Mei the time warping super computer they’re building that will be powered by yet another Singlar Point that’s being slowly raised from miles beneath the earth and reveals that he’s sympathetic to Mei’s fears about the upcoming Catastrophe. Turning on his disbelieving comrades and having all the Orthogonal Diagonalyzers shipped out to mystery destinations, BB and his daughter race to get Mei out if the facility and run into Kai – who apparently also works for the Shiva consortium.
Back with the guys from Otaki Factory and they find that Jet Jaguar is now upgrading itself at an impressive rate thanks to the hidden code located in the text messages sent between Mei and Yun. When the robot comes back on line, it reveals coordinates for a location somewhere in the sky above Tokyo – what further terrors are coming our way?
Over the years, Godzilla has vanquished many an opponent, proving to be simply too big and powerful to be overwhelmed by such antagonists as three-headed dragons, robot doubles and a cyborg chicken, however, with Episode 11, he’s run up against a foe he can barely put a dent in: super dense exposition.
For a plot as needlessly complicated as Singular Point’s, this kind of episode was inevitable, as all the sprawling characters and their individual missions would eventually need to be corralled in order to finally become a cohesive whole – but that’s part of the problem, because I don’t think the things that occur here are part of a cohesive whole. You see, having such shady characters such as the extravagantly quiffed Kai suddenly rise to prominence doesn’t feel so much as prep for the finale as it does prep for a second season, which means that a large chunk of the episode technically isn’t even relevant.
Frustratingly, this is the exact thing I was initially worried about when the anime was first announced as it was the perfect medium to finally give us Kaiju battles unrestrained by the restrictions of having two sweaty guys wrasslin’ in chunky, rubber suits, or the budget required to offer up photo-real CGI. Maddeningly, Singular Point continues to insist that having two boffins rattling out scientific hokum at the rate of a speed metal drum solo is far more interesting than watching building sized monsters punch each other in the face. Yes, plot and characterization are important, but the show hasn’t really given us much of that, either, with Yun, Mei and the gang mostly being mouthpieces for endless theories that were as coherent as someone speaking in tongues.
With Rodans still in the skies, Mandas in the ocean, Salunga in India and Godzilla shearing skyscrapers in half in Tokyo, you’d hope that the show runners would have gifted us a clean, three episode run of monster madness, free of stifling exposition – Hell, even the movies knew that you have to free up the final reel for the juicy stuff – but Singular Point instead obliterates any and all momentum just to move its pieces around the board.
Still, it’s not all bad. Godzilla vs. Manda may be a squash match much in the same vein as that random Rodan attack an episode earlier, but it still looks damn impressive after the Big G settles his hash with a quick blast of his glowing, blue halitosis. Elsewhere, the continued upgrading of Jet Jaguar fuels hope that the show will end big and that his well documented upgrading may lead to spectacular things. But when it all comes to all the other dangling plot threads, I honestly can’t see them all being satisfyingly tied off with only two, twenty-five minute episodes to go, which only succeeds in pissing me off even more. How can the fact that the Shiva Consortium has wild-eyed Kaiju, Salunga, temporarily trapped above ground be such a minor point that he warrants absolutely no screen time whatsoever. Kaiju movies need space for their climaxes to move freely, otherwise too much cutting away just causes frustration in their audience and if your story hasn’t wrapped up at least twenty minutes before the end, your focus will be split when the good shit starts.
After a great run of about three or four episodes, the events of Relaunch brings up a very real concern that Singular Point may ultimately fail to stick its landing with way too much remaining unresolved as we head into a (hopefully) big finish. Can the writers plug that huge hole that’s causing such a large exposition leak, or will the show prove me wrong and actually make perfect sense by the time it all wraps up?
Either way, if Singular Point doesn’t rectify the mistakes made by the Netflix anime trilogy and nail its Kaiju to story ratio, what was even the point of all this – singular or otherwise?
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