Godzilla Singular Point – The Modern Kaiju

Production

While watching Godzilla Singular Point I kept thinking how pretty the show was. The designs are great, especially the monsters. The colours are just fantastic, they pop out at you and the fact that Netflix has some high-resolution streaming makes them even more vibrant. I think. I’m not entirely sure it works that way…

And the CG… well your mileage will probably vary. There’s a lot of it. Most of the beasties are CG. I thought it works quite well. It sort of visually isolated all the monsters that the narrative was othering, creating this perfect dissonance. And it made the movements so much more menacing. I’m guessing some will find it annoying since it’s not exactly seamless.

For me though, it was a downright impressive production. I just found out it was made by Orange and BONES, two studios I generally praise for technical prowess, so it’s not surprising that I enjoyed this one.

Story & Characters

Like I said, I’m not sure my synopsis did it justice. In many respects, Godzilla Singular Point is a much more character-driven story than pretty much any Kaiju movie or show I’ve seen up until now, with the exception of Colossal (a great movie by the way).

A lot of the narrative beats and tropes of Kaiju movies are here. They’re rather similar to natural disaster movies. You know, there’s the small-time scientist who doesn’t have the resources or means to solve everything but actually knows a lot more about what’s happening than anyone else. There’s a mild environmental message. The events start small and isolated but escalate very quickly and cause huge collateral and structural damage. Ultimately the fate of the world rests in the hands of a rag-tag team and a single action. That sort of thing.

And it presents those tropes with reverence. This isn’t a deconstruction or a satire of the genre. It’s a classic Kaiju story brimming with action and even a few robots, most likely written by fans of the genre. For the record, I’m not one of these fans. I don’t hate the genre by any means but it’s not like I gravitate towards it either.

However, there’s also this more personal story happening. Throughout everything, the narrative takes the time to really study the two leads, Mei and Yun and to develop them in detail. Since Mai and Yun (the Gintama-looking guy…) both happen to be very likeable and layered characters, this adds some depth to the story which Kaiju movies usually don’t have the time for. And it’s kind of charming.

I don’t want to spoil anything so let’s just say that Mei and Yun don’t really meet during the course of the action. But they interact regularly. They form this friendly almost pseudo-professional relationship online and discuss their personal theories on what is happening in the world. And it’s these personal discussions and scientific meanderings that actually frame the action.

It’s a subtle shift at times but it really reinvigorated the genre for me. I ended up looking forward to the next episode every time I finished one. I also really cared about the characters. Not in the disaster movie way we care about the cute little girl with the stuffed bunny who is in the path of a hurricane. I cared about them in a way where I wanted to get to know them better. I was curious about how Mei’s studies were going (as a side note, if I had been born rich I also would have studied nonexistent creatures at post-graduate level as well). I really wanted to know how Yun ended up at Otaki Factory. I actually would have loved a few more filler episodes.

I cared about the cast of Godzilla Singular Point, regardless of both Godzilla and the Singular Point event. That’s saying something.

I realize that I have mentioned science and Singular Point a few times without elaborating. You see, in this iteration of Godzilla, he’s not the actual disaster, just a symptom. That twist has been used before but in Godzilla Singular Point, it quickly becomes obvious that the problem is physics. Honestly, if anime has taught me anything, it’s that physics is nothing but trouble!

A lot of the series is concerned more with dimensions crumbling into each other than it is with giant dinosaur monsters. Not that the monsters aren’t a problem. They are! A pretty big one that we have to run from a whole lot. But the more pressing issue is about getting the math right! Oh man, did I just make Godzilla Singular Point sound as boring as Netflix did? I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job.

You might like this anime if:

You like pretty and striking visuals. You enjoy classic Kaiju stories but wish they had more technobabble. You like romance storylines that don’t happen actually happen during the run of the series.

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.