Unpopular Godzilla Opinions

[SpiderZilla]

I doubt most people would recognize the various cities without some landmark being shown.

Has anyone ever attempted to put together a map to correlate the locations to the films?

[Voyager]

I doubt most people would recognize the various cities without some landmark being shown.

Has anyone ever attempted to put together a map to correlate the locations to the films?

There's a showa map, IIRC

[LegendZilla]

^Is it just less expensive for Toho or any other Japanese film studio to just keep filming around the greater Tokyo area?

[JAGzilla]

Tokyo is the city in Japan. It's like Washington, New York, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. It just has so much central, powerful significance that it's the obvious target.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Tokyo is the city in Japan. It's like Washington, New York, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. It just has so much central, powerful significance that it's the obvious target.

Yeah I have zero clue why this is so complicated to understand.

Added in 4 minutes 4 seconds:

I doubt most people would recognize the various cities without some landmark being shown.

Has anyone ever attempted to put together a map to correlate the locations to the films?

A lot of the Japanese guides feature helpful maps that show where each individual movie takes place. Depending on the map, some of them show the direction of each monster, and where they wind up/where major scenes take place. A big conclusive map of everything would be too complex but it’s still pretty cool.

[LegendZilla]

Tokyo is the city in Japan. It's like Washington, New York, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. It just has so much central, powerful significance that it's the obvious target.

Why must it be treated like it’s the only city in Japan?

[JAGzilla]

Tokyo is the city in Japan. It's like Washington, New York, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. It just has so much central, powerful significance that it's the obvious target.

Why must it be treated like it’s the only city in Japan?

Did you not read my post? Tokyo undeniably is disproportionately important to Japan. It's the same reason American disaster movies never take place in Kansas City or Birmingham, Alabama. It's no big loss if they get destroyed, compared with the cities that serve as our centers of government, economics, and culture. Tokyo is all of those things to Japan. You take down Tokyo, you rip Japan's spine out. Osaka or Fukuoka or Sendai just won't hit the same way.

[Voyager]

You destroy Tokyo, Japan is effectively decapitated. It’s is the centre of government, technology, culture, everything.

[StardustGenius]

Tokyo is the city in Japan. It's like Washington, New York, and Los Angeles all rolled into one. It just has so much central, powerful significance that it's the obvious target.

Why must it be treated like it’s the only city in Japan?

If you've looked a bit deeper, plenty of other cities have been attacked during the Godzilla series, and kaiju films in general. There was a huge spectacular destruction scene in Sapporo in vs King Ghidorah, and Sendai in Gamera 2. Osaka's been attacked several times; vs Biollante, Gamera vs Barugon, Gamera vs Jiger. Yokohama in GMK, Fukuoka in vs Spacegodzilla.

Tokyo is the largest city in Japan, and the most important, but it is not treated as the only city in Japan.

[_JNavs_]

Isn't Osaka another big one that often gets destroyed like almost all the time, and is spoken of a ton? Japan certainly isn't treated as the "only" city.

Edit: Ninja'd

[Legion1979]

We've also got Osaka in Godzilla Raids Again, Fukuoka in the original Rodan, Hokkaido in King King vs Godzilla, Nagoya in Mothra vs Godzilla and Gamera vs Gyaos, Yokohama in Ghidrah and Godzilla VS Mothra, and the climax of Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla takes place in Okinawa.

Soooo...yeah.

[JAGzilla]

Partly ninja'd, but recent movies (Millennium onward) have been bad for mostly concentrating on Tokyo. In the earlier eras, yeah, there was more variety. Rodan and Spacegodzilla attacked Fukuoka, the GRA battle was in Osaka, Burning Godzilla attacked Hong Kong, and plenty of other examples.

[Voyager]

Partly ninja'd, but recent movies (Millennium onward) have been bad for mostly concentrating on Tokyo. In the earlier eras, yeah, there was more variety. Rodan and Spacegodzilla attacked Fukuoka, the GRA battle was in Osaka, Burning Godzilla attacked Hong Kong, and plenty of other examples.

Heaps of Showa films were just in the countryside, too.

[Legion1979]

Partly ninja'd, but recent movies (Millennium onward) have been bad for mostly concentrating on Tokyo. In the earlier eras, yeah, there was more variety. Rodan and Spacegodzilla attacked Fukuoka, the GRA battle was in Osaka, Burning Godzilla attacked Hong Kong, and plenty of other examples.

Heaps of Showa films were just in the countryside, too.

Thats....nice?

15 Showa films. 7 Heisei. 6 Millennium. If only half of the Showa series had kaiju scenes taking place somewhere in a city it would still be the same amount as Heisei. And guess what? All the Showa Godzilla series except for the two island films and Godzillas Revenge feature some effects scene taking place in a city.

Sooooo....yeah.

Sometimes LegandZilla, I think your best bet is to just stop. This entire discussion started with you claiming Tokyo is overused as a setting in these movies. We all just proved its not, for the most part.

[edgaguirus]

Moving on if we can....

I like the countryside battles. Being in open country, forests, or rocky/mountainous areas provides some interesting backdrops for the fights, as well as weapons like rocks and trees.

[StardustGenius]

Jeez Legion why are you so damn hostile to Voyager? He's essentially agreeing with you and you give him that response? Tranquilo dude.

[SpiderZilla]

I like the countryside battles. Being in open country, forests, or rocky/mountainous areas provides some interesting backdrops for the fights, as well as weapons like rocks and trees.

Does Japan actually have countrysides like those depicted in the battles? As in, flat land, few if any trees, no homes, no rivers, no power lines?

[LSD Jellyfish]

I like the countryside battles. Being in open country, forests, or rocky/mountainous areas provides some interesting backdrops for the fights, as well as weapons like rocks and trees.

Does Japan actually have countrysides like those depicted in the battles? As in, flat land, few if any trees, no homes, no rivers, no power lines?

In the Showa era, definitely.

[StardustGenius]

Back when Sci-Fi Japan did Youtube videos, they had a series of Showa to Modern location comparisons. That one house in Godzilla vs Megalon out in the countryside is now surrounded by dense urban housing and businesses. Land is super important in Japan, and probably why there was a wave of land scams over the past few years.

[LSD Jellyfish]

Back when Sci-Fi Japan did Youtube videos, they had a series of Showa to Modern location comparisons. That one house in Godzilla vs Megalon out in the countryside is now surrounded by dense urban housing and businesses. Land is super important in Japan, and probably why there was a wave of land scams over the past few years.

Yeah. Even if Tokyo appears a bunch, it's also interesting seeing it rapidly evolve. The Tokyo in Gojira/Godzilla KOTM is very different than the Tokyo portrayed in Godzilla 1984, or Shin Godzilla. I think it's also fascinating seeing all the Showa Ultraman, Kamen Rider, and other Tokkusatsu stuff take place in mainly empty construction sites/fields, when now those types of places still exist. To be clear, a lot of places in Japan can still have fields or emptiness, but for the most part, Japan's big babyboom led to a very drastic increase in development.

Continuing the discussion on Tokyo, I don't think this is discussed much: Tokyo technically isn't a city, in the same way that other cities are is. It's essentially a state, and 23 smaller cities, and one big city, all at once. It's rather complex. You can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo

I think when most people envision Tokyo, they imagine the Tokyo Tower, or the Shibuya/Shinjuku areas (where the big crossings and buildings are). Most of what the films feature, if the film takes place in Tokyo, Godzilla coming out of Tokyo Bay, and entering into the Shibuya/Shinjuku area. But what a lot of viewers miss is the areas of Chiba or Kanagawa that are near Tokyo but often get lumped in mentally with the greater Tokyo area.

If you want a good example of how even the greater Tokyo area is pretty diverse, consider Shin Godzilla:


Godzilla lands in Ota, and one of the big areas there is "Kamata" (hence the Kamata-kun nickname). He continues his rampage, where he engages the helicopters in Shinagawa. He transforms, and retreats back into Tokyo Bay.

Later, emerging from Tokyo Bay, Godzilla engages the JSDF at Tama River:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_River

Tama River, makes it difficult, to understand precisely where Godzilla is, but it's either in Kawasaki, or more inland. Then Godzilla heads into Tokyo, but again, it's a little ambigious where Godzilla is exactly. He's in Tokyo "Prefecture" (see above for why that's a difficult distinction), but he's not in Shinjuku. Then, Godzilla enters the heart of Tokyo, the Shinjuku/Shibuya area, and the bombing scene occurs. A while later, in the finale, Godzilla is in Chiyoda, in this commercial district:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marunouchi

He's stopped directly on Tokyo Station:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Station

This is just an example, but it's meant to showcase that even when many of the kaiju films/genre films take place in Tokyo, many of the specific locales within that are pretty different.