This book from 2021 was meant to capitalize on the release of Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) in Japan, although really is a celebration of Godzilla and Toho science fiction productions as a whole. It's best described as a pocket encyclopedia, measuring at just 15 centimeters in height (about 6 inches).
In terms of presentation, the book is in color from start to finish. That's surprising in contrast to older publications like this, which would often have the majority of their contents in black and white, although has been the norm for more contemporary books. Living up to its name, the Picturebook of Godzilla & All Monsters also features a ton of images on the subject matter. While some of the color productions do have black and white photos, they are rare.
As for the contents, the book is largely a collection of monster bios that are organized loosely chronologically... at least for the ones from the Godzilla productions. Now each bio contains the monster's name in both Japanese and English along with stats and a brief paragraph on them. This will be presented alongside a big picture and generally some supporting images on the adjacent page, although not all monsters get these additional images. The English names are often spot on, but do falter sometimes like misspelling Dagahra and calling Desghidorah by his translated name of "Deathghidorah" just to name a couple of about a dozen with issues. An interesting aspect of the book is that each movie appearance gets its own bio, and even television appearances are included. For example, Showa Gigan has separate bios for Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972), Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) and Zone Fighter (1973).
Now as mentioned the book is mostly monster bios in chronological order. This is true for the coverage of the Godzilla films, but then gets a bit random starting with the monsters from King Kong Escapes (1967) after this and then the Rebirth of Mothra films. Following that we return to a chronological order for the remaining monsters along with now mutants and aliens. Interestingly, Gorosaurus, Varan and some others that do appear in the Godzilla series only have their bios found toward the end here. What's most interesting, though, is the coverage of Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974). This long banned film has only recently started to appear in publications again, and here it's represented by bios for the Giant Bat and Giant Slug. Following these are some mech bios, ala Super X and the Gotengo, although these don't feature the English titles or stats for them but rather just pics and a sentence for each.
The very back of the book has coverage for the American productions, ala GODZILLA (1998) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), along with Shin Godzilla (2016) for some reason. This portion of the book provides more images for each of the productions, with extra focus also placed on Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). It concludes with some coverage of the related TV shows, both about Godzilla and some adjacent like Go! Godman (1972). The anime trilogy of Godzilla films is also crammed in here oddly, given a brief two page spread to cover all three films.
Overall, for those looking for a book focused on the monsters this is a pretty good publication. Being so picture heavy, the release is import friendly as well while the coverage of obscure Toho properties is quite welcome.
As a side note, this book would translate better as "Godzilla: All Monster Big Picturebook". However, since Kodansha included the English title of Picturebook of Godzilla & All Monsters on the front that's the translation we are using. |
