The third,
and most likely last, in B Media Books' detailed series
on Toho's science fiction films: The Godzilla Chronicles.
This book goes over Toho's produced films in the sci-fi
genre (along with Daigoro
vs. Goliath [1972]) from 1954 up to 1999, with
added coverage on the, then new, Godzilla
2000 Millennium (1999) and GODZILLA (1998).
The book also starts with some expanded coverage on
Godzilla's appearances in English comic books and
the Godzilla
Island (1997) television show.
The book, like others in the series, is in Japanese,
but each page is nearly covered in pictures. Although
most of them are in black and white, the total for
the book is well over 1,500 easily compensating
for this aspect. The publication starts out with
eight pages, in color, of in-depth coverage on Godzilla
2000 Millennium (1999), followed by a one
page report on some of Toho's TV shows, then three
pages dedicated to GODZILLA(1998).
This is all followed by two pages that go over Godzilla's
appearances in English comic books and the monsters
he inspired. The cool thing about this is that the
authors do make note of the character appearing
in Iron
Man #193, which at the time was not a well
versed fact among more diehard fans. Anyway, following
this is a two page report on
Godzilla Island (1997) before going over
the specifics of Toho's monsters. The monster section
remains pretty much unchanged from the one seen
in The Godzilla Chronicles Volume 2. A lot
of focus in this section is given to Yamato
Takeru (1994) and the Rebirth of Mothra
series monsters, both of which were missing in the
first volume in the series. Like previous volumes,
the English used in the monster section is questionable,
and it would generally be wise to take it with a
grain of salt. Next, the book goes over the posters
and merchandise associated with Toho's sci-fi films,
this section is entirely unchanged from Volume 2,
before finally going over the movies themselves.
The section devoted to Toho's films and actors,
which takes up more than 3/4's of the book, is,
like in previous volumes, entirely in black and
white. The section is organized by date of release
and lists the film's Japanese name, in Japanese,
and US title, in English. Unlike previous volumes,
some of the Japanese movies after 1992, which hadn't
been released in the US, have English titles in
the book. The titles, unfortunately, are mostly
erroneous, like "Godzilla vs. Space Monster" for Godzilla
vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994). A lot of the
English titles have typos as well, examples include:
Gunhead, Godzilla vsmothra, Godzilla vsmechagodzilla,
and Mothra 3 Invasion of Kingghidorah. Like previous
volumes, through out the movie and actor section
there are "Lost Projects" are scattered in with
a short amount of info on each along with some
concept art or "doctored" still.
Although there are other books with a similar
scope, The
Godzilla Chronicles is more easily found and
covers some of the numerous Lost Projects that
have accumulated over the years. As it stands, The
Godzilla Chronicles Vol. 3 is easily one of
the best books on Toho. This will probably be the
volume from the series most will want to pick up
as it's the largest and most up to date of the
books from the series, and it's a shame they didn't
continue past this volume. |