Toho's early 1970's offering, Go! Godman
was introduced to Japanese audiences as part of the Good
Morning! Children's Show. The show aired six days a
week, while Go! Godman's 26 episodes were each
broken down into five minute segments, totaling 156 in all,
for the program.
The premises of Go! Godman is extremely straight
forward: a monster, or monsters depending on the episode,
show up to terrorize humanity until someone cries forth
with Godman's name, calling for the hero, who hails from
the planet Firegod, to arrive on the scene and destroy the
fiend to save the day.
The show was simplistic, made to function when broken up
into 5 minute segments, and the budget was marginal. However,
due to the limited financing, many familiar faces from previous
Toho science fiction films were featured to reduce expenses.
Among them were Gaira and Sanda from The
War of the Gargantuas (1966), Gorosaurus from King
Kong Escapes (1967), Gabara from All
Monsters Attack (1969), the Bat People from Latitude
Zero (1969) and Kamoebas from Space
Amoeba (1970). To make matters confusing, these
creatures had no relation to their big screen counterparts,
despite having the same name and looking nearly identical
(the large exception is Sanda and Gaira, which both featured
modified masks).
Go! Godman ran from October 5th, 1972 to April
10th, 1973, with a new episode featured each weekday and
on Saturday. Following its initial run, reruns of the show
ran until September 28th, 1973 when the show was pulled
from the program and replaced with Go! Greenman,
which utilized many of the same monsters and locations,
yet holds no continuity with Godman.
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