Toho Kingdom

Ivo-goji wrote:

Panther10 wrote: But for the sake of argument, isn't Burning Godzilla something of a "super saiyan" mode for Godzilla as well when he faced off against Destroyah? I mean in that movie his power levels were off the charts.

Exactly, Destoroyah is supposed to be one of Godzilla's strongest opponents, but since he's a big thighed Heisei kaiju with limited articulation no one cares. He can reconstitute his body from microbes and is immune to anything other than extreme temperature weapons yet according to FM debaters any kaiju with basic melee skills will kick his butt. Take a look at any of the FM topics and you'll see what I mean.

It's only a handful of people who are like that, you're making it out to be worse than it is.

I call it like I see it.

Pretty good timing for this topic... Finally finished: http://www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/bagan.htm

GigaBowserG wrote:Pretty good timing for this topic... Finally finished: http://www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/bagan.htm

It's such a shame Godzilla vs Biollante didn't do well enough, Mothra vs Bagan sounds like it would have been a great movie. I wonder what the rest of the Heisei series would have been like if it had been made?

GigaBowserG wrote:Pretty good timing for this topic... Finally finished: http://www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/bagan.htm

Damn that's thorough. Awesome to have so much material on one page.

Cool design(s), I liked reading all the cutting room stuff, and his backstories, as well as it's cool that he had a model made for him and appeared in a video game. I can't stand the fandoms fanfic surrounding him, but I can't stand fan fiction in general so whatever.

GigaBowserG wrote:Pretty good timing for this topic... Finally finished: http://www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/bagan.htm

Hold on now, just noticed something.

However, Bagan's big screen appearance was not in the cards. An entirely new monster named Barubaroi was instead created, a shapeshifting monstrosity with ties to the original 1954 film.

What is the source for this tidbit? As far as I know nobody had any context for what Barubaroi was supposed to be.

Ivo-goji wrote:

GigaBowserG wrote:Pretty good timing for this topic... Finally finished: http://www.tohokingdom.com/cutting_room/bagan.htm

Hold on now, just noticed something.

However, Bagan's big screen appearance was not in the cards. An entirely new monster named Barubaroi was instead created, a shapeshifting monstrosity with ties to the original 1954 film.

What is the source for this tidbit? As far as I know nobody had any context for what Barubaroi was supposed to be.

Heisei Godzilla Perfection. Barubaroi'll get its main site coverage another time

I like Bagan and honestly don't understand why he hasn't caught on more. Not with fans, but in the franchise itself. No, I'm not saying he should be in a movie or anything (though Mothra vs. Bagan did sound great and if it was anything like Godzilla vs. Biollante it could've been a classic), but he's fairly well known and was created directly by Tanaka, so he's got more going for him than most other monsters. I seriously don't understand why he hasn't shown up in another video game by now, or even gotten his own action figure. I mean seriously, Garasharp has at least one toy made of her and she was in even less than Bagan! I had the idea a while back that Bagan should be a "merchandise monster" - Making appearances in toy lines, comics, video games, etc. despite not being in the actual films.

That having been said, though, I do understand why some people can't stand him. His fans can be a little... enthusiastic, and he is pretty overused as the "Ultimate All-Powerful Super Mega-Death" Godzilla foe, which can be pretty eye-rolling at times. And while his design is nothing mind-blowing, it is a cool one. Some people say "he's just a third rate Destoroyah" but nobody ever trashes Megalon for being "a dumber Gigan" or Battra for being "Mothra, but evil" or "Anguirus is just a Varan that can't fly" or whatever.

(Also, shouldn't Destoroyah be a third rate Bagan, since he came first?)

But yeah. Despite the fact that he is a tad overrated, Bagan is still a cool monster who deserves a place among Godzilla's foes.

Panther10 wrote:how come there is so much love for Bagan but very little has been set aside for other one off characters like ... Gekido-Jin ...?

Gekido-jin is awesome and I'd still kill for Toho to adapt The Godzilla Color Special into a feature length film, complete with emerald Biogoji. The series isn't complete until we have a scene of Godzilla getting smacked in the face by a giant hammer, lol.

TitanoGoji16 wrote:

Panther10 wrote:how come there is so much love for Bagan but very little has been set aside for other one off characters like ... Gekido-Jin ...?

Gekido-jin is awesome and I'd still kill for Toho to adapt The Godzilla Color Special into a feature length film, complete with emerald Biogoji. The series isn't complete until we have a scene of Godzilla getting smacked in the face by a giant hammer, lol.

Speaking of Dark Horse creations, I would certainly much prefer to see a resurgence in fan adoration for Bagorah...


...Burtannus...


...or that Destoroyah-esque space monster from the Bob Eggleton final issue of the Dark Horse run, rather than Bagan.


I get why people like Bagan's design and all, but I feel like we already got that in Destoroyah--plus Destoroyah had wings. And for some reason many of the truly devoted Bagan fans I've encountered have been so obnoxious they've made me hate the character.

Maybe if I had ever played the Super Godzilla game when I was younger I might have felt different, but I tried to play it on an emulator a few years ago and I felt it was garbage and I couldn't even beat the first boss level with King Ghidorah--so I only know Bagan as a concept design and he's not that special.

RandomDeinonychus wrote:Speaking of Dark Horse creations, I would certainly much prefer to see a resurgence in fan adoration for Bagorah...
[]http://www.clubdesmonstres.com/best/img/bagorah1.jpg[/img]

...Burtannus...
[]https://static5.comicvine.com/uploads/s ... 213-13.jpg[/img]

...or that Destoroyah-esque space monster from the Bob Eggleton final issue of the Dark Horse run, rather than Bagan.
[]https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/go ... 0614032625[/img]

I think the biggest obstacle all these monsters face is simply how much less accessible they are. Comic monsters in general have it pretty rough, especially if they didn't spawn during this digital age. At least the Trilopods had the luxury of things like Facebook to be promoted, on top of the ability to purchase their issues on the computer or almost whatever device you desire. I love Cybersaur, probably my favorite mech in the Toho library, but I'd be extremely surprised to see him appear in anything again.

Comparatively, Bagan has the SNES game, which can be found just about anywhere; people continue to do Let's Plays of it on popular platforms like YouTube; and he continues to appear in Toho-related media (largely books and DVDs) to this day. So it's no wonder the same fate hasn't really befallen him.

RandomDeinonychus wrote:I get why people like Bagan's design and all, but I feel like we already got that in Destoroyah--plus Destoroyah had wings. And for some reason many of the truly devoted Bagan fans I've encountered have been so obnoxious they've made me hate the character.

Maybe if I had ever played the Super Godzilla game when I was younger I might have felt different, but I tried to play it on an emulator a few years ago and I felt it was garbage and I couldn't even beat the first boss level with King Ghidorah--so I only know Bagan as a concept design and he's not that special.

Eh? But Bagan has "wings" too -- that's what those giant spires on his back are for He spouts wings of energy.
I can see why people constantly refer to Destoroyah and Bagan with the physical similarities (doesn't help the same person who designed Bagan went on to help design Destoroyah's forms). It's a shame the video game didn't do much for showing off his fantastic, terrifying personality.

Speaking of, while I wouldn't recommend playing it, perhaps you could watch someone play it? I'd highly recommend not really bothering with the battle scenes, and just pay attention to the opening and closing dialogue, as that's where the story comes into play. Actually, making a Super Godzilla "movie" using those scenes might be fun sometime...

GigaBowserG wrote: It's a shame the video game didn't do much for showing off his fantastic, terrifying personality.

If the game didn't show off Bagan's personality, and it's his only appearance, how do you know enough about him to determine that his personality is fantastic, or terrifying?

Fropston wrote:

GigaBowserG wrote: It's a shame the video game didn't do much for showing off his fantastic, terrifying personality.

If the game didn't show off Bagan's personality, and it's his only appearance, how do you know enough about him to determine that his personality is fantastic, or terrifying?

I misworded it a bit -- it's a shame they didn't show off what could have been his personality. His portrayal in the Mothra vs. Bagan storyboards is great, something he really could've used in the video game.

GigaBowserG wrote:Eh? But Bagan has "wings" too -- that's what those giant spires on his back are for He spouts wings of energy.

Does he do that in the video game? Because nothing in the concept images that are usually circulated (specifically of the design maquette) would indicate those are anything but big spikes.

GigaBowserG wrote:Speaking of, while I wouldn't recommend playing it, perhaps you could watch someone play it? I'd highly recommend not really bothering with the battle scenes, and just pay attention to the opening and closing dialogue, as that's where the story comes into play. Actually, making a Super Godzilla "movie" using those scenes might be fun sometime...

I mean, I get that sometimes video games have the capacity for great stories--after all, it's why I love BioWare's games even when they whiff it with the endings--but it doesn't really speak well for a SNES Godzilla game that the best parts are its dialogue scenes.

I mean, I'm not shocked--this is a game that decided Godzilla should be hurt by walking through buildings. That's like a Spider-Man game where swinging from a web makes Spider-man lose health.

RandomDeinonychus wrote:

GigaBowserG wrote:Eh? But Bagan has "wings" too -- that's what those giant spires on his back are for He spouts wings of energy.

Does he do that in the video game? Because nothing in the concept images that are usually circulated (specifically of the design maquette) would indicate those are anything but big spikes.

Not from the video game, but This.
Managed to translate the text, and it refers to them as "Wings of Light", and that that hulking design (referred to as "Plan B") shares them with "Plan A", which is what Toho considers Bagan's canon design, despite the visual differences to its SNES counterpart. It's really strange, but it's popped up in multiple publications.

GigaBowserG wrote:Not from the video game, but This.
Managed to translate the text, and it refers to them as "Wings of Light", and that that hulking design (referred to as "Plan B") shares them with "Plan A", which is what Toho considers Bagan's canon design, despite the visual differences to its SNES counterpart. It's really strange, but it's popped up in multiple publications.

I realize that you mean in the concept stuff, but can you really considered a scrapped design "canon"? I mean, maybe based on what he does in the game, sure, but you're talking about unused scripts.

That's kind of like saying it's canon that Destoroyah shoots a beam from his chest because they went so far as to film his chest lighting up, but then they cut that sequence out before post.

RandomDeinonychus wrote:I realize that you mean in the concept stuff, but can you really considered a scrapped design "canon"? I mean, maybe based on what he does in the game, sure, but you're talking about unused scripts.

That's kind of like saying it's canon that Destoroyah shoots a beam from his chest because they went so far as to film his chest lighting up, but then they cut that sequence out before post.

Or Showa Gigan's eye laser, or Showa Mechagodzilla shooting fire from his nose! I get you. Like I said, he's a strange case, I guess because he was introduced in a video game as opposed to a movie. Pretty much every text I've read regarding SNES Bagan mentions him being a master of land, sea, and sky, despite him never going into the ocean or flying in-game, and him using abilities not seen in the game, even in official Super Godzilla guidebooks ("Horn Beam" is the most common... which is what he uses in the Mothra vs. Bagan storyboards). This isn't something you see with the movie monsters, whose cut abilities are almost never listed.

I just take their word for it, since not all monsters in the game were programmed with all their abilities anyway (Showa MG's cross attack beam, Godzilla's nuclear pulse/spiral ray, Heisei MG's shock anchors/Plasma Grenade/Garuda, etc.).

If Hatchback from Dragonball Z can get some love despite being a video game villain I don't see why Bagan can't. Honestly I feel people overrate Destoroyah more than they do Bagan.

^I think Destoroyah is awesome and still agree that's true.

Bagan has been ruined for me by his fanbase. Though I liked the idea of the Mothra vs Bagan film