English Dub Season Review: Godzilla Singular Point Season One
Overview:
Godzilla gets another anime treatment but this time the animation is less jarring with its CGI use. Mei Kamino (Erika Harlacher) and Yun Arikawa (Johnny Yong Bosch) are the two main characters. There are a bunch of supporting characters as well all trying to deal with the kaiju-sized mess they all find themselves in. They’re also trying to avoid “The Catastrophe” which becomes prominent in the latter half of the season.
Almost all of the monsters from the Godzilla mythos are in here in some form or another. Easter eggs abound in this series and if you have been following the King of Monsters since his first appearance in 1954 you won’t be disappointed. Let’s find out what this Netflix original does well and not so well.
Our Take:
This show was a real mixed bag for me. I grew up on Godzilla and watched every movie I could get my hands on. Some of my fondest memories when I was younger involved the first kaiju. For some reason every summer in my hometown the library would have a Godzilla movie marathon that would last a week. Just sitting down for hours watching Godzilla films was awesome as a kid. So, as you might expect I was excited to get the opportunity to review this series.
My excitement died out in the second half because I got the feeling the show was trying to be too smart for its own good. I legitimately felt stupid watching this at times. There is an object in this show that is kind of the deus-ex machina of the whole problem called the “orthogonal diagonalizer” and upon hearing that for the fortieth time was getting annoyed. When a story throws around science-sounding words just to try and make their wild plots make sense it oftentimes has the opposite effect.
There really is a lot here for fans of the Godzilla franchise. With unique takes being taken on already established monsters. The one that came up the most was Rodan. Instead of being one singular monster, it was the name given to the flying pterodactyl monsters. There are moth-like creatures that bear a striking resemblance to one of the most famous monsters in the franchise Mothra. The moths as well as another monster, Manda, get what I’ll call the “species” treatment. What I mean is that these typically singular monsters are now a group of monsters.
The sounds in this series are also fantastic. From the music which includes a pretty awesome opening and ending song to the monster sound effects. The opening song is “in case…” by BiSH and the ending is “Aoi” by Polkadot Stingray. I never took advantage of the Netflix “skip intro” button for the opening and made sure I was able to watch the credits for the ending. They were good ones. Now onto the other parts of sound.
If there is one thing that is iconic about Godzilla it’s his roar. Studio Bones and Orange nailed that aspect with this one. All of the sound effects were fantastic. Godzilla’s atomic breath looks and sounds awesome, glowing rings appear in front of him as he’s charging it up and it never fails to create a spectacle. There were also homages to the monsters past in the soundtrack with “Godzilla’s Theme” being featured prominently throughout.
If there is anywhere studio Bones never goes wrong in, it’s how they animate. The CGI meshes with the traditional animation seamlessly here. I am usually not a fan of CGI in anime but you can hardly tell at times and the monsters all look great. The characters also have unique appearances and when it comes to the main leads they really stand out.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the story the series falls flat. Really flat, and it is really disappointing. Godzilla has never been known for its fantastic storytelling. It’s just monsters fighting and supposed to be fun, but there isn’t really even much of that here. It felt like they were trying to tell a big profound story but it really missed the mark. There are barely any monsters fighting, for the most part, all the monster fighting involves Jet Jaguar who is featured more prominently than the titular Godzilla.
I really hope you are a fan of Jet Jaguar cause they are featured prominently and for what it’s worth it becomes its own character and is enjoyable. Just for a show title Godzilla: Singular Point the monster in the title isn’t featured all that much. It seemed like they were wanting to do a character drama with kaiju apocalypse as the setting and it just didn’t work. There was a character that was pretty major that died and I didn’t even notice till someone mentioned their death. I went back and watched the scene and I guess you could insinuate that but they are in the first scene of the next episode which is apparently a flashback. Just really jarring pacing and plot decisions.
They heavily tease a second season with Mecha Godzilla being involved in the post-credits scene and I think that could be interesting. I just hope they try and fix some of the plot issues, we watch Godzilla for the monsters, it does not need to be as complicated as they made it.
They got really great voice talent for this one with Erika Harlacher and Johnny Yong Bosch putting in good performances. Even they couldn’t save how off-putting all the science talk was. Cassandra Morris plays an A.I. called Pelo 2 and that was the best performance in the show. Her character was cute and funny especially once she got a robot body. Cassandra does really well with characters like these and this was no different. Kira Buckland also did really well as the A.I. that eventually became Jet Jaguar.
It’s weird I wasn’t a huge fan of this series but I still hope it gets the second season. Mainly because this felt more like setup than anything else. We have seen Godzilla fight Mecha Godzilla a thousand times but with Bones animating I would definitely like to see it again. When it comes to this season though? If you are a huge Godzilla fan you will find some cool stuff here but even that probably won’t be enough. This series wasn’t the worst Godzilla media but it was a far cry from the best as well. Hopefully, the second season if it comes out is better.
