With the recent loss of www.cyberkids1954.com, an old Japanese site dedicated various fantasy film productions that were never made (including some extreme obscurities that would cause your common Godzilla fan's brains to melt and pour out from their ear-holes), I've decided to use Enshohma's Corner as a archival back-up for any and all giant monster obscurities that I may stumble upon... Even if some of my own knowledge on the featured materials are as limited as your typical Godzilla fan, I must sadly admit. I'm no August Ragone but I freaking doing my best, okay?!?! *Ahem* Nothing major for this first attempt, just a little show and tell, showcasing an awesome illustration from the Japanese children's book "Original Reprint Edition: Ultra Q" (rough translation). This illustration features a 'what if' scenario where the creatures Gorgos, Cicada Human, and M1 in mortal combat with each other.
What makes the artwork even more intriguing is the fact that both Cicada Human and M1 were small human-sized characters in the original "Ultra Q" series and have never achieved giant monster status even in their later return appearances. So it's honestly cool to find this image and see both of them pumped up to Gorgos' level even if M1 (the ape-like fellow in the lower right corner) is still relatively puny, looking like he's barely 16-feet in height when compared to the fleeing humans on the opposite end. As for the 'Giant Cicada Human'; I honestly have no idea what's up with that yellow scarf wrapped so stylishly around his neck. At first, I thought it was a direct reference to another insect-theme character from Japanese fiction, the iconic Kamen Rider, but that notion seemed doubtful as that grasshopper-inspired superhero was still five years away from "Ultra Q" original broadcast.
However, the book's title of "Original Reprint Edition: Ultra Q" may suggest that the yellow-colored sight gag was both timely to Kamen Rider's 1971 debut and, as such, most deliberate.
Get it? Spoof of The Hiromi Gargantua? It's a play on War of The Gargantuas! No? Ah, nuts to you! Anyways... The long running anime series Mobile Police Patlabor is often cited as a strong example of the 'Realistic Mecha' genre from Japanese fiction. Realistic Mecha is where giant robots are presented as plausible machinery that could exist and work within the real world while also avoiding the more fantastic clichés of most other giant robot stories such as alien invaders, supernatural power-ups, soulful sentience in the machines, and giant Godzilla-style enemy monsters. However, there are several exceptions seen throughout the Patlabor franchise where wacky monsters do appear and cause havoc, betraying the very concept of Realistic Mecha.
Yes, between giant albino alligators, unmanned killing machines, out-of-control Labor robots, deep-sea reptiles, genetically engineered mega-rodents, hideous human-alien hybrids, and gigantic Kappa androids, this otherwise unassuming franchise about police officers piloting 30-foot-tall police-bots in the near-future has a lot of giant monsters popping up. This continuous trend started with The 450 Million-Year-Old Trap (July 25th, 1988): the third episode in the original direct-to-video series and was an early directorial effort from the now famous director Mamoru Oshii, one of the forgotten grandfathers of Patlabor. A series of mysterious incidents occur in and around Tokyo Bay, including damaged undersea cables and a parked car being pulled off a pier, leading some to believe that it could be the work of an actual sea monster. Detective Takahiro Matsui of the Metropolitan Tokyo Police Department (a recurring character in the franchise) requests Captain Goto, head of the Police Special Vehicle Section 2 Division 2 (SV2 for short), for help on the strange case. Goto and his SV2 Patlabor team help pilot a remote control submersible Labor to search for what caused the incidents. However, the Labor is destroyed during its underwater search, convincing all present that the monster truly does exists. The SV2 are given orders to kill the monster soon after but not before they stumble upon the giant creature's origins: an life-form birthed from a science experiment gone...a little out-of-hand thanks to a well-meaning but clumsy and shortsighted mad scientist.
Although this sea monster is largely off-camera throughout the episode, its noted that the artificially created being went through various stages of accelerated evolution (presented in a brief montage of resurrected prehistoric animals) until reaching its supposedly final form which makes its rather anti-climactic reveal by the story's end. As you can tell by now, The 450 Million-Year-Old Trap is a subtly played spoof of Toho Studio's classic run of giant monster movies, complete with a big blue-colored War of The Gargantua homage shown throughout this article. Now we could call this unnamed guy 'The Blue Gargantua' for obvious reasons but, based on an odd little twist in the tale where this somewhat benign beast shares an unexplained resemblance with SV2's team member Hiromi Yamazaki, the ironically tall man from Okinawa who's soft-spoken and kindhearted, I shall nicknamed this character The Hiromi Gargantua until I'm corrected otherwise with an official moniker.
RELATED VIDEOS ON PATLABOR:
Marc of Oh No Anime takes you through the life and legacy of one of anime's most under-appreciated franchises, Patlabor (direct video link right below video box).
I know you younger people and more tech savvy individuals are enjoying the virtually unlimited promise of streaming services with the variety of programming it offers. However, with the way things are going now, with every company creating their own streaming channels, limiting their libraries to only the most marketable and recent fair, a reliance on syndicated show packages from the same handful of entertainment monopolies, and phasing out older films and television shows in turn, I feel like it's only a matter of time until streaming services will become the same miserable wasteland that modern cable television has long ago become. A television wasteland where we literally have thousands channels but with nothing interesting to view beyond the same 44 reruns of BIG BANG THEORY and the original CHARMED scattered across multiple networks. I don't care if you're a fan of BIG BANG THEORY or not, but 20 channels playing the same set of episodes is NOT a good thing: that would be like going to a grocery store that only sells french fries and only the same brand of french fires in all fifteen of its aisles. You probably don't believe me, of course, but this nifty video from FredFlix perfectly illustrates the wonderful if not offbeat variety of film and TV programming we use to have on cable entertainment, back in the day when you could be up at 2AM and have a wide choosing of rarely shown movies to watch as opposed to today.
I still cannot stand this bloody holiday known as Ex-Mess but if it offers some festive giant monsters then I'll take it!
Robin: Gargantuan killer toys whose bright colors highlight them from the otherwise pitch black background? I don't see any, Batman!
Here's a trio of giant toy soldiers from the fun but ultimately passable CHRISTMAS WITH THE JOKER, the second episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES (November 13, 1992) which also marked that show's first appearance of the titular Clown Prince of Crime. Despite the series' attempts to avoid the more fanciable clichés of children's adventure cartoons of the 1980s and early 1990s, the producers and writers would still dip their toes into such nonsense occasionally, as with their rendition of The Joker being surprisingly efficient at building murderous robots as either attack drones, booby traps (Hazel), or fully functioning henchmen (Captain Clown). Despite their great size and stomping square-shaped feet, The Toy Soldier Robots were among The Joker's weaker creations as their heads were easily torn or knocked off by the defending Batman and Robin, destroying the holiday giants instantly. I really have nothing much other to say about these three automatons other than that their Joker-like smiles were a nice design touch.
Criss-Mass still blows. Give us the time off but keep everything else I hate about this time of year. Happy Arbor Day, suckers!
I along with friends and fellow nerds KaijuNoir and Brayton sit down and share our audible thoughts via podcast on one of the year's more decisive-yet-belittled films Jurassic World: The Fallen Kingdom. Take a listen and enjoy.
ARTICLE UPDATE: Here's a new Kickstarter video by The Aquabats! discussing their now newly rebooted campaign.
So... Yeah, this happened as burning testament to why I prefer not to cover current events: The Aquabats have wisely decided to reboot their Kickstarter campaign to more realistic stretch goals and limit their AQUABATS! SUPER SHOW! as an easier to produced web-series based on the success they've been having with the previously shared online mini-series.
On one hand, I'm happy for them to lower their ambitions to something more manageable and easier to attain but, on the other hand, I'm reminded why I shouldn't touch current news and related reviews and leave that work to the in-the-know professionals.
Articles on pre-existing obscure and lesser-known giant monsters coming up in September, you know, the EASY stuff!
The Aquabats! From left-to-right: EagleBones Falconhawk (Ian Fowles), Crash McLarson (Chad Larson), The MC Bat Commander (Christian Jacobs), Jimmy the Robot (James R. Briggs, Jr.), and Ricky Fitness (Richard Falomir)
Living in Los Angeles back in the early 1990's, a local Orange County station would aired a late, late, late night music video show entitled ARE-OH-VEE which played alternate and punk rock music videos too obscure or offbeat for 120 MINUTES. It was on this program that me and my two younger brothers were introduced to the humorous group known as THE AQUABATS through their host segments for Are-Oh-Vee and through their music video SUPER RAD:
Taking their name from some fairly obscure Hanna-Barbera monsters (from MIGHTY MYTOR AND MOBY DICK THE SUPER WHALE), The Aquabats were equally influenced by the campy superhero shows on yesteryear, particularly the 1960's BATMAN and numerous Japanese-based productions like ULTRAMAN and JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT. You can clearly see the influence in the following videos featuring their 1999 demo pilot for a planned Aquabats television series and a tongue-in-cheek recounting of the band's history with such failed pilots before finally finding success on The Hub cable network:
Even though The Hub eventually went under after a relatively short time in existence, THE AQUABATS SUPER SHOW lasted for an impressive 21 episodes: the following video gives one a taste of the series' bizarre style and hyper-kinetic energy:
If you want to delve even deeper into the Aquabats' rabbit hole, all their second season episodes are (at the time of this writing) accessible for free on their official YouTube channel. Here's four such episodes that also happen to be my personal favorites: RETURN OF THE AQUABATS:https://youtu.be/KlPqCW24B90 THE ANTIBATS:https://youtu.be/rCMtjswEd6Q SHARK FIGHTER:https://youtu.be/aLk-hMC3al0 KITTY LITTER:https://youtu.be/3yBbs7zzqmo By this point in the article, you're either fully on board with this particular flavor of madness or have grabbed your computer with both arms and threw it out the window, cursing both me (Enshohma) and The Aquabats in tandem. If you're among the former then congratulations because I'm about to discuss the band's highly ambitious (some may even say foolish) Kickstarter that is coming to a close this very week. At the time of this writing (where have a read those words before?) the campaign only has five days left and is just half-way to its end goal so any support at this point would be welcomed. KICKSTARTER PAGE CAN BE FOUND HERE! The Aquabats have also uploaded a related mini-series that continues from their series with this first episode explaining the campaign in full... After the parade of celebrity guests of course.
The here's the rest of the mini-series complete with recaps from the band's channel re-posted here for a narrative sake: After The MC Bat Commander visits The Wizard of Hollywood, he's on a mission to gather a LEGION OF RIGHTEOUS COMRADES to help make MORE MUSIC & MORE TV. But first... The Bat Commander must find his best homies - THE OTHER AQUABATS!
The MC Bat Commander continues his mission to gather a Legion of Righteous Comrades and find all of his fellow Aquabats. This time, he's off to find Jimmy the Robot at his cool job in the arcade... until things don't go exactly as planned.
It's Episode 4 of The Bat Commander's quest to gather The Legion of Righteous Comrades and his fellow Aquabats. Are the Commander's dance moves rad enough to save his friend? Did Jimmy the Robot survive the belly of the mechanical beast?
After a desert scrapper dance off, The MC Bat Commander and Jimmy the Robot go to find Eaglebones Falconhawk. But can they overcome his job security? Will Eaglebones' boss tolerate The MC Bat Commander's inability to use an inside voice?
A lactose-laden terror revealed itself at Eaglebones' place of work, and now it's up to our heroes to deal with the milky madness so that they can continue to find their friends and gather a Legion of Righteous Comrades! Can The Aquabats survive the flaky furor of POWDERED MILK MAN?
After a narrow escape from the dreaded Powdered Milk Man, our heroes continue their quest to find all of The Aquabats. As the guys find Ricky, a beef with some beach bum bullies may end up becoming the least of their worries!
