Godzilla City on the Edge of Battle Review

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Ladies, Gentlemen and others, welcome my friends to Godzilla City on the Edge of Battle!

If I haven't made my point clear before, I'm a huge Godzilla fan. I love every movie regardless of what the quality is, to me he's a big brother who's the hero in every story he's in. He's like the All Might to my Izuku, and much to my delight they were making an anime trilogy of my Aniki. A year ago, I did a review of this first movie Monster Planet and from my initial thoughts were OK about the plot and characters because it was a Godzilla movie and I was used to it. Many of the things I suggested in that review were debunked, particularly with the theory that I made of Godzilla Earth being a new Biollante. It was debunk due to the prequel novel, Godzilla Monster Apocalypse, already had a Biollante running around in Brazil, while other kaiju such as Zilla, Baragon, Varan and many others were appearing along with Godzilla. In fact, from what I've been told, Godzilla, Anguirus, Varan and Baragon fight each other like it was supposed to be for GMK. Sadly I don't believe this novel has been released in English as of the writing of the review, and I do so much want to read it but it must be a huge book if it depicts the entire history of what happened at the turn of the century. What I'm getting at here is that this was a very big project for Toho Animation because, as I've said multiple times before, this was the very first Godzilla anime in the franchise's history and they were taking some big risks in doing so. It's always good to do something different in a film series about a giant radioactive dinosaur; however you can't just change the character to suit the story. Being fair, director Kobun Shizuno wanted Godzilla to be the pinochle of evolution of life and that trees and plants were decided on for a design because trees are some of the oldest living organisms of earth and some plants can emit electromagnetic energy sometimes. honestly, this follows a trend of Godzilla films that could be traced way back into the original 1954 film, of Godzilla being more than an animal that's he's this living embodiment of the natural order of things, a symbol of Japan's pasted sins, and now he's the ultimate evolved creature.

So with the second movies, the gears shift to City on the Edge of Battle not without its own baggage and boy does it hit the wall hard. I think looking back on the first review I was trying to be fair because this feels like the movie was getting itself creatively off the ground and that it was fighting an uphill battle, think about it, it was the first of its kind, Toho had never done anything like it, was the second Godzilla movie to be Japan exclusive after Shin Godzilla and after Legendary started up the MonsterVerse series, all the while working with a totally new take on Godzilla. To me, I feel like that in a franchise that lasted for not one year but almost 65 years is pretty impressive but then you see this movie and you think that the creators just don't seem to care. But now the kid gloves are off, they had almost two years to work on this with a trilogy in tow, and yet this feels like it's inferior to Monster Planet. I think that it's because they're trying something totally original with making Godzilla a pissed off house plant, but that's not the important part. Godzilla is not an idea that's doomed to failure, if that were the case the messages of nuclear destruction, the tragedy of war, and the price of hundres of thousands of people who lost their lives would be for nothing. After watching this movie, I really hate to say it but I personally believe that this is the most polarizing Godzilla movie I have ever seen. Now all of this is just my personal opinion, if you like this movie, good go ahead! But let me plead my case first. So with that out of the way,

 So with that out of the way,

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