The first English translations of the original novellas about the iconic kaiju Godzilla.

Godzilla emerged from the sea to devastate Tokyo in the now-classic 1954 film, produced by Toho Studios and directed by Ishiro Honda, creating a global sensation and launching one of the world’s most successful movie and media franchises. Awakened and transformed by nuclear weapons testing, Godzilla serves as a terrifying metaphor for humanity’s shortsighted destructiveness: this was the intent of Shigeru Kayama, the science fiction writer who drafted the 1954 original film and its first sequel and, in 1955, published these novellas.

Although the Godzilla films have been analyzed in detail by cultural historians, film scholars, and generations of fans, Kayama’s two Godzilla novellas—both classics of Japanese young-adult science fiction—have never been available in English. This book finally provides English-speaking fans and critics the original texts with these first-ever English-language translations of Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again. The novellas reveal valuable insights into Kayama’s vision for the Godzilla story, feature plots that differ from the films, and clearly display the author’s strong antinuclear, pro-environmental convictions.

Kayama’s fiction depicts Godzilla as engaging in guerrilla-style warfare against humanity, which has allowed the destruction of the natural world through its irresponsible, immoral perversion of science. As human activity continues to cause mass extinctions and rapid climatic change, Godzilla provides a fable for the Anthropocene, powerfully reminding us that nature will fight back against humanity’s onslaught in unpredictable and devastating ways.

Godzilla emerges from the ocean, sinking ships and attacking a small island destroying a fishing village.  Some scientists wish to study Godzilla, others wish to destroy him and as they argue about what to do, Godzilla attacks and destroys large areas of Tokyo. We follow the story via several characters - Professor Yamane, his daughter Emiko and Shinkichi, whose brother and mother were killed by Godzilla. The climax is the destruction of Godzilla via a new weapon of mass destruction and the suicide of that weapon’s creator to prevent its misuse in the future.

Godzilla Raids Again sees a second, new Godzilla rise from the ocean as well as a second monster, Anguirus, who destroy Osaka as they battle each other.  After Godzilla destroys Anguirus he is ultimately defeated himself, buried in an avalanche on a small northern island. We follow the action mostly through three characters - Hidemi, daughter of the Marine Fisheries owner, and Tsukioka and Kobayashi, pilots who work for the company.

As a huge Godzilla fan, I jumped at the chance to review this title. The two novellas read very much like the screenplay for the movies just fleshed out a bit which makes for hard reading at times. There is no real character development, in many places it reads literally as if it is just describing the scenes we see on the screen in the movies. It reads much as if it is a manga minus the pictures.  Both novellas are short - less than 100 pages each.

There are a few differences between the novellas and the films, one being the romantic interest between Emiko and Ogata which in the novella becomes Emiko and Shinkichi who are more the same age presumably as that would be of more interest to the young readers the novellas were aimed at. The other real difference in the Tokyo Godzilla Society which posts flyers around Tokyo praising Godzilla leading to a conspiracy theory that Professor Yamane actually controls Godzilla.

The most interesting portion of the book is the Afterword which delves in depth into Kayama’s intentions both with the screenplay he wrote and the novellas he followed them up with; as well as how the story changed from his incredibly more direct anti-nuclear message to the one we see on screen.  I am not sure I really enjoyed the novellas, such a direct translation probably did not serve the stories well - but they are necessary for the greatest appreciation of the information in the Afterword.  This is a must read for the Godzilla fan. Recommended ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

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