Towards the end of 2001, perhaps the most celebrated installment of the Millenium series of Godzilla films was released: Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, on December 15th of that year. As with many other Godzilla films (though fewer in the Millenium series), GMK had a manga adaptation released around the same time… but along with that promotion, a separate, more unique manga was also published as part of the media blitz: a two-part biographical manga based on Ishiro Honda’s life, focusing on his work making the original Godzilla (1954). The manga, titled “The Men Who Made Godzilla: Ishiro Honda,” was written and drawn by Kazuya Ataki (at this point, I haven’t found any further information about this creator), and they were published in the Weekly Shonen Magazine, the first coming out on December 12, 2001, and the second on January 1st, 2002. The manga serves as a highly dramatized, exaggerated, but loving recreation of Honda’s story in making Godzilla, and includes many familiar fan-favorite faces rendered in shonen-style, do-your-best, hyper-emotional glory.
While “The Men Who Made Godzilla: Ishiro Honda” is not the first tokusatsu biographical manga, it may be the first to focus on Ishiro Honda. Eiji Tsuburaya (who also appears in this manga, naturally enough) has had several manga adaptations of his life which are substantially longer than Honda’s two-parter. One difference, however, is that Ishiro Honda’s story in this case focuses entirely on the making of one film. Tsuburaya’s biographical manga cover a wider swath of his accomplishments, usually with generous attention to the special effects’ guru’s work in television (ahem, Ultraman). Tsuburaya’s manga stories, too, are more explicitly educational; all three of the adaptations I own were published as part of educational manga biography series. While Ishiro Honda’s two-part tale is also based on fact, more attention is given to melodramatic “overcome-the-odds” bravado and cartoonish caricatures.
The first chapter starts with a framing story in which a huge crowd is waiting to rush the cinema for the release of GMK. A young boy asks a rickety old fellow what kind of movie “Godzilla” is, to which the geezer replies that it’s pretty great, the first time in a movie that “that guy” shook Japan… but even greater than Godzilla was the director, Ishiro Honda!” Just who this old man is, however, is never firmly established. His facial structure and hair look similar to how Honda is rendered on the pages of this adaptation, but it seems obvious that he can’t be the director (who died in 1993). At any rate, we soon jump into the story.
The first chapter is all about the grand attempt to get the green light from the studio to make Godzilla. We meet Akira Kurosawa (the famed director), here depicted in all-black, slim, stylish, a cinematic rock star and good friend of Honda’s. Tomoyuki Tanaka arrives, we learn about the cancellation of Toho’s huge co-production with Indonesia. Honda and Tanaka dream over coffee about making a monster movie together instead. The higher-ups shoot down the idea as junk that would tarnish Toho’s name, but Honda convinces them to wait three months so they can put together a proper movie pitch. Tsuburaya (here a cranky, white-haired old man—he would have been about 53 in real life) is called upon, and Honda goes through trials trying to write the script, eventually drawing upon his memories of Hiroshima after coming back to Japan. Honda’s passion convinces Tsuburaya to hop on board, and they put together an astonishing pitch complete with hundreds of storyboards and even a finished Godzilla suit. With such profound moves, the studio heads acquiesce, the cast is chosen, and Honda and Tsuburaya begin filming their respective first scenes. End of chapter one.
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| The meeting pitch for Godzilla with the suit |
The second chapter opens with a depiction of a Godzilla city destruction sequence, which includes a recreation of the famous incident in which Haruo Nakajima falls and smashes part of the set. We also see Honda pushing his actors and crew to their limits filming the scene where Godzilla appears and extras run away in droves. A “villain” also appears to taunt Honda and denigrate the Godzilla project: movie critic Makoto Shirozuka. Staff deal with frustration and tensions surrounding the project, to the point that a fight breaks out. Honda and Tsuburaya have a heart-to-heart in the midst of their stressful schedule, and Honda experiences a flashback to his war days; Godzilla is established as his reason for returning from the war. Honda redoubles his efforts, begging a building owner to allow his edifice to be depicted getting destroyed in the film; his staff is inspired by the director’s dedication, and they redouble their efforts. Shirozuka appears again to further deride Honda, and the staff scare him with a Godzilla prop. The staging of Godzilla’s death sequence is recreated for the page, the film wraps, emotions are high. On opening day, Honda and Tsuburaya witness the massive crowds waiting to see the movie. Tears! Relief! Tomoyuki Tanaka says the opening was better than Seven Samurai (1954)! Honda succeeds. There is a brief closing sequence where the old man Honda lookalike speaks again with a child fan at the GMK showing, and we end with more inspiring words about the making of this classic film.
The framing of the story feels pure shonen. Even though Honda was in his forties when he made Godzilla, he looks much younger here—manga Honda bears little resemblance to the real director. He is the underdog, the hero with a hard past (the war), the hard-worker with a hard-knock life and a super-cool rival who overawes and inspires our protagonist. Many trials ensue, exaggerated to an extreme (surely the creators of Godzilla didn’t prepare all the storyboards before the pitch meeting, plastering them all over the walls—let alone creating an entire Godzilla suit). While the story here is obviously based on facts, there are relatively few sequences that are straight recreations of actual incidents on the set. Much of the panel-to-panel action is fanciful dramatic conversations and soul-searching which might or might not have happened in the real.
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| Honda's past |
Consider Honda’s relationship to Kurosawa. Like in real life, they are friends who share mutual respect. They encourage each other. While I doubt that they used the particular nicknames that appear in this text (Honda calls Kurosawa “Kuro” or “black”… and Kurosawa calls Honda “Ino,” which means… “pig”), the two directors’ genuine friendship and collaboration shown here is laudable, bringing to light their surprising camaraderie that stretched late into their real-world careers.
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| The story's cool Kurosawa |
Honda’s relationship with Tsuburaya feels true to some aspects of reality, too. Tsuburaya in this manga is a crotchety elder master artist, probably meant to reflect the real “old man’s” strong temper and stubborn ways. Honda, meanwhile, is also shown to be dedicated and demanding, but unstintingly kind to his staff, which tracks according to retellings from Ryfle and Godziszewski’s Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa biography. On the other hand, a scene with Honda crying over his war memories and Tsuburaya consoling him and suggesting that his Godzilla movie is the reason he came back from the war seems an overstep into fancy, a move away from the pair’s cordial but professional relationship.
Note that Godzilla scribe Shigeru Kayama gets REALLY short shrift in this retelling; he is mentioned, but Honda gets most of the credit as the writer for the film. Though if you follow the true story, it was Kayama who instilled the Godzilla tale with subtext about the bomb, and his version was more overt and political, in this manga, Honda is depicted as the mastermind behind the nuclear meaning of the film.
For me, I was intrigued by how the film handled the skepticism and outright hostility against the Godzilla project. While the comic definitely slathers on the exaggeration, with the studio heads showing comical levels of disdain, the real film DID undergo significant scrutiny and derision, with many staff uncertain or dismissive of the project. That unease is woven into this narrative, too, which can provide a healthy corrective to those who picture the Japanese as automatically more open-minded about their monster filmography.
That said, the buffoonish movie reviewer Makoto Shirozuka takes the theme into parody, evoking something not so far removed from the unfortunate “Mayor Ebert” from Devlin and Emmerich’s GODZILLA (1998). Shirozuka may or may not have been a real journalist; a quick search of his name did not turn up any hits. Regardless, it appears to be true that the media at the time did not treat Godzilla kindly at first. If Shirozuka DID exist, though, I can’t imagine he would appreciate the way he is depicted here, a sneering snob with squinty eyes and massive buck teeth. He looks like he walked right in off of a racist WWII propaganda short. His final comeuppance, “scared away” by a Godzilla model, inspires more eye-rolling than inspiration.
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| Critic Makoto Shirozuka |
Still, there is inspiration in seeing the staff come around to Honda’s sometimes harsh regimen, the rising loyalty, the sacrificial hard-work, and Honda and Tsuburaya dashing to witness the awesome crowds on opening day. To have Honda’s wartime service included, too, ties the tale into its heady themes powerfully, even if the director’s participation in war crimes is (unsurprisingly) never mentioned. Nevertheless, the heart-on-a-sleeve, work-hard-and-succeed shonen tropes do map onto the story in satisfying ways.
The Men Who Made Godzilla was not the only biography of its type, as back in 1995 another two-part manga biography with a wider cast was published in Weekly Shonen Sunday. That manga, The Men Who Invented Godzilla (even the title is nearly the same) is more realistic, from the art (clearly modeled on the actual people) to the closer attention to recreating specific events often retold about the making of the film. I prefer The Men Who Invented Godzilla, but Ishiro Honda’s manga bio is still a worthy, quirky addition to the tokusatsu making-of genre, and more respectful than the vaguely snarky Legends of Tomorrow episode. Maybe this is the shonen Godzilla anime we all really deserve—I would love to watch Honda’s continued adventures through Rodan (1956), Mothra (1961), the continued Godzilla series, all the way to Dreams (1990) with Kurosawa. It’s got to be at least as good as another “human with Godzilla powers” series! Maybe Honda really is cooler than Godzilla. |
