Have I mentioned that I love Godzilla? I didn’t just watch a couple Godzilla movies when I was a kid, I watched all of them – then the entirety of the Showa and Heisei series, as well as the TriStar version that we’d be better off forgetting. While I may not be 100% any more on the Millennium and MonsterVerse outings, I still have a deep affection for the character, and that whether in more dark and dramatic outings (like the original known as “King of the Monsters” in its American recut, Shin Godzilla, or the recognition-earning Minus One) or whether it’s in pure Tokusatsu cheese (like Destroy All Monsters or Godzilla vs. Mothra). I even have some affection for the really campy stuff like Godzilla vs. Megalon.
So, suffice to say, with my affection for the big screen outings whether suitmation or CGI, I was pretty excited to see the King of the Monsters getting a fresh animated series outing. And I do mean a fresh one – for those who don’t know, there were two older American animated versions, a Hanna-Barbera version from the late 70’s and one from the late 90’s that tried its best to redeem the TriStar continuity. But we’re not here today for Godzooky or ‘Zilla (nor the late 2010s animated films, which are “maybe some day” fare for this blog), we’re here for what was pitched as a new, original take on the classic Kaiju in Godzilla: Singular Point.
I will try to stamp down my fanboy urges as we go through this one, but I can’t promise that I’ll never slip.
After a very chaotic little opening sequence, we start to meet our main characters in this ambiguously near-future world – not Godzilla, but rather the humans, including a couple of engineer/handymen who also appear to double as ghost busters and whatever else pays the bills. These are eccentric grumpy genius Yun Arikawa and relative meathead Haberu Katou. They work for old man Gorou Ootaki, who wants to build piloted giant robot Jet Jaguar (Godzilla series staple) in order to protect the town and the world from alien threats, though their efforts are looking a little “first half of Robotics;Notes” at the start.
The other main character is Mei Kamino, a grad student who gets introduced to the plot when she’s called upon to consult for a SETI-style radio telescope facility. Their problem is that they have a strange alarm going off and don’t know what it means since it predates all of them, leaving only an obtuse manual to parse it. The engineers get called in as well, since they did some service work a while back.
After a first episode that’s mostly just eerie, we end by revealing two kaiju. The first is when a festival (at which the Jet Jaguar is being set up as an attraction) is attacked by everybody’s favorite toothy pterosaur, Rodan. In the second, there’s some suggestion that the alarm at the SETI base is linked to “underground”, where in the final bit the old facility head shows the new guy what they’ve got down there: the skeleton of Godzilla himself.
But let’s start by worrying about the active issue, Rodan.
Aside for those interested in broader Kaiju stuff: This Rodan is quite different from the Rodan typically seen in older movies. Classic Rodan was a heavy-hitter and frequent rival to Godzilla while the Rodan – or rather, Rodans – in this show serve the generic mook role. Personally, I don’t mind. It is a pretty huge downgrade for one of the few of Godzilla’s foes to headline its own movie (rather than just sharing a versus battle), but at the same time Singular Point is supposed to be its own thing, separate from any other Toho continuity. Reinterpreting Rodan as a smaller, weaker, flocking creature gives some creative space to do things you normally don’t in a kaiju outing. Like here in episode two where we fight the lone Rodan basically with mortal weapons (including a very early Jet Jaguar) and people on foot and don’t just die.
After the first Rodan keels over from unknown causes and more (as carcasses) turn up, everybody seems to get Rodan fever. The engineer team work to repair Jet Jaguar, only for a massive Rodan flock to begin emerging from the red tide out at sea. The flock rampages for a good long while until it, too, keels over, apparently unable to survive in modern Earth for long. At the end of the episode, we get a hint of a giant sea monster that the music tells us is a form of Godzilla.
Yeah, Godzilla in this one is constantly evolving, much like we see in Shin Godzilla, rather than emerging fully formed like you see in most Godzilla movies. This sort of angle has often been used for Godzilla’s foes, a few of which have whole life-cycles worth of forms including Mothra, Hedorah, Biollante and… I should keep this brief but suffice to say while not unprecedented it is a somewhat different take on the big guy. But, we’re only getting hints for now.
Instead, Mei ends up on the trail of a mysterious substance called Archetype that shouldn’t exist in the world as we know it, and yet does – a substance that might come from another dimension with other physical laws and that seems to warp the ones we know, like causality and time.
Meanwhile, Yun follows a trail of evidence towards an encounter with another minified classic Kaiju, Anguirus. The spiky Showa alumnus is less degraded than Rodan, but still much more mortal than is typical of Toho’s kaiju. It does, however, end up as the main focus of a couple episodes.
In general, the show unfolds mostly as a mystery, and keeps at least two, and arguably as many as four or five lines going. While Mei investigates Archetype (occasionally texting theory back and forth with Yun), some shady corporates mess with sources of “red dust” that’s the base material for Archetype. This red dust is also seen around the Rodan corpses and is presumably what’s turning patches of sea red, seas in which Godzilla was briefly seen and in which the sea dragon kaiju Manda is encountered. And all the while the matter is being looked into by the junior at that radio telescope, who noted red dust around the Godzilla skeleton and who suspects that his organization may be more deeply tied into this kaiju mayhem.
In my mind, this is a pretty smart way to go about things. It’s easy to forget, but while watching giant monsters smash up model cities and fight each other is a lot of fun, having a human element to connect with is essential to making a long-form narrative watchable. We all remember the rampages, but the original Godzilla had a lot about guilt and responsibility given Dr. Serizawa’s arc in the film, themes that would be echoed somewhat in Minus One being grounded in the tortured emotions and lingering guilt of its failed kamikaze pilot lead.
And a film like either of those only needs to sustain two hours. Singular Point, as a thirteen episode anime, has a running time of nearly five hours. We can wait for Godzilla; the humans have to be able to sustain our interest. To that end, the petty Kaiju actually make a lot of sense, as they give a chance for the thread to build rather than just jumping to city-wreckers right away.
As for the characters, they do spend a lot of their time getting plot out, because there are a zillion lines and each one of them has some fairly complex scifi stuff to communicate as well as layers of conspiracy to slowly peel away. But in the meantime Mei is quite personable, Yun a good foil for basically anyone he’s forced to play against, Haberu reasonably personable, and Gorou a fun one-note crazy old man. We’re not going for an incredibly deep study here, but we are kind of fine as-is.
The Anguirus arc involves a civic attempt to capture it, with a golf course as the scene. As the beast is taken down, the Manda manifestation results in Godzilla emerging in Tokyo, shrouded in a persistent cloud of the red dust. Meanwhile, Rodan swarms are appearing worldwide with similar dust storms that evidently make them stronger. This stage doesn’t last long, and the seeming human victory (obviously false) has some hang time.
In the time before we really get back to Godzilla, Mei cracks the secret of the late scientist who seems to be the origin of all the spooky organization around Archetype, revealing that there’s a predicted space-time catastrophe in the future and that “singular points” of which Godzilla is suggested to be one, may be the root of it.
Thus, as the Kaiju emergences get worse, she and her mentor scientist in the mysterious company start running to use the old scientist’s future-probing computer to predict and hopefully defuse the catastrophe. Meanwhile, the now AI-driven Jet Jaguar (and the rest of the team) get sidetracked from running to battle with Godzilla by a fight with some spider Kaiju (properly Kumonga, a classic albeit c-list kaiju)
Finall, Godzilla emerges from his char-broiled chrysalis and begins to rampage on Tokyo once again, to the tune of a hurricane of red dust.
This brings us to a new act. Mei races to meet up with important people to prevent catastrophe, possibly by creating a device known as the Orthogonal Diagonalizer that can send Red Dust back to the dimension that spawned it, while Yun researches time abnormalities to the same end, learning that his conversations with Mei may hold the key to the message left by the founder.
Meanwhile, Godzilla gets along with delivering the wanton destruction you’ve craved.
Ultimately, the showdown turns into Mei trying to derive the correct code for the Orthogonal Diagonalizer, while Yun, in Tokyo, is set to receive and deploy it, forcing a direct confrontation with Godzilla in order to be at the correct time and place.
After the obligatory “all hope is lost” moment, it turns out the real solve code is not to banish the dust, but to use the physics-breaking insanity in order to turn Jet Jaguar the size of Godzilla, and allow the robot to fight the giant monster for the future of humanity. After a brief struggle in which this Jet Jaguar declares itself the time-warped descendant of the AI buddies of both Yun and Mei , there’s a massive world-healing explosion that deletes Jet Jaguar and wipes out the Kaiju with a mass of blue crystals
We confirm that Mei and Yun meet up IRL after texting this whole show long, and a post-credits scene lets us know that the founder is still alive and has acquired the Godzilla skeleton from the radio telescope in order to build Mechagodzilla around it. But Singular Point stands alone, and to date has not been continued.
I understand the people who dislike the fact that there’s not all that much Godzilla in this Godzilla show. He really only does show up towards the end in any meaningful way, and then only for three sequences: Rampage in Tokyo form 1 & 2 and vs. Jet Jaguar.
But for my money, I quite enjoyed it, even if the headliner wasn’t in it all that much. There’s a good balance between investigating mysteries and fighting (mini) Kaiju. The scifi jargon can become a little much, but I think it ties itself together well enough in the end. The new looks for Showa-era classics are reasonably effective, and more importantly than any sort of continuity nod, they do what they have to for this story in particular.
The animation can be a little clumsy. It’s not the worst CGI, but there are some points where it fails. The sound work is top notch, with both the plot-sparking insert song and mixes of the classic Godzilla series riffs having a solid presence. The characters, as I’ve said before, are mostly serviceable. I kind of wish that we’d gotten an opportunity to really get an arc out of one or two of the humans, but this is far more action than drama so it is what it is.
All in all, I’ll give Godzilla: Singular Point a B. It’s far from the Godzilla franchise’s best entry, but it’s a perfectly respectable venture into anime inspired both by the Showa series and Shin Godzilla in delightful ways.