BW Media Spotlight

I come from a time where Godzilla being one of the good guys was nothing new. The movies primarily produced in the “showa” era of Japan’s history owes a bit to business decisions. Kids really enjoy giant monsters smashing buildings and fighting each other. So that’s what Toho gave them, using their most popular monster to do so. However, they reasoned Godzilla should become a good guy, a guardian monster for the kids to cheer on, as definite good and evil forces were created, usually aliens from space and one undersea kingdom. And one terror group we never seem to remember because their monster was a giant crab.

A lot of newer Godzilla fans hate this. “Godzilla should be the bad guy, the threat to Japan inspired by the atomic and now nuclear explosives or payback for Japan’s sins.” Well, Godzilla was a threat but not necessarily evil. With a few exceptions in later continuities, Godzilla’s biggest issue was that he didn’t like walking around things, joined by his willingness to fight to retain his “king of the monsters” title. He didn’t hate humans so much as he didn’t care unless they started shooting at him or using his dead relatives as giant robots. Then he hated them.

Just for some interesting filler I wanted to put together a full list of the showa period guardian monsters. I don’t think they necessarily formed a battleline outside of their battles with Ghidorah, not a lot of team-ups. Still, when it came to protecting the earth from space monsters and robots from a black hole, these were the kaiju you called.

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