And so, on the cusp of its final episode, Godzilla: Singular Point finds itself teetering on the abyss of disaster after two whole episodes of momentum murdering exposition. Maybe this wouldn’t have been such a dire situation if there wasn’t so much slack to be picked up, but after episode 12 ended, it not only left the world on the verge of destruction with an unseen Godzilla growing within a massive cloud of red dust, but a vengeful Salunga heading toward the Shiva Facility in India with the intention of laying some serious pain on the Singular Point-powered super computer located within. On top of tha, we also had to contend with annoying AI, Pelops II trying to figure out the secret to thwarting the Catastrophe from within the super-computer and Kaiju slaying robot Jet Jaguar preparing itself for the fight of its life as it travels toward a life or death battle with Godzilla himself. Does it manage to pull everything back in the nick of time?
Aaaaaaaalmost.
As Pelops II delves inside the mainframe of the Shiva super-computer in order to unlock the secrets of everything that’s occured over the past 50 years, Mei, BB and Lina wait uncomfortably as Salunga starts smashing his way into the facility. However, after merging itself with all of its alternate versions created by the time distortion created by the Singular Point, Pelops II discovers an unfinished and complex calculation started by Ashihara that was halted by the sudden explosion that resulted in his disappearance.
Meanwhile, the Otaki Factory race to Godzilla’s location before he triggers the Catastrophe in the hope that the upgraded Jet Jaguar can get to the exact coordinates given to them by Mei earlier in the hope that the gargantuan lizard can be stopped once and for all. Equipped with sick propellers, a red dust neutralizing Orthogonal Diagonalyzer and – rather foolishly – Yun strapped to it’s back, Jet Jaguar launches into skies absolutely choked with Rodans in order to make a date with apocalyptic destiny.
However, after Pelops II finds it impossible to crack the calculation in the time it has, so opts to use the time distortion to go back in time to make the extra moments it needs to figure this thing out, but this may all come too late for Yun who, after a particularly rough crash landing, finds himself stranded on Godzilla’s back will the Diagonalyzer just out of reach.
With time all but run out and the chance of Pelops II broadcasting a solution to Mei ruined by the bludgeoning fists of an incensed Salunga – can our heroes hope to figure all this shit out before the world ends when Godzilla really cuts lose.
It’s to Singular Point’s credit that it comes so close to wrapping everything up in a satisfactory fashion and that it manages to fashion its excruciatingly chatty last two episodes into something that’s suitably epic and fast paced, but the very nature of the show manages to kneecap it from being all it can be.
The main issue the the episode’s length, which simply isn’t anywhere near long enough to do justice this type of shit and for a world ending problem that’s taken twelve episodes to set up, it all gets solved in an embarrassingly short amount of time. It’s still not exactly clear how it all gets rectified either as the exposition in past episodes was often tougher to crack than an egg made of vibranium, but from what I understand is that all the information our characters needed to bust this thing wide open has been at their fingertips the entire time but couldn’t be accessed until they knew what it was they were looking for thanks to some freaky deaky time paradoxes caused by the squiffy science of the Singular Points themselves. Simply put, I’m not entirely sure if any of it actually holds together, but I’ll be fucked if I’m going to trawl through the season all over again to find out. Let’s just leave it at this: it works enough.
However, while the plot is debatably sketchy as hell (best not let Neil deGrasse Tyson anywhere near this bitch), thankfully the scale of the episode simply can’t be denied. Godzilla himself, now swole to his max size, is every inch the Kaiju mega-beast he should be, regardless of whether he’s here to save the world of sizzle it and even with limited screen time, he still commands the mass and threat he needs thanks to some fine animation. While we’re at it, a massive nod needs to go to the show’s MVP, Jet Jaguar, who has been kicking ass since he first butt heads with Rodan way back at the start. Be it watching the robot whizz around on his nifty flying backpack, slicing up Rodans with his spear, or growing to giant size in order to lock up with the King Of The Monsters himself, the black faced automaton has probably put in the best performance of its 50 year career. Even though the fact that the entire plot has been about unlocking a code to make Jet Jaguar huge makes about as much sense as computer code written by a chimp, even the concept of the robot upgrading himself to be big comes directly from Godzilla Vs. Megalon and thus negates any plots with some good, old fashioned fanboying.
However, as good as these aspects are, you can’t help but feel that the entirety of Godzilla: Singular Point has been horrendously overplotted for what is, in essence, a very simple ending and maybe, just maybe, the show should have set more of its runtime having a bit more fun with its Kaiju cast instead of making you cram twelve episodes of interdimentional physics that merely all added up to “robot go big”. Elsewhere, Salunga’s big, belated moment ends up taking some much needed screen time away from Godzilla in a way that feels as wise as taking focus away from Darth Vader in order to focus more on Bib Fortuna. While the show was still streets ahead of Netflix’s anime trilogy, for a time there it wasn’t so cut and dry and if we get a second season, vast improvements really need to be made to the pace and the weak-as-clear-piss characters to really bring it up to the same quality as the genuinely great Kaiju stuff.
Speaking of a second season, both Netflix and Toho have been annoyingly silent on that front, despite some plot threads being being predictably dangled like a kitty toy in order to tantalise/torture the crap out of us. Finally clueing us in to what all that stuff about the skeleton was about (not to mention a long overdue arrival for Ashihara) in a welcome post credits sequence, we even get a mouthwatering glimpse of a brand new Mechagodzilla – which is more than enough for me to start braying for a Season two.
There’s still a wealth of Showa-era Kaiju to update – Ghidorah, Mothra and Gigan are bound to be a shoe-in, right – and let’s not forget newer creatures such as Biolante, Space Godzilla and Destoroyah too.
Sure, the show could be maddening at times, but when it was good, it was good and Toho and Netflix would be remiss in their duties if they didn’t give this incarnation of Godzilla another shot at breaking the world.
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