Godzilla's Gender: Voice your opinion (and don't be a jerk)

[Young Guy]

I think Godzilla's gender depends on the film in question.

The 1998 monster is certainly female.

The 1954 Gojira (for example) is called "King of the Monsters" so that I say is a male.

The GMK Godzilla is born out of the dead spirits that were angry at Japan, so I don't think GMK Gojira actually has a gender.

To me there needs to be a female Gojira for the baby Gojira Minilla/Godzuuky/Gojira Jr to even be born and later found by Gojira.

1998 is asexual.

[M.U.T.O.]

Is it weird now that I actually wanna see heart shaped spines?

No, not all. I think it'd be pretty visually interesting.

I wasn't lying when I said she had heart-shaped spines and was pink. Forgot the EYELASHES though.

[Moguera24]

Is it weird now that I actually wanna see heart shaped spines?

No, not all. I think it'd be pretty visually interesting.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409024608
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409021715

I wasn't lying when I said she had heart-shaped spines and was pink. Forgot the EYELASHES though.

GOJIRIN'S A GIRL! DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT. WE'RE SO SUBTLE WITH THE CHARACTER DESIGN, IT MIGHT BE HARD TO TELL!! YOU GUYS?!?

But in all seriousness, the heart shape spines are fun little addition. It reminds me of how they started differentiating Pikachu genders by giving the females heart shaped tails.

[edgaguirus]

Heart spines are one way of making it a girl. It was a kid show, too, and even Godzilla was made to looks cute.

[BlankAccount]

I guess that counts as a Godzilla anime.

[MechaGodzillaShowa]

My feeling about Godzilla's gender is that it's can be interpreted either way and since he's the King of the Monster - I have no problems making him male. In many cases he can be interperted going one way to the other. I say both.

[Starsteam]

Is it weird now that I actually wanna see heart shaped spines?

No, not all. I think it'd be pretty visually interesting.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409024608
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409021715

I wasn't lying when I said she had heart-shaped spines and was pink. Forgot the EYELASHES though.

Now to just wait for the bottom-of-the-Baganless-Heisei-barrel SHMA figure. And luckily for them, all they'd have to do is repaint Rebirth Goji and add new spines. Easy!

(Actually, that could possible sell well since the character doesn't have a toy).

[edgaguirus]

Why not make a plush of the character? I bet that would do well.

[KaijuFiend]

Godzilla is definitely male for me, except for 98 and GMK who are both asexual (with 98 being able to reproduce and GMK not being able to reproduce, obviously). Godzilla eggs were able to survive nuclear tests and whatnot for one reason or another, thus explaining Minilla and Junior. Godzilla could either be their biological or adoptive father.

I certainly wouldn't mind a female Godzilla, as long as there was good reason to have one. Alteration of the spines is the easiest way to pull off a bit of sexual dimorphism. I've seen fan female Godzillas that had smaller spines, and the heart-shaped spines on Matt Frank's interpretation of Gojirin looked badass.

[Young Guy]

Is it weird now that I actually wanna see heart shaped spines?

No, not all. I think it'd be pretty visually interesting.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409024608
http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/god ... 0409021715

I wasn't lying when I said she had heart-shaped spines and was pink. Forgot the EYELASHES though.

What about his girlfriend from the Gameboy game?

[g2vd]

[PRIMEVAL]

Dafuq? o.O

[kpa]

I think some people really misunderstand GMK. According to Toho and Shusuke Kaneko, the Godzilla in that film is the exact same Godzilla from the original film. So he's male, and he's not a ghost or a zombie. The "spirits of the war dead" angle was a Japanese interpretation attached to GODZILLA '54 decades before GMK was made, and Kaneko used it to explain the monster's motivation in both the 1954 and 2001 movies.

[PRIMEVAL]

I think some people really misunderstand GMK. According to Toho and Shusuke Kaneko, the Godzilla in that film is the exact same Godzilla from the original film. So he's male, and he's not a ghost or a zombie. The "spirits of the war dead" angle was a Japanese interpretation attached to GODZILLA '54 decades before GMK was made, and Kaneko used it to explain the monster's motivation in both the 1954 and 2001 movies.

I thought he was resurrected by said spirits as hinted by his ghostly white eyes?

[Hauntedmech]

While I am in no way attempting to dispute the objective fact that the general consensus is that Godzilla is male and that it is easiest to refer to him as such for the sake of consistency and ease of understanding, my opinion is that Godzilla's gender does not matter, has never mattered, and that every single Godzilla film to date would be exactly the same no matter what Godzilla's gender was. Really, Godzilla could have been female all this time and none of us would have been the wiser. She certainly wouldn't have bothered to tell us.

On that note, however, to those of you saying that "the 2014 Godzilla is confirmed to be male,"
"This is probably a good time to point out that Godzilla's actually a female... At the last minute we changed it from 'Godzilla: Queen of the Monsters.'"
~ Gareth Edwards, at 10:30.

My point is that regardless of the pronouns that we assign to these characters, their genders only really matter in very rare circumstances, and while it's safe to refer to them as male or female just as we always have, in most cases it's unreasonable to assume that that's what they actually are, because the only reason we ever have is just people referring to them that way out of convenience.

- A couple important exceptions are in GMK, when Godzilla is the reincarnation of Japan's dead soldiers, who can be assumed to identify as male, and in Godzilla vs. Biollante, when Godzilla is treated as masculine for thematic purposes, and is contrasted with the feminine Biollante. Even in the latter case, it's important to note that "masculine" doesn't necessarily mean "male"; females can also be masculine, and anyone who claims that statistics imply otherwise has clearly never done much research on the spotted hyena.

[g2vd]

Umn, you realize Gareth was joking right?

[Toxic Toast]

in GMK, when Godzilla is the reincarnation of Japan's dead soldiers

Godzilla wasn't brought back by the spirits of Japan's dead soldiers in that movie, it was brought back by the spirits of the people killed by Japan's dead soldiers.

[kpa]

I think some people really misunderstand GMK. According to Toho and Shusuke Kaneko, the Godzilla in that film is the exact same Godzilla from the original film. So he's male, and he's not a ghost or a zombie. The "spirits of the war dead" angle was a Japanese interpretation attached to GODZILLA '54 decades before GMK was made, and Kaneko used it to explain the monster's motivation in both the 1954 and 2001 movies.

I thought he was resurrected by said spirits as hinted by his ghostly white eyes?

GMK deals with symbolic qualities associated with Godzilla since the first film. In an interview with the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shinbun, Akira Ifukube described how audiences reacted to seeing the original GODZILLA in 1954: “The terror of the times was such that people thought that Godzilla might be the symbol of the spirits of the departed soldiers at sea.” In 1994, Professor Norio Akasaka wrote that Godzilla was a “representation of the spirits of soldiers who died in the South Pacific during World War II” and compared Godzilla’s actions in the 1954 film to the story The Voice of the Hero Spirits, in which the ghosts of kamikaze pilots appear before the Emperor and accuse Japan of spiritual decay.

Kaneko uses that to explain why Godzilla specifically attacked Japan in both the 1954 film and GMK... the latter film is a "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it" story about Japan's desire to once again build up their military for the first time since WWII. Therefore Godzilla is an unkillable force that can be temporarily defeated but never permanently destroyed; he will return to show Japan the errors of its ways.

[Toxic Toast]

What dialogue in GMK do you think states that spirits motivated Godzilla's '54 attack?

[Hauntedmech]

Umn, you realize Gareth was joking right?

Of course he was, but that doesn't really mean much. The context of the quote is that an interviewer had asked a question that was clearly intended as a thinly-veiled stab at the lack of strong female characters in the movie, a legitimate complaint that Gareth has on a number of occasions made clear that he is somewhat ashamed of. The joke was, it can be assumed, an attempt on Gareth's part to show that he recognized the flaw and that he had no intention of making it again. The reason it's funny is because, while we all assume that Godzilla is male (Gareth himself even refers to Godzilla as "he" at that very same press conference), someone could suddenly flip that around on us and say that Godzilla is female, and no one would be the wiser, because there really is no reason to think that he's either one outside of people just offhandedly calling him that.

Really, I just don't get why some people are so invested in Godzilla being male. It's not like it makes much of a difference either way.