The literary market has lately been saturated with tomes covering Toho’s Godzilla film franchise—perhaps expectedly so, given the recent international laurels, including an Academy Award, bestowed upon Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One (2023) and the ongoing Hollywood spinoff series from Legendary Pictures. Topping last year’s books was Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s Godzilla: The First 70 Years, and readers in the near future will be gifted with Erik Homenick’s Scoring Godzilla: An Analysis of Akira Ifukube’s Musical Narratives. Other texts have sprung up in between, among them a Fonthill Media offering that might become a go-to resource for those seeking a brisk overview of the franchise. Daniel DiManna’s G-Cinema: An Exploration and Celebration of Japan’s Monster King is a charming little book, packed with well-researched history on Godzilla and the nation that begat him—not to mention the cultural, industrial, and economic events that shaped both.
In what sets his book apart from other Godzilla tomes, DiManna begins the monster’s story prior to World War II. Rather than the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the tale of Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka imagining a sea monster during an international flight, G-Cinema opens with a discussion of The Classic of Mountains and Seas, a fourth-century Chinese text whose stanzas spoke of “strange and wondrous creatures.” DiManna describes how the language and culture from which this text emerged “were spreading across Asia to younger, still-developing nations” before zeroing in on Japan’s historical ties to the fantastic. From here, he segues to early paleontology, which lent the anachronistic dinosaur reconstructions that still influence pop culture. All of this points the way to the kaiju (“strange creature”) under discussion: a beast with the upright posture and dragging tail of Occidental dinosaurs and used by Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda to embody postwar trauma in 1954’s Godzilla.
At this point, DiManna assumes the route expected of a Godzilla history book: escorting the reader through the monster’s cinematic oeuvre and addressing events that informed various entries. On this front in particular, the author has done a splendid job. G-Cinema is more exploratory than celebratory, and DiManna’s knack for time-capsuling is among the book’s greatest strengths. I appreciated, for instance, the use of statistics and timelines to delineate the pollution crisis at the time of Yoshimitsu Banno’s Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971); the shifting consequences of 1960s capitalism that is reflected in everything from 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla to 1969’s All Monsters Attack—both directed by Ishiro Honda; how the natural disasters and bureaucratic incompetence of March 2011 influenced Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla (2016).
Along the way, we receive behind-the-scenes information, including bits that, to my memory, aren’t widely discussed in English. (A tangent on 1962’s King Kong vs. Godzilla salutes one of the fascinating challenges of research: the deeper one explores, the more contradictory claims and perspectives pile up. As is documented in DiManna’s book, Toho personnel and material historically offer varying answers to whether the picture’s finale even has a proper victor.) DiManna likewise comments on Japan’s evolving film industry and devotes page space to Godzilla’s reach beyond the cinema house. Passages recount the monster’s appearances in television and comics, and the book contains a multi-page printing of posters, VHS covers, and related material. The result is a taut but detailed examination of a series that’s spanned multiple generations, countries, and media.
And while some might walk away longing for more personalized commentary (in his introduction, DiManna clarifies a wish not “to guilt you into liking or disliking anything,” which I feel is a misunderstanding of critical analysis and a missed opportunity for the text; as the writings of, say, Ryfle and Godziszewski have demonstrated, critical writing allows the reader to feel they’re in discussion with the author and pushes them to think), G-Cinema isn’t without intuitive observations. Most perceptive is an analysis of how Godzilla Minus One dovetails recurring narrative beats of sacrifice. In this (beautifully written) section, DiManna recalls past Godzilla characters who surrendered their lives to save the world. He then explores the theme within Minus One’s parameters (“[The film] posits that a human life is never worth losing, not even for the sake of honor or to enact revenge”) and within the broader spectrum of its franchise: “Godzilla Minus One […] turned the sacrificial paradigm of previous films on its head.”
At 240 pages, G-Cinema covers a fair amount of territory—seventy-plus years of movies and centuries more in history—in relatively limited space, but it does so well and with infectious, steadily readable prose. One of many Godzilla books to have risen in the last few years, it comes recommended, in particular, to newcomers and casual fans; as mentioned above, the compact size makes it ideal for those seeking a crash course on Japan’s iconic monster. And even for seasoned admirers desiring a pleasurable read on their favorite series, there’s enough data and thoughtful words here to satisfy and entertain.
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